Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Dominic Aquilina, Managing Director with Jefferies in the Aerospace, Defense & Government Group. With me today, I've got Jeremy Wensinger, the President and Chief Executive Officer of V2X. Appreciate everyone's time. Just a quick format check before we jump in. I'm going to turn it over to Jeremy to kick it off with a few slides and overview of the company. We'll go through a few discussion points, and then we'll open it up to the floor for questions if we've got remaining time. Thanks, and Jeremy, over to you.
Thank you. Appreciate the time. Thanks for taking the time, especially during the lunch hour, to do this. V2X plays in the government services space. We are principally a provider to DoD and the intel community. We do have some civil work with NASA and the FBI and DEA, but most of it is either going to be MRO work or some very specific work that we do for NASA. And then obviously we have some classified work that is in the portfolio as well. You can see about $4.9 billion in revenue, 16,000-ish employees. We're in almost every single time zone around the globe. It's a global company in the sense of supporting our customers. And we support them in numerous ways. Base operating support, so think about a base.
Somebody's got to be able to run the infrastructure for the base so that we can support the war fighter, or in the MRO world, keeping aircraft in the air for our customers. Then there's another leg of the business. There's a lot of engineering, doing very bespoke work for Department of Defense and some other customers. But it's a lot of engineering. It's about 1 million square feet in Indianapolis that we support that engineering business with. Then there's a C5ISR part of the portfolio, mostly services again, and in the intel space, which is a lot of services. Again, around the globe, high logistics company, in terms of our ability to move equipment around the world. Pretty good balance in terms of portfolio of customers.
But again, we play in the O&M budget, which is a pretty attractive budget when it comes to budgetary activity on the Hill. Typically doesn't get caught up in all of the congressional stuff. We like where we play. We've seen good growth in our business over the last couple of years. Principally, it's because we have been able to take the entire company to a lot of these bids and create separation and differentiation with our customers. I'll just highlight on the next page. Here's some recent awards, and you can see on the left-hand side, it kind of spans the entire portfolio. So we're winning work in each of our portfolio areas. We think the differentiation that the combination of these companies came together several years ago is starting to bear fruit.
If you look at our book-to-bill, or you look at our revenue growth, I think all the metrics are pointing in the same direction that I just conveyed. We've really started to see the benefits of the merger several years ago.
Yeah. Let's jump in. Well, Jeremy, I want to congratulate you for just passing your two-year anniversary with V2X. Just curious, what are some of your key takeaways with your time so far with the company, and what are you most excited about moving forward here?
Yeah. In the two years, the things that I've been most impressed by is the persistence of the missions we support. They have long legs to them. They're enduring. The complicating side of how do you do business in all these foreign countries? How do we get licensing, bank accounts? All the stuff that in my prior job was a stumbling block because it was not a core muscle memory of those companies. Where it is, I think for V2X, it's been very impressive. Then just the ability to move equipment around the globe seamlessly. Big supply chain. I really did not appreciate that when I first came in. But again, I think when I look at the overall missions that we support and the enduring nature that they are, and our customers' willingness to continually turn to us based on our execution for continued growth.
We do an awful lot of on-contract growth, and we're winning our fair share or more of new work as well. It's been a great two years in terms of learning for me to understand what are those levers that drive the business outcomes. We've built a good team. Over that two-year period, we've seen it kind of transform from dispersed companies that kind of came together to now it's really one company. It is operating as one.
I think top of mind for investors is always, from a macro perspective, the budget policy environment. I would say right now it seems to be more dynamic than it has been in a long time, and part of that is the threat environment. How do you think about V2X and the relative positioning against some of the funding priorities and where dollars are heading, like readiness, modernization, national security, evolving threats?
Yeah. If you look at those awards that I was showing on the other page, they are mostly readiness and modernization type of awards. This administration has put a strong focus on us being ready and modernizing where we can. It plays well in terms of the portfolio, and I think that is why we are experiencing the growth that we are having. Two, like I said before, a lot of where we are at, these are enduring missions that they are not going to go away overnight. When I look at budgetary stuff, I look at the overall O&M budget. Like I said before, it typically does not get a lot of notice other than just the dollar size in terms of Congress fussing with it. What they really want is they want to keep aircraft in the air, keep bases protected, keep our personnel in a way that they are ready to fight.
I think when I look at what we do really well, then when I look at the Indy facility, our ability to take very quick react contracts and put them in a way that puts them in the theater in a very short period of time, I think that capability has really proven well for us and for our customers. Being nimble, quick, I always refer to us as kind of scrappy. We are very easy to work with, and also, I think, just quick in terms of our ability to be responsive to needs.
You mentioned the Indy facility, and maybe just double-click on that a little bit. You are doing some rapid prototyping some modernization work there. I think in the last quarter, you called out an award for the multi-year production of the carriage equipment-.
Yep.
For the strategic bomber fleet. You mentioned the Tempest CUAS system. Not something that I think maybe some investors think about when they're looking at a traditional services company.
Right.
Talk a little bit more about what's going on there and kind of how that positions you for growth going forward.
Obviously, the carriage was something that that facility does very well and has for a long period of time. But when I look at the Tempest family of products, that really started with a customer who took a visit to the site and realized that we had 1 million square feet. They had an urgent need. We went from back of the napkin to fielding those systems in months. So it isn't like I have a five-year development program, and I go to LRIP, and I go to production. We were in theater in months. And I think the customer-- It was taking everything best of breed and putting it all together in one system for this customer because they had an urgent and compelling need.
And I think that site has given us lots of opportunities, I think, as I look downstream. But also, we use that engineering capability when we bid other parts of the business. So if you think about our center of excellence that's in Orlando, Florida, for proposal support, if we're doing a bid down there, we may have people from all parts of the business contributing to that bid because there might be an engineering requirement for it. There might be a logistics requirement for it. There might be an MRO requirement. Whatever it is, we tend to bring everybody into that facility that can support that proposal activity, and I think it's boding well for us. Our CTO has a nice, I think, a very focused perspective on the technologies that are going to be relevant to our business in the future, and we're making progress on that, both internally and in terms of creating separation with us in the competitive environment with his work.
That's great. Maybe quickly hitting on Q2 a little bit more. Obviously, results you announced a few weeks ago, off to a really strong start for the year. I think you talked about some of the growth you're seeing in the Pacific theater. Talk a little bit more about what you're seeing there, the opportunity there, and then maybe just more broadly, when you kicked off the presentation, you mentioned the global presence as a differentiator against some of your peers. Maybe talk and double-click on that a little bit.
Yeah. Obviously, the Pacific Rim is a high area of interest for not just this administration, but administrations going back. We have presence there. We have presence that I think matters, and I think one of the things that people don't underscore enough is, one, is the contract vehicle, so they can get access to you. But two, being present in theater, where they have an urgent need, or they have an emerging need, and they can quickly turn to you. When I see the Pacific Rim, I see growth coming in the Pacific Rim. You just cannot underscore the fact that being with the customer, shoulder to shoulder with them every day. I'm going to fly to Kwajalein here at the end of the month for the sole purpose of they have urgent and compelling needs, and I want them to know we're focused, and we're committed.
I'm going to go there, just like I went to the Middle East last year. I think the INDOPACOM, I see growth definitely. I see the opportunity in really all regions that we're at by being present. The customer turns to you, and that was, I think we announced in the first quarter, an award in Israel. That award doesn't happen, or the one in Balad, doesn't happen if I wasn't present in that theater.
Yeah, it's almost like a geographic incumbency.
It is.
That's really hard to.
Replicate.
Replicate and challenge if you're not there on the ground.
Right.
You guys are.
Now, we're not the only people in INDOPACOM, but I don't think you're going to do a lot of work in INDOPACOM if you're not there.
Mm-hmm. Yep. You mentioned earlier that the billion dollars of awards that you announced on the Q2 call, as well as your backlog, which is almost $13 billion. How do you think about how that translates into revenue visibility for the next couple of years here?
Yeah. We have very good revenue visibility just based on the type of work that we're awarded. When you're awarded a five-year contract, you can pretty much work your way down that revenue profile. The fact that we've had so few recompetes, I called it a recompete holiday. The stuff that we're winning now is almost entirely, except for C-12, that was a recompete that we won, gives us that opportunity to grow the top line. You're seeing it kind of fall through, right? You're seeing it in terms of our trailing 12-month book-to-bill. We're well over one, which is good. That'll give some visibility to an analyst as to the growth profile that we're going to demonstrate in the future. But again, when I look at our revenue, again, having so few recompetes and being able to put new bids on the street that are going to create new opportunities for the company, our average contracts last between five and seven years.
That $12 billion of backlog, you can kind of get an idea of what that revenue profile looks like. Then again, as we continue to add new work through our bid process, we'll just continue to replenish that backlog.
Yep. Maybe following up on the bid environment. I think you reported last year a 50% increase in bid velocity for 2025, targeting 30% this year. Where are you seeing the strongest demand? What's giving you confidence in converting those bids into wins?
Well, I think you saw in the awards, we are not struggling to find things to bid. We are working in every part of our capabilities, has its own pipeline, has the ability to grow. When I look at that 30% growth, it is really across the portfolio. There's really not one area that I'm seeing is more high demand than others. The other thing that I think gets a little bit underscored, sometimes not enough, is the fact that our on-contract growth is a core competency of this company. The ability to be sitting somewhere in one of the regions of the world, have an existing contract, and the customers say, "I have an emerging need. Can we just add it to your contract?"
That doesn't come across as a new win. That comes across as on-contract growth, and our team does an exceptional job at that.
That's great. Your margins have been fairly steady over the past few years and quarters. Fairly predictable. What are the levels you have? Is it business mix, product versus services, scale? Is it AI efficiency that you could push that higher?
Well, we're 60% cost-plus, so that tells you that you're kind of frozen a little bit until we bleed that backlog off. Now, those awards that we put up there, they were all margin accretive. We are highly focused on, as I tell the team all the time, we're going to get paid for what we do because we do it really well. When we look at pricing, we look at what competitive discriminators can we put on the table that's going to make it a compelling technical offering, and can we make that then margin accretive. The cash flow side is very predictable because the nature of work that we do, and so we are very strong cash flow conversion. We're highly focused on margin accretion, but again, some of the older stuff that's sitting in backlog has to bleed its way out as some of the new stuff comes in. So it's not going to be overnight, we're popping on margins. It's going to be this slow boil that you have to go through to get up there.
Yep. You mentioned the cost-plus versus fixed price dynamic. It is definitely being discussed, the shift in-.
Yeah.
Certain areas of the mission that the government is pushing more and more contractors to focus on fixed price. Some with success, some with some challenges. What is your philosophy on that?
We push our customers all the time to convert our stuff to fixed price. We love fixed price. We do exceptionally well on fixed price work. In many of the places where we are doing cost-plus work, I have been doing it for 10 years on cost-plus. I know what to do. I think one of the challenges that our customers have is, when DoD came around, a lot of contracting officers took the offer.
Yep.
I think they're terribly overworked, and they do a great job, but there's just not enough of them. When we look at fixed price conversions, we'd love to see it go faster, but it's moving, just not as fast as we'd like it to happen.
AI's obviously being discussed in every meeting. I'm sure you're being asked about it several times, and I've talked about it several times already today. Maybe give us a little bit on the V2X AI-.
Yeah.
Story and where you're investing, where you're excited about it-.
Yeah.
What the difference maker is.
I get it. Every meeting you're in, somebody's going to have to mention AI just so-.
You got to check the box.
Yeah, you've got to check the box. I get it. For us, in the type of work that we do, I can spend my calories keeping an aircraft in the air by fixing a broken part, or I can spend my calories preventing that part from breaking to keep that aircraft in the air. I will give you one example. If an aircraft goes down for maintenance or repair, even though I might flip that aircraft that day, that pilot has to wait 7 days to get back on schedule. If you think about your training profile, if you have six weeks to train on an aircraft, now I have just extended you to seven weeks.
Versus if I could get in front of that repair earlier. What we are spending calories on AI is creating digital twins. Digital twins of every aircraft that we service, digital twins of bases that we support, and it gives us the ability because we own all the data. When we went to Google and IBM and all that, the advantage that I had with them is AI is on their critical path, and I wanted to hook my wagon to somebody whose future was dependent on them being great at AI. I own all the data, which was attractive to them.
So taking our data and using it in a way that does more predictive analytics than reactive analytics is where we see AI being an enabler for us going forward. Then the corollary to that is we're using it internally, whether it's in writing software code, whether it's using bots to make your experience at the help desk better. Whether it's using AI to help our supply chain better manage the global logistics. So we've kind of embraced it, and I will tell you, Google has been a tremendous partner. They've been wonderful to work with, and we're excited about the prospects of this going forward.
On the digital twin side, are you finding that more to be a pull from the customer, just a differentiator that you're able to bring?
That's what, yeah.
An ability to take labor out or be more competitive on pricing? How is it actually manifesting?
I think it's all the above. The customer didn't ask for it. We just saw this as a requirement for us to be relevant in the future.
Yes.
Not moving was going to mean we were not relevant.
Yeah.
This is for us to be relevant, give them a better solution, give them better readiness rates, and save them money in the long run.
Yep. That makes sense. Maybe flipping a little bit to the balance sheet. You guys have been steadily delevering. I think you are targeting at or below 2x for the end of the year. As you continue to delever, how are you thinking about capital deployment going forward and investment organic versus potentially M&A?
Yeah, I think our internal investments are built into our rates. That is really not a capital allocation strategy as much as it is more of an expense strategy and making sure we maintain our competitiveness from an expense standpoint. When I look at the balance sheet and get us to two or less, in terms of capital deployment, we will be very disciplined on how we think about deploying that capital. There are areas that we are not going to change our stripes. If we look at anything in terms of M&A, it is going to be right down Main Street with what we do. I will give you the example. When we bought the, we did a small deal last year on QinetiQ.
It was the intel business. The reason that we did that was there was a place in the intel community that you cannot bid there unless you have the tickets. We had tickets in a lot of other places, but this one gave us tickets to a place that buys the same things that we do today. They have global requirements. They have aircraft. There's a lot of things we can do for them that we already do for other people. What I always say, it kind of filled in a circle for us. It was small, but it was a very important strategic move. When I think about acquisitions going forward, if in time we ever do one, it's going to be consistent with who we are. It's either going to augment something we do already and give us more access to a customer or another capability that's going to augment what we already have and make us an even bigger player in that market.
Again, it's not like we're going to go fly off the reservation and do something really, turn left with the portfolio strategy. I like what we do. It's a very, very sticky business. I think our customers appreciate our commitment to it, because they keep turning to us in these awards. I think the best demonstration of someone's confidence is they keep awarding you work. I like what we do.
Yeah. maybe one more question to kind of wrap up or.
Yep.
Wrap to where you started. When you joined, V2X was in year maybe what, two or three of its combination.
Yeah, I think it was year two.
Curious if you could talk about some examples of the power of the combination where you're succeeding and taking the capabilities and the combined footprint of the business to make a difference and win awards.
I think and I didn't bid it. It was an award that happened right as I arrived, and that was the W-TRS program. I don't think V2X would've been capable of bidding that without these companies coming together. It brought the best of all three parts of the company. The global logistics, the training side of it, some of the engineering side. So, it was a good proof point that the investment thesis made sense.
We have continued to use that investment thesis as we bid stuff. It's not uncommon, as I said, to show up in Orlando and you will have multiple sides of the company all sitting around the table trying to figure out how we bring the best of the best to that offering. I think the investment thesis was right, but staying true to who we are is probably the most important thing because, one, it's a very, very large market. I think we have competitive cost structure, and I think we have a competitive differentiation in terms of how we look at it with that global footprint and the engineering side of it. I get excited about the portfolio going forward because, again, I'm not lacking things to go bid.
In many instances, we are resource-constrained with people.
Yeah.
How many multi-billion dollar bids can you get out the door in one month?
Yeah.
Right? You can only do so many. We're very selective about what we bid based on our ability to win it. But again, I think it's a great market.
Yeah. Maybe to that point, how are you prioritizing this plethora of opportunities that you're seeing?
It is probably the hardest thing in our space is to figure out what you're not going to bid before what you bid. Because there are so many opportunities. Then there's just certain segments that are less attractive to us. Even though it's a similar type work, that segment might be less attractive. We have a very good, what I call vetting process on how a bid arrives at a gate review and makes its way all the way up to an offering. I love the discipline that we have in place, and I think it's standard around our industry, but I like the way we've done it, and I think it's proven to be a success model for us.
That's great. Well, I want to give the opportunity to provide some closing remarks, anything you want to leave with the audience, and I think we have a few minutes left to see if there's anybody.
Yeah, no, I want to thank you for the time. I appreciate you showing interest in the company. Like I said, it is a great business, and it's a great business model because of the nature of the work that we do ends up being, like I said, very sticky and nationally important. Keeping training pilots, keeping aircraft in the air, making sure our bases are well operating and secure for the war fighter. If you can't get excited about doing this type of work, you're not going to get excited about national defense. I love what we do for a living, and I love the engineering component. I love the fact that we took something that was on the back of a napkin, went in theater in six-ish months and had a 97% kill rate.
That's incredible.
Yeah. It's just fascinating to watch them do it. Anyway, thank you for the time, and I appreciate you showing interest in the company.
Thanks. Any questions from the audience? Good. Any? All right. Well, thank you, guys. Appreciate the time.
Thank you.