Mercury Systems Inc

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Mercury Systems second quarter fiscal 2026 conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I'd like to turn the call over to the company's vice president of investor relations, Tyler Hojo. Please go ahead, Mr. Hojo.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With me today is our chairman and chief executive officer, Bill Ballhouse, and our executive vice president and CFO, Dave Farnsworth. If you have not received a copy of the earnings press release we issued earlier this afternoon, you can find it on our website at mrcy.com. The slide presentation that we will be referencing 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, and free cash flow. 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 Ballhaus.

Please turn to slide three. Thanks, Tyler. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining our Q2 FY26 earnings call. We delivered Q2 results that were ahead of our expectations with solid year-over-year growth in backlog, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA, and robust free cash flow. our ability to accelerate progress on a number of our customers high priority programs once again contributed to strong results this quarter including record first half revenue today i'll cover three topics first some introductory comments on our business and results second an update on our four priorities performance excellence building a thriving growth engine expanding margins and driving free cash flow And third, performance expectations for the balance of FY26 and longer term. Then I'll turn it over to Dave, who will walk through our financial results in more detail. Before jumping in, I'd like to thank our customers for their collaborative partnership and the trust they put in Mercury to support their most critical programs. I'd also like to thank our Mercury team for their dedication and commitment to delivering mission critical processing at the edge. Please turn to slide four. Our Q2 results support our expectations for robust organic growth with expanding margins and positive free cash flow. Bookings of $288 million and a 1.23 book to bill resulting in a record backlog approaching $1.5 billion. Revenue of $233 million with first half revenue up 7.1% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA of $30 million and adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.9%, up 36.3% and 300 basis points respectively year over year. And free cash flow of $46 million, well ahead of our expectations. We ended Q2 with $335 million of cash on hand. These results reflect ongoing focus on our four priority areas with highlights that include solid execution across our broad portfolio of production and development programs, backlog growth of 8.8% year over year, a streamlined operating structure enabling increased positive operating leverage and significant margin expansion, and continued progress on free cash flow drivers with net working capital down 61 million year over year, or 12.9%. Please turn to slide five. starting with our four priorities and priority one, performance excellence, where our efforts positively impacted our results, primarily in two areas. First, in Q2, we recognized 4 million of net adverse EAC changes across our portfolio, which is in line with recent quarters, reflecting sound execution on our development and production programs. Second, we accelerated progress across a number of programs, and generated approximately $30 million of revenue, $10 million of adjusted EBITDA, and $30 million of cash primarily planned for the third quarter. This acceleration contributed to top line growth, adjusted EBITDA margins, and free cash flow that exceeded our expectations for Q2, and will also factor into our outlook for Q3, which I'll speak to shortly. Notably, our focus on accelerating customer deliveries led to record first half revenue and the highest first half point in time revenue since FY21. Beyond the solid performance across our portfolio programs, we progressed on a number of actions in the quarter to increase capacity, add automation, and consolidate subscale sites in our ongoing efforts to drive scalability and efficiency. Notably, we continued to build out our highly automated manufacturing footprint in Phoenix, Arizona, and progressed on bringing online an additional 50,000 square feet of factory space to support ramp production for our common processing architecture programs and to allow for efficient scaling if potential market tailwinds materialize. This is just one of many actions we have taken, along with prior investments across a number of critical technology developments that are driving our ability to accelerate delivery of vital capabilities to our warfighters and our allies. Please turn to slide six. Moving on to priority two, driving organic growth. We delivered another strong quarter with 288 million of bookings, resulting in a book to bill of 1.23 and a record backlog approaching 1.5 billion. Q2 awards reflected a mix of franchise program extensions, competitive new design wins, and follow on production awards across both domestic and international customers. Bookings were led by a scope expansion on a long-standing cost-plus development program supporting modernization efforts within a core missile defense platform, extending Mercury's role through additional hardware content and further strengthening our position as the program progresses toward future production. We also captured two key new design wins during the quarter in exciting growth markets. These included a major RF and processing subsystem, supporting a leading advanced air mobility manufacturer's development of its ground control infrastructure, as well as a new design award supporting a space-based application with a leading aerospace and defense prime, expanding Mercury's capability set within the fast-growing space market. Importantly, these design wins represent new platform entry points and future production potential, positioning Mercury for continued growth as these programs mature. Follow-on production awards were another contributor, including incremental quantities on a key U.S. missile franchise, reflecting continued customer confidence as those programs ramp, along with additional awards supporting deployed naval platforms and international land-based radar and electronic warfare applications underscoring the durability of Mercury's installed base. Finally, the quarter included approximately 20 million of follow-on awards that leverage our common processing architecture and include embedded anti-tamper and cybersecurity software from our recent acquisition of Starlab, reinforcing the strategic value within this key set of capabilities. These awards are important not only because of their value and impact on our growth trajectory, but also because they reflect those customers' trust in Mercury to support their most critical franchise programs with our proven capabilities and latest innovations. Beyond our backlog growth, customer conversations continue to progress on the potential for higher demand on multiple programs across our portfolio, driven by increased defense budgets globally and domestic priorities like Golden Dome. Although these potential opportunities are still in early pipeline phases, I remain optimistic that they may have a positive impact on our demand environment if funding is allocated across certain program priorities to our customers over the next several quarters and beyond. Please forward to slide seven. Now turning to priority three, expanding margins. In our efforts to progress toward our targeted adjusted EBITDA margins in the low to mid 20% range, we are focused on the following drivers. Backlog margin expansion as we convert lower margin backlog and add new bookings aligned with our target margin profile. Ongoing initiatives to further simplify, automate, and optimize our operations and driving organic growth to realize positive operating leverage. Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.9% was ahead of our expectations and up 300 basis points year over year. This margin performance was driven by the conversion of backlog previously contemplated to be delivered later in FY26 and higher operating leverage. Gross margin of 26% was slightly down year over year driven by an increased mix of low margin backlog converted in the quarter. We expect average backlog margin to continue to increase as we convert lower margin backlog and bring in new bookings that we believe will be in line with our targeted margin profile. Operating expenses are down year over year as a result of fully realizing the impact of previously implemented actions to further simplify, streamline, and focus our operations and ongoing initiatives to drive efficiency. Please forward to slide eight. Finally, turning to priority four, improved free cash flow. We continue to make progress on the drivers of free cash flow, and in particular, reducing net working capital, which at approximately $414 million is down $61 million year over year and is at the lowest level since Q1 FY22. Net debt is now down to $257 million, also the lowest level since Q1 of FY22. We believe our continuous improvement related to program execution, accelerating deliveries for our customers, demand planning, and supply chain management will lead to continued reduction in working capital and net debt over time. In addition, we continue to expect to allocate factory capacity in FY26 to programs with unbilled receivable balances, which will help drive free cash flow, although with little impact to revenue. Please turn to slide nine. Looking ahead, I am optimistic about our team, our leadership position in delivering mission critical processing at the edge, the market backdrop, and our expected ability over time to deliver results in line with our target profile of above market top line growth, adjusted EBITDA margins in the low to mid 20% range, and free cash flow conversion of 50%. We believe our strong first half results reflect continued progress toward this target profile with an aggregate 1.17 book to bill 7.1% top line growth, 14.3% adjusted EBITDA margins, 400 basis points of margin expansion year over year, and 41 million of positive free cashflow over the last two quarters coming out of Q2. We maintain our full year view on FY26, which excludes any further accelerations within or into FY26 or upside bookings to our plan tied to domestic priorities like Golden Dome or increased global defense budgets. We continue to expect annual revenue growth of low single digits. Given our Q2 and first half over performance of approximately 30 million, We expect Q3 revenue to be down year over year absent any additional accelerations, followed by a ramp in Q4. We continue to expect full year adjusted EBITDA margin approaching mid-teens. Given the accelerations into the first half and positive impact on first half margins, We expect Q3 adjusted EBITDA margin approaching double digits as we convert low margin backlog and realize lower operating leverage. We continue to expect Q4 adjusted EBITDA margin to be the highest of the fiscal year. Finally, with respect to free cash flow, we continue to expect free cash flow to be positive for the year. As discussed, we pulled forward approximately 30 million of cash receipts into Q2. which impacts Q3 and we expect will result in free cash outflow for the quarter. In summary, with our momentum coming out of Q2 and the first half, I expect FY26 performance to represent another positive step toward our target profile. Additionally, I'm gaining optimism regarding the potential for tailwinds associated with increased global defense budgets, and domestic priorities like Golden Dome to materialize and upside bookings to our plan over time. I look forward to providing updated commentary as we progress through the year. With that, I'll turn it over to Dave to walk through the financial results for the quarter, and I look forward to your questions. Dave?

Thank you, Bill. Our second quarter results continue to reflect solid progress toward our goal of delivering organic growth, expanding margins, and robust free cash flow. We still have work to do to reach our targeted profile, but we are encouraged by the progress we have made and expect to continue this momentum going forward. With that, please turn to slide 10, which details our second quarter results. Our bookings for the quarter were approximately $288 million with a book to bill of 1.23. Our record backlog of nearly $1.5 billion is up $119 million or 8.8% year over year. Revenues for the second quarter were $233 million, up approximately $10 million or 4.4% compared to the prior year. During the second quarter, we were again able to accelerate progress on a number of customers' high priority programs worth approximately $30 million of revenue primarily planned for Q3 fiscal 26. Gross margin for the second quarter decreased approximately 130 basis points to 26% as compared to the same quarter last year. The gross margin decrease during the second quarter was primarily driven by execution on lower margin programs. As Bill previously noted, we expect to see an improvement in our gross margin performance over time as the average margin in our backlog improves and through our continued focus to simplify, automate, and optimize our operations. We expect the average backlog margin to continue to increase as we convert lower margin backlog and bring in new bookings that we believe will be in line with our targeted margin profile. Operating expenses decreased approximately 2 million or 2.4% year over year. The decrease in research and development costs of approximately 6 million or 28% was driven by efficiency improvements and headcount reductions initiated in fiscal 2025 to align our team composition with our increased production mix as we previously discussed. We also saw a decrease in amortization expense of over a million dollars related to various customer relationship intangibles that were fully amortized in fiscal 2025. These decreases were partially offset by an increase in restructuring and other charges of $4 million as we progress on driving scale and efficiency in our operations. Decreases in operating expenses were also partially offset by increased selling general and administrative costs of approximately $2 million, primarily related to litigation and settlement costs. Gap net loss and loss per share in the second quarter were approximately 15 million and 26 cents, respectively, as compared to gap net loss and loss per share of approximately 18 million and 30 cents, respectively, in the same quarter last year. The improvement in year-over-year earnings is primarily a result of increased operating leverage and lower non-operating expenses. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was approximately $30 million, up $8 million, or 36.3% as compared to the same quarter last year. Our adjusted EBITDA during the second quarter was also partially driven by the acceleration of customer deliveries as previously mentioned by Bill. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.16 as compared to $0.07 in the prior year. The year-over-year increase was primarily related to our increased operating leverage in the current period as compared to the prior year. Free cash flow for the second quarter was an inflow of approximately 46 million as compared to 82 million in the prior year. The inflow from the current period was primarily driven by progress made in reducing our net working capital by approximately 61 million or 12.9% year over year. As Bill previously noted, free cash flow during the second quarter benefited from the progress we accelerated primarily from the third quarter. Slide 11 presents Mercury's balance sheet for the last five quarters. We ended the second quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $335 million, sequentially driven primarily by approximately $52 million in cash provided by operations in the second quarter, which was partially offset by investments of nearly $6 million in capital expenditures and $15 million of shares repurchased and retired from our share repurchase program. Billed receivables remain relatively flat and unbilled receivables decreased by approximately 5 million year over year. As Bill previously noted, we continue to expect to allocate factory capacity in fiscal 26 to programs with unbilled receivable balances, which will help drive free cash flow with minimal impact to revenue. Inventory increased year-over-year by approximately 5 million. The increase was driven primarily by work in process as we bring product to its final state in support of our increased proportion of point-in-time revenue on many of the company's production programs. Prepaid expenses and other current assets increased year-over-year by approximately 46 million, primarily due to our settlement in principle on the securities class action complaint. This settlement in principle is recorded as receivable within prepaid expenses and other current assets, and a corresponding accrual was recorded in accrued expenses. Accounts payable increased year-over-year and sequentially by approximately $41 million and $8 million respectively, driven by the timing of payments to our suppliers. Accrued expenses increased approximately $3 million sequentially, primarily due to restructuring and other charges in the second quarter. Accrued compensation increased approximately 12 million sequentially, primarily due to our incentive compensation plans. The amount due to our factoring facility increased sequentially by approximately 27 million, primarily due to the timing of payments from our customers due back to our counterparty. Deferred revenues increased sequentially by approximately 11 million as a result of additional milestone billing events achieved during the period. Working capital decreased approximately 60 million year over year or 12.7%. Working capital also decreased by nearly 44 million or 9.5% sequentially. This continues to demonstrate the progress we've made in reversing the multi-year trend of growth in working capital, resulting in a reduction of 246 million or 37.3% from the peak net working capital in Q1 fiscal 24. Networking capital remains a primary focus area for us, and we believe we can continue to deliver improvement. Turning to cash flow on slide 12. Free cash flow for the second quarter was an inflow of approximately 46 million as compared to 82 million in the prior year. We continue to expect free cash flow to be positive for the year with an outflow in the third quarter, as Bill previously noted. We believe our continuous improvement in program execution, hardware deliveries, just in time material, and appropriately timed payment terms will lead to continued reduction in working capital. In closing, we are pleased with the performance in the second quarter and the higher level of predictability in the business. We believe continuing to execute on our four priority focus areas will not only drive revenue growth and profitability, but will also result in further margin expansion and cash conversion, demonstrating the long-term value creation potential of our 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, sir. Everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one to ask a question. We'll take the first question today from Peter Arment from Baird.

Hey, good evening, Bill and Dave, Tyler. Nice results. Bill, can you give us a little bit of a kind of a handicap? How do we think about how much is left of the lower margin backlog that you've got to kind of convert and pull through? It sounds like it's going to be still with us for Q3, but Obviously, it sounds like Q4 is going to be the highest margin of the year. How should we think about just kind of how that exits the system?

Yeah, I mean, it's the same progression that we've been talking about for several quarters now, where at the end of FY24, we talked about the backlog margin, the average of backlog margin being lower than what we expected to see on an ongoing basis, driven by a number of factors. flow through over time and if you look at the duration of our backlog it wasn't a four quarter period of time wasn't necessarily a 12 quarter period of time somewhere in between so as we work our way through 26 and through 27 we expect to see most of the impacts tied to the low margin distribution of our backlog start to burn through and get behind us i think the good news on this front you know our gross margin in TAB, Mark McIntyre, The quarter was down it's actually a good thing, because it reflects that we are burning down that lower margin distribution in our backlog and we continue to replace. TAB, Mark McIntyre, That part of our backlog with higher margin booking that we expect to be in line with our target profile so. TAB, Mark McIntyre, No change from what we said before to continuation, if anything, we made great progress this quarter and burning down a little margin distribution, as well as. bringing in solid bookings in the quarter.

Thanks for that call, Bill. Just a quick follow-up. When we think about the pull forward, is that something that's also tied to this low margin backlog, or is this just something that you're calling out just because I think there's some confusion about what's pull forward or what's growth, etc.? ?

yeah I mean you've seen over the last several quarters that we've been successful in accelerating deliveries and it's had an impact in us delivering results that were ahead of our expectations and that's exactly what happened again this quarter we had about 30 million of revenue that we pulled forward it impacted EBITDA positively by about 10 million that gives you a sense for where That backlog sits in our distribution because it basically flows through a gross margin. There's not much OPEX. There isn't any OPEX that we had associated with it. So I would say this quarter is just a continuation of what we've been delivering over the last several quarters.

I appreciate the follow-up. I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Peter.

Up next is Ken Herbert from RBC. Yeah.

Hi. Good afternoon. Bill, Dave, and Tyler. Hey, maybe, Bill, I just want to start first on the capacity you called out that you're adding in terms of the CPA. Can you level set us in terms of where you are with capacity today on that product line, maybe from a revenue standpoint, if possible, and how we should think about how much more capacity you need to continue to bring on to support the order activity and the demand pull?

Yeah, and I want to just a reminder that the capacity that we're bringing online in Phoenix, the cost associated with that is already in our OpEx. And so the investment that we're making is a little bit of CapEx to bring additional lines on board. We are continuing to ramp up production in our CPA area. That has gone basically per plan. feeling very good about how we're delivering for our customers. We continue to grow our backlog. You saw in the quarter we had another 20 million of orders associated with TPA, and we remain confident that as time goes on and we continue to execute on our program, so we'll continue to see increased demand over time for that product line, and that's behind bringing on the additional space. As far as you know, additional capacity and investments required beyond that. One of the nice things about where we sit right now is when we look at all of the potential tailwinds that are out there, and we talked about what's driving those, for us to be positioned to execute and deliver on those tailwinds, the investment profile is really incremental and it's graceful. And we don't have to invest ahead of the demand in order to be able to deliver on it. And for the most part, We're running at single shifts across all of our factories. And so the first step for us to increase capacity to meet tailwinds would be to add additional shifts. And now with this capacity coming online in Phoenix later this year, we'll be in the same position with CPA that we can very efficiently meet increased demand associated with tailwinds just by moving to additional shifts. So I think that's a really good place for us to be.

Hey, I appreciate the color and if I could, I just wanted to ask a question on on the guidance. I mean, I think you you've demonstrated a pattern here to be able to outperform and. And it seems like, you know, recurring, you're able to pull revenues to the left relative to expectations. You've obviously set up here today with this call a fairly soft fiscal third quarter within a strong fourth quarter and I can appreciate the seasonality, but. But maybe what kept you back from pushing up the guide or having a little bit more confidence in the full year numbers, because you've got multiple quarters now of being able to obviously outperform and exceed expectations and continue to overdeliver relative to sort of the near-term setup.

Yeah, and it has been pretty consistent quarter over quarter for the last several quarters. And if we think about the setup to FY26, Coming into the year, we pulled forward about 30 million of accelerated deliveries and revenue from 26 into 25, which really set the stage for expectation for the year to be low single digit growth on top of high single digits last year. If it weren't for that pull forward, we would have been looking at mid single digit growth last year and high single digit growth this year. So it just shows how the movement between quarters can really impact the optics around growth in a period. Now, as we've come through the first two quarters of FY26, we're well ahead of plan. If you look at our top line, if you look at our EBITDA, and if you look at free cash flow, all of that is ahead of plan. So our expectations for the year are the same now as they were coming into the year. What we've done is we've overperformed and we shifted the profile to the left. The expectations and the commentary that we gave for Q3 is absent any further accelerations from Q4 into Q3 or any accelerations from FY27 into FY26. The reason why we're giving our commentary that way is for the most part, our ability to accelerate deliveries is largely driven by our ability to accelerate materials. So if you think about what just happened in Q2, In the last few weeks of Q2, we were able to pull in material so that we could deliver more units in Q2, and you heard that our point-in-time revenue in Q2 was the highest that it's been in five years. That's a reflection of us moving hardware through our factories and shipping it. In order to do that, it's based on accelerating material from our suppliers, and we can't be certain that we're going to be able to accelerate until that material is in-house. And I don't want to give commentary and set expectations based on things that we don't have 100% confidence around. Now, for the last several quarters, we have demonstrated the ability to exercise that muscle across our entire operation. And every quarter, we've been able to accelerate 20 to 30 million in deliveries into the quarter. But we're not setting our expectations based on that because we're going to work through the quarter on the next set of constraints and the next set of material that we're trying to accelerate. And, you know, based on prior orders, we've been able to do that, but we don't want to set expectations assuming that that's going to happen. So hopefully that provides a little bit of clarity on that commentary.

Thanks, Bill. I appreciate the context.

The next question comes from Sheila Kawagulu from Jefferies.

Hi, guys. This is Kyle on for Sheila. Thanks for taking my question. Justin Cappos, On an extension of the question that Peter asked about low margin backlog and your your response that that sort of persist through a 527. Justin Cappos, You know how do we think about the puts and takes, as we think about mid teen margins this year and what fyi 27 could ultimately look like if you're still still burning through some of that past backlog and in light. Justin Cappos, Potentially pulling forward growth and what you're seeing in the bookings trends thanks.

yeah I think. I think just a point of clarification, you know, we may have lower margin backlog still in our backlog as we're working our way through FY27, but it becomes increasingly smaller as time goes on. And so, you know, as we move forward, the impact of our low margin backlog on our EBITDA margins continues to drop over time because the volume comes down. You know, as every quarter that progresses, we expect that impact to continue to come down. Because what we're doing is we're burning down that low margin backlog. It's going away, and we're replacing it with new bookings that are coming in for higher margins. And that's what's giving us the increase in our average backlog margin as time goes on. So hopefully that helps Clayton by the point. And Bill, if I might, and, you know, for Kyle,

It's becoming, every quarter that goes by, it's a smaller percentage because of the aggregate, because as Bill said, we're not adding new things at low margin. So every quarter that we've had a bit of a lower than our expected margin, that number comes in the backlog. That number starts coming down. And when Bill said, hey, we expect some of that to go through, FY27, it's shrinking every quarter and that's getting closer and closer to nothing as we go through. So I don't think people should build an expectation that we're going to have the same level of low margin activity every quarter as we go through 27. We're not saying that at all. Yeah.

As a reminder, this isn't a situation where it looks like we have a at lower margins. We have legacy programs, development programs, programs where we took EAC impacts in FY24 and FY25 that have resulted in that lower margin distribution in our backlog, and we're just converting that and burning it through over time, and it's not being replaced. We're replacing it with higher margin booking.

Understood. Very helpful. If I could just ask one follow-on about the net EACs. Obviously, they're much lower than they have been in the past, but have still been a little sticky at that $4 or $5 million a quarter. Can you just talk about what you're, you know, where we are in the inning, you know, what inning we are in terms of kind of scrubbing that portfolio and getting more towards a normal baseline? Thanks, guys.

I'm not good at the baseball questions because I was a track guy, so innings are hard for me. um you know maybe we're on the last leg of the relay race you know um so you know the largely those eac adjustments or reflection as we talked about as we're going through and completing some of these programs at the very end there are not that many programs left they're very small adjustments compared to what they were in the past we're seeing solid positive adjustments at the same time so you know this quarter it was three and a half million roughly um you know could i see could i see and we've been asked you know many times could we see that being positive in a quarter yeah we could see that um you know could it be slightly negative in a quarter you know it's it's within a range that that is not unexpected for us it's consistent with what we we've considered in our outlook, and we keep, every time we finish one of these programs, put it behind us, it lessens the opportunity for those adjustments to happen in the future. So I guess by the way we're getting there, it's things that happen within the quarter as we're completing these things, largely as we've talked about in past on development, programs, but they're older programs that we're just completing as we go through the final kind of qualification on these things.

And I would just say very succinctly that we think they're kind of in a normal course range right now. And, you know, we're confident in our ability to get to our target margin profile with the EACs and the zip code that they've been running over the last several quarters.

The next question today will come from Seth Seifman from J.P. Morgan.

Hey, thanks very much, and good evening, everyone. Nice quarter. Wanted to ask, the common processing architecture in terms of ramping up, I'm sure you don't want to give an exact number, but if we think about kind of a rough proportion of what that comprises,

in in the sales mix is there is there any way for you to kind of speak to a where that is and and be um you know where it should be going as we think uh you know a year or two out well we haven't given uh we haven't quantified the percentage of the business or the sales mix etc i will say that we have been successful over the last year in ramping up to meet our program demands the good news is The team has been executing very well in this area since we went through and implemented our root cause corrective action and started bringing the production line back up and we've seen the follow on orders coming and we do see good growth potential in this part of the business. We see healthy demand and it's an area where we're technically differentiated and so we have a lot of optimism about this part of our business.

Justin Cappos- yeah and I think you know we don't we don't talk about you know kind of where we are an individual programs, but I think there are programs that were you know better fully ramped up in the production within the common processing architecture, there are other programs that are still ramping up.

Justin Cappos- Okay, so they're still still runway I guess. Justin Cappos- Okay, and then just when we think about. Justin Cappos- Your cash up to. Um, over 300 million, you bought back, uh, a little bit of, uh, of stock in, in the quarter. Um, you know, how do we think about where that cash balance sort of should be over time and, um, you know, what, what you guys are going to kind of do with the cash?

Yeah, no, no good question. I mean, we, we've said, and, you know, kind of still validate and think about that. you know, around 100 to 150 million is probably the, you know, the right kind of balance for us. It's higher than that as we've generated significant cash in the last year and a half. You know, that's the right level, you know, over the last two or three quarters, you know, kind of, you know, probably felt like the prudent approach to cash was to TAB, Mark McIntyre, was to keep cash on our books, as we were going through a little bit of uncertainty around government shutdowns not shut down, you know what what was going to happen in terms of payment on you know our emphasis is still on delivering. TAB, Mark McIntyre, You know that's something we're we're looking at obviously as we go through the next couple of quarters.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, yeah I say the priorities around delivery and continue to drive down that that state that that remains focused.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, Okay, great thanks very much.

Up next, we'll take a question from Michael Tremoli from Truist.

Hey, good evening, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Good results. Bill or Dave, just, I mean, looking at your top line, and I can appreciate all the commentary, you're growing slower than some of your SMIDCAP peers and even some of your customers. And I think maybe You kind of alluded to it, but can you help us with exactly how much capacity is being allocated to the unbilled and maybe keys out that drag? I mean, is it kind of 10 million, 15 million a quarter? Just to try and get a sense of kind of how much is flowing through the P&L at no revenue recognition, but obviously it's, you know, you're tying up capacity, executing on that.

Mike, you know, we haven't talked about that. You know, we haven't put out, you know, this is how much revenue, how much higher revenue would be if we stopped doing that. You know, it's a focus of ours to continue to burn down our networking capital. We're still not where we think our networking capital should be. We still think the unbuilt balances are too high. You know, certainly there's some drag for that. We've talked about that. but we haven't quantified it.

Okay. Okay. That's fair. Well, maybe we'll take that offline. Just maybe back to Ken's question as well, you know, on kind of the choke points and why you can't consistently see some of this acceleration. You know, we're one month into the quarter. As you, you know, kind of gauge your suppliers and look at maybe potential choke points, are there certain items that are, you know, giving you less confidence? Is it is it semiconductors? Is it is it circuit boards? Can you just maybe is it discrete components? What what is sort of the potential watch items on that material list that that's giving you reason for pause?

Like literally every week with the teams across every program, we're going through every bill material line by line and looking at what does it take for us to get kit complete and that You know, that can vary by program, but we're literally working across all of our programs to figure out how we can accelerate kit completion so that we can move hardware through our factories. And the reality is, while we're pushing on our suppliers to close out kits, we don't know that the material will be here until the day that it shows up. Because literally, a supplier could tell us that the material will be here on Friday, and then on Friday tell us that it delayed by 60 days for one reason or another. So that's the reason why we're not incorporating any further accelerations into our outlook, but we're working it very aggressively every day across the business. And I think the good news is the last several quarters, we have demonstrated that we have built the muscle in the company to do this fairly consistently. We're just not baking it into our commentary.

And I wanted to say, you know, Mike, I wouldn't characterize it as you know, something's lessening our confidence. You know, we go into the quarter, as Bill said, with, you know, hey, what would we need to do to be able to accelerate this? And then we work on those constraints all quarter long to build our confidence that we can get it done. So, you know, I wouldn't suggest that anything's lessening our confidence and our ability to do it. It's a process we work through.

Okay. Okay. That's fair. Good stuff. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Thanks, Mike.

Austin Moeller from Canaccord Genuity has the next question.

Hi. Good afternoon. Nice quarter. Are you able to comment, and I know it's small, but are you able to comment on the revenue impact to mercury of the stock fork order on the SCAR program? And if that were to be resumed, when you might expect task orders or long leads to come in on delivering components for that?

Yeah, Austin, we don't quantify individual contracts or programs. You know, we have literally 300 different programs, and one of the strengths we have is the broadness of our portfolio and the revenue across it. There's no single contract that we have that approaches 10% of our revenue. And, you know, we're working closely with our customer here and, you know, have thought through with them and, you know, understand where we are in terms of funding, where they are. you know, what they're doing in terms of that stop work. And, you know, it's incorporated in our outlook, but it has been. There's not, you know, there's nothing that we would change at this juncture.

Okay. And I understand the dynamic of the contract shift towards higher margin production contracts in the near term here, but is there a specific mix of component product types that you expect to be bridging you to your long-term gross margin and EBITDA margin expectations of low to mid-20s?

Yeah, no, not specifically. You know, Bill's talked about the production versus development mix and, you know, whether 80-20 is an ideal number. There probably isn't. You know, we're, you know, we're in the range kind of we expect to be in. You know, the margins that we're bringing into our new bookings are consistent with our longer-term model of what we expect. You know, so it is across the portfolio. You know, we feel good across the portfolio about the margin profile we're seeing in all our new bookings.

Understood. Thanks for all the color there. Great.

Next up is a question from Jonathan Ho, William Blair.

Hi, good afternoon. Just wanted to see if there's any additional color you can offer regarding updates to both Golden Dome and those international orders that you're perhaps getting a little bit more visibility towards.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting because when we think about the growth drivers in our business right now, we have a number of different growth factors. I mean, obviously at the core, it's the ramp to rate from our development programs to production. And that's largely what is the drive group behind us achieving our target profile of above market growth, top line growth, EBITDA margins in the low to mid 20% range and free cash flow conversion of 50 plus percent. And then on top of that, which you don't really factor into that outlook, are a number of different tailwinds the market associated with the larger u.s defense budget a larger percentage of that budget being allocated to the acquisition of capabilities like ours the the executive orders that we feel like really play to our sweet spot uh things like mandating the use of commercial technology which was right in the center of our value proposition of course golden dome significant tailwinds there and the growth of the international defense market. So that's kind of the landscape of growth drivers that are out there. I would say that for both Golden Dome and for the international opportunities, we're having numerous conversations. They continue to progress across our portfolio on a large number of programs. So it's not one or two opportunities that we're tracking. There's a dozen plus programs where we're having conversations with customers around significant increases in quantities. And I would say that if any of those tailwinds were to hit, that would shift our expectations around our ability to hit our target profile and exceed our target profile. So still in the pipeline phases, conversations are still progressing. And the best leading indicator that we'll have is when those conversations materialize in the bookings and we'll keep you posted as those conversations progress.

Excellent. And then just in terms of your cost savings and facilities consolidation initiatives, can you give us a sense of how far along we are there and maybe some of the incremental margin opportunities that are still remaining? Thank you.

Yeah. We've made a lot of progress as we've talked about the savings that we've already recognized. And you can certainly see that when you look at the kind of the run rate we have on our OpEx now versus what it was two years ago. You know, we continue to, you know, identify everything. You know, we continue to work on the things that make the most sense to make us more efficient. You know, some of the automation Bill talking about, you know, simplifying the process looking at our facilities, you know, obviously the facilities, you know, take a longer timeframe to recognize those kinds of savings. But, you know, Bill said many times, this is a long-term, you know, life, always part of your life is looking for savings. How can you do things better? So we still see it going for a long time. You know, Bill's talked about the operating leverage and how you can see, you know, as we've been able to accelerate activity, we haven't increased our off expense associated with those activities. So it kind of flows right through. That's the kind of impact that we expect to keep seeing as we build the business going forward. Thank you.

As a reminder, everyone, it is star one. If you have a question today, we'll go next to Noah Popanak with Goldman Sachs.

Hey, good evening, everyone. Hey, Noah. Could you level set us on the percentage of your revenue that is international? And I don't know if you could estimate or if you have the number on what's direct versus eventually ends up outside of the U.S., but it's through a U.S. customer. And then same question on Missile and munition, just as we all kind of recalibrate for growth rates in those two segmentations.

Yeah, so first I would tell you that we don't break out, if you're asking about FMS versus non-FMS, we don't actually break that out in our financials. And to a large degree, we follow our customer set. So as we're going through, we're working with our customers on what that breakout is. But if you look at the queue, you can see the international and FMS revenue. And for the second quarter, that was $38 million. So that's percentage so quick.

15 percent range something like that okay yeah and do you have an approximation for how much revenue you generate from um the category of missiles and munitions we do we don't rent that out separately okay um you'll be able to see in the

huge breakout between FMS and international and our domestic business. And as we know with our business, programs and revenue can be kind of bumpy. The international FMS business had been growing nicely. Its growth rate is down a little bit this quarter, but of course that highlights that our domestic business, when you look at the first half year over year is up low teens, which I think speaks to some of the inherent growth pretty exciting. So there's a little bit of detail that you'll see in the Q, but we remain very bullish about the international opportunity where our backlog is.

And you could look at it, we do break out sensors and effectors, but, you know, to break it into just specifically how much is missile, you know, you can look at that, but it would be something we don't show.

Understood. That is helpful. I appreciate it. Question on margins. Could you speak to, even if directionally, in the medium-term framework, what do you expect for the gross margin and then R&D and SG&A as a percentage of revenue to walk to that EBITDA margin? Which I just, it'd be helpful to understand just given those percentages have been moving around as you've taken on your strategy.

Yeah, I don't think we've spoken to gross margins explicitly when it comes to our target margin profile. But what we said about our targeted EBITDA margins in the low to mid 20% range, basically the elements of the bridge from where we are to get to that target range involve the backlog margin progressing the way we talked about. burning off the low margin programs and continuing to bring in new bookings in line with our target margins and we've been doing that consistently for several quarters and we continue marching down that path continuing to streamline and focus automate drive efficiencies into the business and then third positive operating leverage because we feel like we've got our op ex in a very good place. And as we continue to grow the top line, we don't expect to see meaningful growth in our OPEX. So those three elements really provide the bridge from where we are to that targeted margin profile.

Okay, that's helpful. And just one last one. I had the step back up in restructuring to the 4 million. Just curious what you're doing there and what it does for the future.

Yeah, that's when we took an action in the corner, you know, and you can see this when you look in the queue, you know, that affected, you know, about 100 folks and, you know, and some facilities. So, you know, we do expect to see some lift of that as we go through the, you know, get the full impact of that over the next year or so.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

And Mr. Bauhaus, it appears there are no further questions at this time. Therefore, I would like to hand the call back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thank you very much, and thanks, everyone, for joining us for our quarterly call, and we look forward to meeting again next quarter. Thank you very much.

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