Mercury Systems Inc

this afternoon, you can find it on our website at mrcy.com. The slide presentation that Bill and I will be referring to is posted on the investor relations section of the website under events and presentations. Turning to slide two in the presentation, I'd like to remind you that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements including information regarding Mercury's financial outlook, future plans, objectives, business prospects, and anticipated financial performance. These forward-looking statements are subject to future risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results or performance to differ materially. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements on slide two. In the earnings press release, and the risk factors included in Mercury's SEC filings. I'd also like to mention that in addition to reporting financial results in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP, during our call we will also discuss several non-GAAP financial measures, specifically adjusted income, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow, organic revenue, and acquired revenue. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP metrics is included as an appendix to today's slide presentation and in the earnings press release. I'll now turn the call over to Mercury's Chairman and CEO, Bill Ballhouse. Please turn to slide three.

Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining our Q3 FY24 earnings call. Today I'd like to talk through three topics. First, some introductory comments on our business and results. Second, an update on the progress we are making in each of our four priority areas, delivering predictable performance, building a thriving growth engine, expanding margins, and driving improved free cash flow. And third, expectations for our performance both for the balance of FY24 and longer term. Then I'll turn it over to Dave who will walk through our financial results and guidance. Before jumping in, I'd like to thank our customers for their collaborative partnership and the trust they put in mercury to support the most critical programs and our mercury team for their dedication and commitment to delivering mission critical processing at the edge. Please turn to slide 4. As I've said in the past, while we believe FY 24 is a transitional year, I'm optimistic about our strategic positioning as a leader in mission critical processing at the edge. and our ability to deliver predictable organic growth with expanding margins and robust free cash flow. Our Q3 results, similar to Q1 and Q2, reflect progress we are making in addressing what we believe to be transitory challenges associated with a multi-year increase of working capital and a high mix of firm fixed price development programs. We are executing on and transitioning these programs toward low and then full rate production and expect them to be a driver of our near and medium-term organic growth. Additionally, in Q2, we paused the transition of our common processing architecture toward full-rate production in order to retire risk and validate a highly producible, scalable design. This pause in production activity, combined with the investments we're making in this technology area have led to expected impacts on Q3 bookings, revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow. That said, we believe we have driven to root cause and implemented corrective action in our common processing area. In addition, We have initiated limited pilot production in Q4, which has returned positive results in terms of yield and is an important initial step toward full-scale production. We remain confident that the significant investments we are making in this area will lead to profitable organic growth, where we see robust demand for a unique ability to support our customers' stringent mission-critical needs. In Q3, We made solid progress in each of our four priority focus areas with highlights that include completing or retiring risk on two additional challenge programs in Q3 and an additional one so far in Q4. Expanding our record backlog to nearly 1.3 billion, up 17% year over year. Leaning our cost structure as we further streamline our operations, enabling increased positive operating leverage as we expect to return to organic growth. Reversing the multi-year trend of growth in working capital with net working capital down 8% year over year and sequential reductions in inventory and unbilled receivables. As we continue to make progress in what we believe is a transition year, We look forward to closing out FY24 and expect to enter FY25 with a clear path to delivering predictable organic growth, expanding margins, and strong cash flow. Please turn to slide five. Following those introductory comments, I'd like to spend time on each of our four focus areas, starting with our first focus area, delivering predictable performance. Our Q3 results reflect a number of impacts that we believe obscured the underlying performance of the business. Specifically, we recognized approximately 39 million of items that we believe are transitory, including 16 million of program cost growth impact across our portfolio, 12 million of inventory reserves and scrap, 5 million of warranty reserves, and 6 million associated with contract settlement reserves. These items reduce Q3 revenue by approximately 16 million, gross margin by approximately 32 million, and the remainder impacting operating expenses. As in prior quarters, we experienced the majority of these impacts in a subset of our portfolio, representing approximately 20% of the business and the majority of our challenge programs. As such, This part of the business contributed negative gross profit in Q3 and obscured performance in the balance of the portfolio, which is performing well and consistent with our expectations. The approximately $16 million of development and production program cost growth is a near 50% reduction from what we experienced last quarter and consisted of approximately $6 million from our challenge programs, with more than half of the impact tied to one program, and approximately 10 million spread across the remaining programs. We continue to see the majority of our EAC cost growth isolated to the 20% of the business. While this level of EAC impact is above what we would like to see on a go-forward basis, we are encouraged that as we continue to refine our EAC process across our portfolio, this is the lowest level of EAC impact in four quarters. As shown on slide six, With respect to the challenge programs, during the third quarter, we progressed as expected by completing, exiting, or retiring risk on two of the original 19 programs. And in Q4, we have completed one additional program, and we believe we have now retired risk on 11 of the original 19 challenge programs that have driven earnings volatility in recent quarters. For the remaining programs, we expect to close out half this quarter and largely retire the challenge program's risk as we exit FY24. Please turn to slide seven. Turning now to the second focus area, driving organic growth. Bookings for the quarter were 220 million, resulting in a 1.06 book-to-bill, with a few opportunities moving out of the quarter awaiting the completion of our efforts to begin the transition to full-rate production in our common processing technology area. Our backlog, now at a record 1.3 billion, is up 17% year-over-year. And notably, when we look at the bookings so far this year, approximately 80% of our firm fixed price bookings are production in nature, which we believe is a good leading indicator that the mix shift in our business is occurring. Several marquee wins in the quarter are worth noting. In January, Mercury finalized a production agreement with Blue Halo to provide digital signal processing hardware, to support the U.S. Space Force's Satellite Communications Augmentation Resource, or SCAR, program. In February, we announced a five-year, $243.8 million indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract to deliver rapidly reprogrammable electronic attack training subsystems to the U.S. Navy, and we have received and are executing on the first production order. These subsystems build on more than 25 years of test and training technology from the mercury processing platform to bring the most advanced near peer jamming and electronic warfare capabilities to U.S. pilot training organizations. As mentioned on our second quarter earnings call, We were chosen by L3Harris Technologies to provide solid state data recorders for the U.S. Space Development Agency's Tranche 2 tracking layer satellite constellation. The $31 million contract award supports 18 satellites following the delivery of hardware for 20 earlier spacecraft. I also want to mention a development milestone on a new strategic weapon system program that we announced last quarter with a booking value of $91 million. The team held a successful integrated baseline review with the customer, confirming that our approach will meet cost, schedule, and performance targets. As a result, we received the maximum possible award fee for this phase of the Cost Plus contract. We will spend the next several years developing and delivering prototype hardware for this critical national security program. These awards are important not only because of their value and impact on our growth trajectory, but also because they reflect our customers' continued trust in Mercury to support their most critical franchise programs. Please turn to slide eight. Now turning to our third priority focus area, expanding margins. So far in FY24, we've delivered margins beneath our targets. These shortfalls are primarily driven by the previously discussed impacts that we believe are transitory, and negative operating leverage from relatively low production volume, largely driven by development program delays and exacerbated in Q3, as expected, with the production hold in our common processing technology area. As we've mentioned in prior quarters, to achieve our adjusted EBITDA margin targets, We are focused on the following levers executing on our development programs and minimizing cost growth impacts, getting back toward a more historical 2080 mix of development to production programs. Driving organic growth to generate positive operating leverage and achieving cost deficiencies. I discussed on this call or program execution and cost growth containment efforts along with our organic growth efforts. Regarding cost efficiencies, as previously mentioned, in Q1 we've implemented a series of cost reduction actions. In January, we announced a corporate reorganization in which we streamline and simplified our operations, consolidating our two dependent structure into a single integrated structure, incorporating all of our lines of business and matrixed business functions, reporting into our COO, Roger Wells. Earlier in Q4, We announced the second phase of this realignment, organizing our U.S.-based business units into two product business units and an integrated processing solutions business unit, and centralizing our engineering, operations, and mission assurance functions. Additionally, we set up an advanced concepts group that is focused on advanced technologies, innovation, and strategic growth pursuits. This second phase of our realignment will contribute additional efficiencies to our previously mentioned run rate savings of 44 million that we've already actioned. Approximately 24 to 26 million of those previously actioned savings are expected to be recognized inside the fiscal year. Overall, although we've seen the adverse margin impacts of what we believe are transitory issues and negative operating leverage in FY24, We believe the structural efficiencies of our realignment and other cost savings measures will be evident in our margin profile going forward as we expect to return to growth in FY25 and beyond. Please turn to slide nine. Finally, turning to our fourth priority focus area, improved free cash flow. We continue to make progress in reducing net working capital, which is down 8% year over year after years of expansion. Inventory is down sequentially by $11 million from $354 million in Q2 to $343 million in Q3, driven primarily by manufacturing adjustments associated with specifically identified inventory reserves. Notably, while inventory is flat year over year, WIP is up approximately 45% from our prior fiscal year end from $83 million to $120 million reflecting an increased mix of inventory progressed toward delivery. Even with the pause initiated in Q2 in common processing architecture production and deliveries, unbilled receivables is down sequentially from $351 million in Q2 to $325 million in Q3 and down $63 million from Q1. The improvement in unbilled since Q1 is in part driven by Q2 and Q3 billings, which were the two highest billings quarters on overtime revenue contracts in the company's history. This included an increase in unbilled of approximately 15 million tied to four recent new bookings that generated revenue in Q3, all of which has now been invoiced in Q4. Please turn to slide 10. As discussed, we continue to make progress in our four priority focus areas. That said, for the first three quarters of FY24, our revenue and earnings are below expectations, primarily due to higher than expected cost growth and other charges as we proactively retire risk across the portfolio, especially related to our challenge programs, and lower second half volume tied to the pause in activities associated with the common processing architecture. Aside from these headwinds, which we believe are temporary, we continue to set our sights on delivering above average industry growth with low to mid 20% adjusted EBITDA margins over the longer term. For the balance of FY24, we plan to continue to work on the transitions I discussed earlier, shifting our large portfolio of development programs to production, especially the remaining challenge programs, ramping up our common processing production line, and focusing our operational capacity on burning down networking capital, particularly in unbilled receivables and inventory. As I have said in prior calls, we believe that demand remains strong. Our outlook for bookings is unchanged, and we continue to expect full year bookings above $1 billion. In addition, we continue to expect revenue in the range of $800 to $850 million, as well as positive free cash flow for the full fiscal year. With that, I'll turn it over to Dave to walk through the financial results for the third quarter, and I look forward to your questions. Dave? Thank you, Bill.

I'll start with our third quarter fiscal 24 results and then move to our Q4 and fiscal 24 outlook. As expected, our financial performance in the third quarter was below that of the prior year across all P&L metrics. As discussed in our prior earnings calls, We believe that fiscal 24 is a transition year where the organization is seeking to execute on both our challenge and development programs and then progress toward the follow-on production awards. Through that transition, we expect to recognize the small proportion of remaining revenues on the challenge program contracts, but more importantly, we expect to move toward releasing significant working capital balances, especially related to unbilled receivables. We then anticipate shifting our resources to execute on the follow-on production awards, which we believe will begin to rebalance our program portfolio more heavily toward higher margin, predictable production programs, as well as consume existing inventories. We continue to expect this transition to occur in Q4 and into fiscal 25. In Q3, as Bill discussed, we made progress towards this rebalance with a continued focus on our four priorities. We made progress completing, exiting our otherwise retiring risk on our challenge programs. We expanded our record backlog to nearly $1.3 billion. We further reduced our cost structure to drive margin expansion, and we continued to work toward reversing the multi-year trend in working capital growth. With that, please turn to slide 11, which details the Q3 results. Our bookings for the quarter were $220 million with a book-to-bill of 1.06. yielding backlog of $1.3 billion, up over $190 million, or 17% year-over-year, and $12 million, or 1% sequentially. As Bill discussed, we feel good about the mix in our backlog, with approximately 80% of our firm fixed price bookings this year being production contracts. We believe these recent bookings are a leading indicator of the shift in the mix of our backlog from development to production. We continue to maintain our focus on not only backlog growth, but the quality of our backlog in terms of margin and our ability to predictably perform. Revenues for the third quarter were $208 million, down $55 million, or 21% compared to the prior year of $264 million. As expected, revenues decreased year over year as we continue to prioritize resources to execute our challenge programs transition from higher mix of development programs and aim to better align our operating cadence with prudent working capital management. As Bill noted, we experienced approximately 16 million of cost growth impact in the quarter as compared to approximately 7 million in the prior year, which affected revenue. The $16 million, which was the lowest EAC growth in the last four quarters, was comprised of $6 million related to our challenge programs and approximately $10 million related to multiple development and production programs. In accordance with GAAP, this resulted in cumulative revenue adjustments to properly reflect progress on the programs due to the revised cost baselines driving an overweight impact in the third quarter. The 6M cost growth impact related to our challenge programs was largely tied to 1 program representing nearly 60% of the impact. This program is several others in our portfolio were impacted by an industry wide supplier issue, which has since been resolved as well as technical execution issues resulting from facts and circumstances in the quarter. While we executed largely in line with expectations across the remaining challenge programs, we did experience cost growth on certain other development and production programs in the quarter, which impacted revenues in a similar manner. Of the nearly 10 million of cost growth impact related to development and production programs, we continue to see roughly 20% of the business driving the majority of this cost growth. The cost growth within our development of production programs was attributable to several factors, including the industry-wide supplier issue previously mentioned, technical issues resulting in incremental rework costs, and risk mitigation costs. Finally, as we build and mature integrated processes and management systems, we seek to continuously assess our judgments and estimates, including potential future risks and opportunities, based on the latest and best information available. Gross margin for the second quarter decreased to 19.5% from 34.3% in the prior year. Gross margin contracted year over year primarily as a result of cost growth impacts as well as higher manufacturing adjustments, especially as related to inventory reserves, warranty expense, and scrap. As just discussed, we recorded approximately 16 million of program cost growth impact in the quarter. This represents approximately 9 million of incremental cost growth impact year over year. The remaining decrease in gross margin year over year was primarily due to higher manufacturing adjustments of approximately 16 million related to inventory reserves, warranty expense, and scrap. With regard to inventory reserves, We recorded over 7 million more reserves in the quarter as compared to the prior year. The primary drivers of the specifically identified excess and obsolete inventory in the quarter were related to end-of-life components where design changes have occurred, as well as configuration changes necessary to drive efficient production in the common processing architecture. Our process going forward is to procure end-of-life components with funding from our customers where possible. As you know, we are working on our common processing architecture and the changes necessary to drive efficient production. We experienced higher levels of scrap, especially related to the common processing architecture involved in several over-challenged programs. Due to the nature of the technology, the scrap material is high value and cannot be reused or reworked. We have several initiatives underway designed to address more efficient and cost-effective producibility of these systems. With regard to warranty expense, we recorded approximately $5 million of additional expense in the quarter as compared to the prior year, primarily associated with estimated costs related to repair and rework of some previously delivered common processing architecture products. As was the case in Q3, we expect gross margins to improve sequentially in the fourth quarter. That said, we believe the full year fiscal 24 gross margins will be below those of fiscal 23, given the higher than expected cost growth impacts through the first three quarters of fiscal 24. We expect gross margins to continue to be impacted by unknown risks that may materialize as we progress these challenge programs and other development programs through final stages of development and into production. Operating expenses decreased approximately 2 million year over year, primarily due to lower R&D and SG&A expenses as compared to the prior year. These decreases were driven by the previously announced organizational consolidation of our divisions into one unified structure, incorporating multiple lines of business and matrix business functions in January 2024. The workforce reduction eliminated approximately 100 positions driving $9.8 million of restructuring expense in the period. In total, our previously mentioned cost savings actions in fiscal 24 are expected to yield over $44 million in annual run rate savings, of which $24 to $26 million are expected to be recognized in the fiscal year. We are implementing additional efficiencies in Q4 as we complete this second phase of our realignment. That said, the third quarter of fiscal 24 included 6 million of contract settlement reserves related to anticipated settlements resulting from negotiations to reduce performance obligation on customer contracts that do not align with our strategy or otherwise do not have acceptable returns in exchange for lower cash consideration. We believe these costs are not comparable to the prior year, and thus, our run rate operating expenses would have decreased nearly $8.3 million year over year, reflecting the cost savings actions executed in the first and third quarters of fiscal 24. Gap net loss and loss per share in the third quarter. respectively, as compared to GAAP net income and earnings per share of $5.2 million and $0.09 respectively in the prior year. The decrease in year-over-year earnings is primarily a result of nearly $9 million of incremental program cost growth impacts, $11 million of incremental inventory reserves and scrap, approximately $5 million in incremental warranty expense, as well as $6 million of contract settlement reserves. Gap net loss was also impacted by the temporary volume shift in revenues as we align our operating cadence with prudent working capital management. These factors were partially offset by over 2 million of incremental tax benefit year over year. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was negative 2.4 million compared to 43.5 million in the prior year. Adjusted loss per share was 26 cents as compared to adjusted earnings per share of 40 cents in the prior year. The year-over-year decrease was primarily related to the same costs that impacted gap net loss and loss per share. Slide 12 presents Mercury's balance sheet for the last five quarters. We ended the second quarter with cash and cash equivalents of 143 million. we have $616.5 million of funded debt under our revolver. Billed receivables increased approximately $9 million due to the timing of invoicing collections in the quarter, as well as reduced receivables factoring in the period. Unbilled receivables decreased approximately $26 million due in part to successful execution and billings across the program portfolio. as well as the cumulative adjustments associated with the cost growth impacts in the quarter and our contract settlement reserves as previously discussed. Inventory decreased approximately 11 million, primarily as a result of the incremental reserve and scrap activity in the quarter. Accounts payable decreased over 8 million, evidencing the shift in our operating cadence aimed at better aligning the timing of material purchases with both contract awards and resource availability. Conferred revenues decreased approximately 11 million in the quarter, reflecting revenue recognized on the higher volume of customer advances we successfully negotiated with favorable billing terms, as we previously discussed on our Q2 earnings call. Working capital increased approximately 12 million in the third quarter. However, we have made progress in reducing this balance 8% year-over-year after multiple years of expansion. The third quarter increase was driven by the self-imposed production pause initiated in Q2, combined with investments we are making in our common processing architecture, which have delayed our cash flow conversion. As Bill previously mentioned, we believe we are making progress towards resolving the challenges in our common processing architecture, as well as in transitioning challenged and other development programs toward production. As such, we expect to see reductions in certain working capital metrics as we continue to execute and convert unbilled to build receivables and then cash. In addition, we expect the mix of development programs to shift to better align with historical norms. And as we receive expected follow on production awards, we believe we will consume inventory purchase in anticipation of these awards turning the cash flow on slide 13. Free cash flow for the third quarter was an outflow of 25.7M as compared to an outflow of 12.7M in the prior year. The outflow is driven by the impact of our program cost growth and the associated impacts to achieve billings on those programs. the industry wide supplier issue impacting a subset of our program, which has since been resolved, and the self-imposed pause on the common processing architecture as we complete design modifications to allow for a transition toward full scale production. I'll now turn to our financial guidance for full year fiscal 24. First, we continue to expect bookings above $1 billion for FY24 as our demand remains strong. Second, while we believe we have made progress in our four priority areas and will continue to do so in the fourth quarter, the cost growth impacts incurred during the first three quarters, coupled with the potential for continued volatility, especially related to the single technology, may continue to negatively impact revenues and gross margin for the remainder of the year. We still expect both revenues and gross margin to trend lower than the prior year, with continued expectation for 800 million to 850 million in revenues for fiscal 24. We believe operating leverage will improve in Q4 due to expected sequential revenue and margin increases, coupled with the cost actions completed in the first and third quarters, along with additional efficiencies we are implementing as part of the second phase of our organizational realignment in Q4. We expect gap net loss and loss per share as well as adjusted EBITDA and adjusted loss per share for fiscal 24 will be meaningfully below the prior year. While cash flow in the third quarter was disappointing, we expect improvement in the fourth quarter as we plan to complete or retire risk on a majority of our challenge programs, shift and build final product, and convert unbilled receivables to billed receivables and then to cash. we continue to expect positive free cash flow for the year. In closing, we believe continuing to execute on our four priority focus areas will not only enable a return to historical revenue growth and profitability, but will also drive further margin expansion and cash conversion, demonstrating the long-term value creation potential of the business. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Bill.

Thanks, Dave. With that, Operator, please proceed with the Q&A.

Thank you, and everyone, at this time, we will take your questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, that is star 1 if you have a question today. We'll take the first question from Pete Skibiski, Olympic Global.

Hey, good evening, guys.

Hey guys, so I guess if all goes well, you're going to be at four challenge programs remaining as you head into fiscal 25. I'm wondering, how deep do you think you have to go in fiscal 25 to retire the remaining risk on those programs? I guess I'm trying to get a sense of, assuming they're all common processing, architecture related, I'm trying to get a feel for how much technical risk remains on those programs.

Yeah, Pete, thanks for the question. It's Bill. I'll take that. You're right that our expectation is as we get to the end of this year, we'll have four challenge programs left. They're all related to this common processing architecture that you've heard us talk about. Where we are with respect to the common processing architecture is we believe that we've gotten to root cause. in understanding what was keeping us from getting to a very specific physical integrity that we need to get to in order for our technology to work as intended. And it's based on our understanding of the material science, and based on that understanding of the material science, we've been able to implement a change in the manufacturing process that allows us to get to the physical integrity that we need. Now, we're ramping up production we've moved to initial production after we've done a ton of testing a lot of analysis seeing our analysis and the empirical data all match up so in the fourth quarter we've done initial builds we are currently in what we're calling pilot production which will go through the end of the fourth quarter and as we exit the fourth quarter we expect to have pretty solid validation of our corrective action, which will then give us the ability and the indications that we need in order to ramp up to full-scale production. So I would expect that as we're exiting the fourth quarter, moving into the first quarter of FY25, we should have the validation that we need to make that assessment.

Okay. Okay. So at some point in the first quarter, you'll have a sense whether you can ramp into full production on those programs. Is that a good way to think about it?

Correct. And really, this is all about getting to a sample size that we think is statistically significant. I mean, the units that we built, all the testing that we've done during the quarter, all indicate that the corrective action we put in place gets us to where we need to be from a physical integrity standpoint. We want to see that over a much larger sample size to increase our confidence in the corrective action.

Okay, I think I get it. Just one follow-up for me. As you guys are thinking about, you know, kind of going forward into 25 and 26, how are you thinking about on-ramping new development programs, right? Just given, you know, we've heard about the challenge programs, but I also feel like maybe there's some other development programs that have had some issues but aren't part of the challenge programs. So how are you thinking about taking on new development programs, and how should we think about the technical risks? associated with that going forward?

Yeah, it's a great question. And you've heard us talk in the past about our historical mix being around 20%, 80% development to production. We've recently been in this dense phase of 40% development, 60% in production. Our goal over time, at least in order to hit our targeted EBITDA margins that we've talked about in prior calls, is to see that mix move back towards 2080. But the mix isn't the only driver. The makeup of the development programs is a big driver. So, for instance, the challenge programs that you've heard us talk about, they're all firm fixed price development. Well, we've won some large development awards this year that we feel great about, that are cost plus. And so the risk profile on those is very different than firm fixed price development. If you look at our bookings so far this year, we feel like the makeup of those bookings are taking us toward that target of 80-20. And specifically of our firm fixed price bookings this year, 80% are production and 20% are development. And then one other thing I point you to is the level of rigor that we are putting into our bid and proposal activities. And then our program baseline activities, once we win a contract and implement it, is much more mature than it has been historically. And I think one piece of evidence of that is one of our largest development contracts, the integrated baseline review that we went through this quarter and received very good grades from our customer and the highest incentive fee that we could earn on our program is a good indication of the maturing of not only our bidding, but also our program baselining activities.

Okay. Very helpful. Thanks, guys. Yep. Thanks, Pete.

And we'll take the next question from Sheila Kouagalou, Jeffries.

Thank you, guys, and good afternoon. Hi, Sheila. Good afternoon. Hi. Just wanted to maybe ask, you know, on the top line, you know, with one quarter left to go, you guys do have a wide range in the fourth quarter. Backlog and book to bill is starting to turn. But, you know, how do we think about that wide range and your visibility into fiscal 25? Any indications you could provide on that front, especially given a fairly easy comp this year and production mix being 80% of bookings?

Yeah, Sheila, this is Dave. I would say the first part of the question, yes, it is a wide range as we approach Q4. And, you know, there's, you know, when you look at the midpoint of the range, we feel, you know, that's the right midpoint of the range. As we think towards, you know, additional, could there be additional, you know, cost actions that happen between now and the end of the year? And that's what gives us confidence in the lower end of the range. And on the upper end of the range, it really is about timing. And are there, you know, largely for us at this stage, it would be material that's staged for the very end of the year. And if it comes in the very end of the year versus the beginning of fiscal 25 would be the difference. So those are really the drivers. We're not at a point where we're thinking about guidance today for FY25. So, you know, we're not putting anything ahead of us right now.

Okay. And then maybe on free cash flow usage, if you could just talk about that a little bit, it would be used at 26 million in the quarter compared to your comments last time about being close to break even. So maybe you talked about working capital improvements. If you could just, you know, Give us a little bit more detail there as we think about the improvement into fiscal Q4 and getting positive to break even free cash flow for the year.

Yeah. And so we feel good about the positive cash flow for the year. You know, we see and Bill talked about the highest billings we've had the last two quarters. And so that has set us up well heading into the fourth quarter. The variance on the cash flow when we were looking towards breakeven, I talked about the industry-wide supplier issue we had had in Q3, which pushed some of our billings that we expected to get out and collect in Q3, it pushed them out towards the end. So that was more than half of that variance was driven by that. And this was, you know, non-conforming material that we had gotten. We had to go and change out products. And we're not the only ones that got it across industry. Other people had the same thing. We had to change that out, take it out of product, you know, put conforming material in and deliver those products before we could build and collect. So that was the single biggest driver. on the cash variance for the quarter. So, we don't view that as anything that would recur. So, you know, that will be part of our Q4, you know, obviously our Q4 collection.

Got it. Thank you. The next question comes from Sam Struthaker, Truist Securities.

Hi. Good evening, guys. I'm Mike Trulli. Appreciate you taking the question. I was curious if you guys could maybe give a little bit more color on how you're thinking about, you know, the pipeline of future opportunities, just kind of looking at backlog is obviously really good, but it seems like there might be a bit of a decline in bookings from a year-over-year perspective, something like new orders and things like that. How are you kind of looking in the long term about, you know, how do you feel about the pipeline long term in that regard?

Yeah. This is Bill. I'll take that one. First, your comment on the backlog, like we said, we feel really good about not only the size of the backlog, but the makeup of the backlog. And in particular, this year's bookings and the mix associated with that. We did see some orders slip out of the quarter tied to the work that we're doing on the common processing architecture, which is understandable that customers would want to see us making progress, getting the production back up and running, and then eventually getting back to full rate of production. So that did impact booking somewhat in the quarter. But as we look forward at our pipeline, we feel good not only about the size, but also the mix of that pipeline as well. And as we said before, just longer term, we feel like we're in a very strong part of the market, an attractive segment of the market with good growth rates. And I think our pipeline reflects that.

Great. I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

And just a reminder, everyone, that is star one if you have a question. We'll take the next question from Jan Engelbrecht-Baird.

Jan, your line is open. Please check your mute button. Good evening, Bill and Dave.

I'm on for Peter today. The first question, just if we take a step back on the sort of 19 challenge programs that were identified, Can you just give us a sense of, you know, of the 11 that's been resolved, sort of how many of those have transitioned to production contracts? Have you exited any? And how many do you expect to sort of transition to production in the coming quarters?

Yeah, this is Bill.

I'll take the question. Let's see, as far as exiting, there have been a couple that we have exited. The balance we have completed and generally are on a path toward production is how I would characterize those. And for the ones that are outstanding, we are on a path to close out half of them this quarter, which we expect to transition over time to production. and the four that are remaining are associated with the common processing architecture, all of which we expect to transition to production.

Perfect. Thanks, Bill.

Just a quick follow-up. If we just look at your recent wins in space with Blue Halo and then also on the Tranche 2 and all the tailwinds that we're seeing in space with missile tracking and missile defense situational awareness, should we expect Mercury to sort of more aggressively target space programs in the next couple of years. I mean, if we just look at the SDI tracking layer and transport layer, if you get with L3, if you can get sort of consistent awards on future tranches, I would think that that would be a very attractive program as it will sort of almost roll over every two or three years as those satellites need to get replaced. And just any comments on space and military in the longer term?

Well, we think it is a growth market for us. We're very pleased with the orders that we've received. And I also, you know, we're also pleased that it's a good mix, I think, of production contracts like Blue Halo, as well as new development contracts that we've won that will be drivers of longer-term organic growth. So it's a market that we think is attractive, we're well-positioned, and we're focused on, and back to my earlier comments, it's why we're so focused on executing on the development contracts that we've won.

Perfect. Thanks, Will. Thanks, Dave. I'll jump back in with you. Thank you.

And everyone, at this time, there are no further questions. I'll hand the call back to Mr. Bill Bauhaus for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, at this point, thank you. I appreciate the interest and the attendance at the call, and we look forward to updating everyone next quarter. Thank you very much.

Once again, everyone, that does conclude today's conference. We would like to thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Thank you very much.

Once again, everyone, that does conclude today's conference. We would like to thank