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spk13: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CACI International Fiscal 2022 third quarter results. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will announce the opportunity for questions and the instructions will be given at that time. If you should need any assistance during the call, please press star zero and someone will assist you. At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to Dan Leckberg, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for CACI International. Please go ahead, sir.
spk09: Well, thanks, Seth, and good morning, everyone. I'm Dan Lechberg, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for CACI, and we thank you for joining us this morning. We are providing presentation slides, so let's move to slide number two. There will be statements in this call that do not address historical fact and, as such, constitute forward-looking statements under current law. These statements reflect our views as of today and are subject to factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from anticipated. Those factors are listed at the bottom of last night's press release and are described in the company's SEC filings. Our safe harbor statement is included on this exhibit and should be incorporated as part of any transcript of this call. I also point out our presentation this morning will include discussion of non-GAAP financial measures. These should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for performance measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. With that out of the way, let's turn to slide number three, please. To open our discussion this morning, I'll turn the call over to John Meguchi, President and Chief Executive Officer of CACI. John, over to you.
spk05: Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter 2022 results. With me this morning is Tom Uttren, our Chief Financial Officer. Slide four, please. Let's start off with our third quarter financial highlights. We grew revenue by 2 percent. Profitability was healthy with adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.2 percent, and we generated robust free cash flow of nearly $300 million. We also continued to win new and re-compete work with $1.2 billion of contract awards, 568 million of those classified, representing a book-to-bill of 1.5 times on a trailing 12-month basis. Our results reflect the short-term headwinds we discussed last quarter, albeit a bit more than expected, with funding delays being the key driver. Slide five, please. While market trends remain positive in the medium and long term, the short-term headwinds I discussed last quarter still exist, including slower issuance of task orders, supply chain challenges, delayed funding, and restricted customer and facility access due to COVID. What changed during our third quarter is the process of getting funding on contracts has been much slower than in past years. In fact, our third quarter funding orders are down over 300 million, or 20%, compared to the same quarter last year. As a result, we are reducing our outlook for fiscal year 2022, which Tom will discuss in more detail shortly. Slide six, please. Looking past these short-term funding issues, we have a large and growing addressable market, and the budget environment is even more constructive today than in the recent past. For example, we see increased spending across defense, where we have a robust footprint, the intelligence community, where approximately 30 percent of our revenue is generated, and important non-DoD customers like DHS, where we provide cyber and applications development. From a capability perspective, we see increased spending in IT modernization across the federal government, the space domain, including photonics and space situational awareness, and continued strong spending across the electromagnetic spectrum to include SIGINT, EW, and cyber. Slide seven, please. With those spending priorities as a backdrop, I'll cover recent investments we have made in IT modernization and space. First, on the IT modernization side, we continue to invest in commercial solutions for classified or CSFC. You've heard us talk before about our subscription-based software-as-a-service Steelbox application for secure communications. We continue to invest in new capabilities and are seeing successes with recent deployments within the intelligence community. And our recent acquisition of ID Technologies expands our portfolio of software-based CSFC for classified networks. Combining these CSFC offerings with our existing network modernization capabilities provides a compelling end-to-end solution to capture increased spending in IT modernization. Second, we continue to invest in the increasingly important space domain. SA Photonics, in partnership with DARPA and SDA, recently demonstrated the connection of an optical link and data transfer between satellites in orbit. This success is an important step in establishing space-based communications to transmit greater amounts of data in a more secure modality. We also recently completed an important milestone for two mission payloads that will launch into low Earth orbit early next year. These upgradable software-defined payloads will demonstrate APNT, an alternative to GPS, as well as tactical ISR from space. These space payloads are great examples of taking exquisite terrestrial capabilities and investing internally to deploy them in space. Slide 8, please. The bottom line is our business is performing well on the things under our control. We are delivering with quality, winning new business, driving profitability, generating robust cash flow, investing ahead of need in relevant and differentiated technology, hiring great talent, and being recognized in several surveys by our employees is a great place to work. Before I turn things over to Tom, I want to make it clear that our business is performing well and long-term prospects are positive. While we are still going through our FY23 planning process, our preliminary assessment indicates healthy organic growth, profitability, and cash flow. We have the capabilities, the contracts, a robust backlog, and a track record of winning business to continually delivering shareholder value next year and beyond.
spk04: With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom. Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I'm still on slide number eight. Let me start off by providing some additional color around FY23. As our customers begin to execute on what is now a fully appropriated budget and get funds on contract to meet critical needs, we expect funding to revert to more normal levels in early FY23. As is our practice, our fiscal year plan and guidance is based on a program-by-program, bottom-up process. This activity is well underway and is providing enough insight for us to be confident that we will be able to generate healthy organic growth, profitability, and cash flow in FY23. We will provide formal FY23 guidance with full details in mid-August. With that, I'll turn to our third quarter results in FY22 outlook. Please turn to slide number 9. We generated revenue of $1.6 billion in the quarter, representing 2.1% growth, with organic revenue down approximately 2%. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA margin was 10.2%, below our expectations, due primarily to fewer high-margin emission technology sales as a result of the Our 17.9% tax rate benefited from increased RMD tax credits of approximately $9 million related to FY20 through FY22, which we recognize this quarter. Slide 10. CETI continues to generate strong cash flow and free cash flow per share. Third quarter cash flow from operations excluding our accounts receivable purchase facility was $314 million, and free cash flow was $297 million. This includes $160 million of tax refunds related to the FY21 tax election we have previously discussed. Excluding the tax benefits, free cash flow for the quarter increased by 26% from a year ago. Our continued focus on working capital management drove DSO to 51 days, demonstrating the consistent and efficient performance of our business. We closed the third quarter with net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA at 2.8 times. Together with our recently expanded credit facility and continued access to capital, we have flexibility and optionality as we consider all capital deployment opportunities. Slide 11, please. We are updating our fiscal year 22 guidance to reflect the short-term funding headwinds, which impact both our third and fourth quarters. When we reported results last quarter, we anticipated that 3% of our revenue would come from new business. A good portion of that was related to material and technology revenue, which did not materialize due to funding issues. While we now have a fully appropriated budget, received soon enough to enable us to deliver and recognize any associated revenue by the end of our fiscal year. For fiscal year 22, we expect revenue to be between $6.2 and $6.25 billion, with total revenue growth of 3% and organic revenue growth of around 1% at the midpoint. Adjusted EBITDA margin to be around 10.5% at the midpoint, reflecting the delays in funding associated with higher margin technology. CapEx of around $80 million in an effective tax rate approximately 22 percent. We are maintaining our free cash flow guidance of at least $720 million, and our other assumptions remain materially unchanged. Year-to-date, we have realized $190 million is the expected $230 million cash tax benefit from the 2021 method change. We anticipate the remaining $40 million to occur in the fourth quarter, but the timing of the tax refund is dependent upon the IRS. Slide 12, please. Turning to our forward indicators, we now expect virtually all of our FY22 revenue to come from the same program. We have $10 billion of submitted bids under evaluation, with around 90% of that for new business and CACI. And we plan to submit another $20 billion over the next two quarters with about 90% of that for new business. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to John.
spk05: Thank you, Tom. Let's go to slide 13. Before we transition to Q&A, I want to leave you with a few important takeaways. The short-term funding headwinds are just that, they're short-term. They do not change our large adjustable market, nor its positive demand signals. We continue to see bipartisan support for national security and modernization. The CECI is well aligned to these key spending priorities. Near-peer adversaries continue to develop capabilities that we will need to counter, regional tensions remain, and counterterrorism requirements have not gone away. Domains like cyber, space, and the electromagnetic spectrum are increasingly important, and broad-based modernization across the federal government is essential. To our 22,000 talented employees, thank you for everything you do in service to our customers, and our nation each and every day. Your dedication, your talent, your good character, and your spirit of innovation is truly foundational to our success. With that, Seth, let's open the call for questions.
spk13: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and wish to withdraw your question, please press star 2. Please allow time for one question and one follow-up only. give equal opportunity for everyone to ask their questions. The first question today comes from Gavin Parsons from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, good morning, guys.
spk13: Good morning, Gavin.
spk08: John, you mentioned the constructive budget environment, right? I mean, FY22 is plus top, 23 is growth across the board. We actually have a fit up How does that translate back to the level of confidence in spending at your customers? What does it take for them to get comfortable in actually spending at these higher levels?
spk05: Yeah, Gavin, thanks. You know, as we mentioned in our preparedness remarks, it really comes down to issuance of funding. You know, the way our third quarter played out, it's not that the government didn't have that funding, it was getting those funding orders out. So, you know, bottom line up front, we are very confident about things going forward. You know, from a big picture and from a budget standpoint, I think the FY22 budget and the planned FY23 budget is further proof that the world's a really dangerous place. And I believe that Ukraine was a wake-up call But China and other near peers in counterterrorism threats are all still there. You know, we're hearing potentially largest DOD budget in history as we get into government fiscal year 23, potentially greater than $800 billion. We're working through a $14 billion multi-year supplemental spending for Ukraine. which includes operational and intel support for the U.S. European Command, which is a command that we support broadly. As I shared in my prepared remarks, we're going to see increased spending in the intelligence community, where we provide a wide range of advanced cyber and intel and analytical technology and expertise. We're going to see increased spending by DADHS that really supplements what we do with DHS CISO organization, as well as our large Customs and Border customer there through our Beagle program, we're going to continue to see increased spending on IT modernization. So, you know, when we look at our adjustable market, greater $240 billion, we look at that we continue to invest in differentiating capabilities and the like. And we're in the right areas of spend. We're in space. We're in cyber. We're in AI. We're in mission tech solutions. So we are even more confident as we go into FY20, 23, Gavin. And again, I want to close this question off with our FY22 struggles in the second half of this year are an absolute issue with funding.
spk08: Okay. I appreciate all that, Connor. Maybe just following up on that, if you expect the funding to revert to normal levels in early 23, have you started to see that yet or is that still a wait and see from the customer?
spk05: Yeah, Gavin, thanks. Yeah, you know, it's a fact that our contract funding orders in the third quarter were down about 20% versus last year. You know, these are temporary and we do believe funding is going to begin to flow What I can share is through the 25th of this month, which is the first month of our fourth quarter, funding orders are up about 8% from the same period last year, but clearly not in time to support our FY22 efforts with only 16 days remaining in our current fiscal year. We're going to continue to assess our FY23 plan, but in light of what we saw in April, we would expect May and June to show that same level of reversion back to the normal, which will support FY2023, reverting back to, you know, strong organic growth, gray margins, and increased cash flow. Thanks, Kevin.
spk13: Our next question is from Mariana Perez Mora from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk06: Good morning, everyone. Could you give us some details on when we should start seeing some upside from these, like, improved trends in defense spending?
spk05: Yes. You know, we're looking for positive impact of the FY23 budget spending during our FY23 year, as well as increased funding coming up during our fourth quarter. You know, we... are continuing to focus on high quality revenue, and as I mentioned to Gavin, we're in the right places. Our technology continues to be more profitable and grow faster than the expertise portion of our business. We are continuing to focus on high quality revenue, and we want to be able to grow and expand margins within that tech sector. We've got very healthy awards. We've got a great healthy backlog. We are committed to driving, driving growth above our addressable market, which today is $240 billion, Mariana. When we get a chance to assess the full FY23 plan going forward, we'll have a new addressable market. But the goal of the acquisitions that we have done over the last couple of years has really been focused on growing that addressable market. You know, we're a $6 billion company today. We're in a $240 billion addressable market. There's no reason why, with the appropriate funding, we cannot continue to grow as we have year over year.
spk07: Perfect. And then as a follow-up, how large is your space exposure today and how large it could be like five years from now?
spk05: Yeah, so what we do in space today is really, really focused in our Mission Taika area. You know, we were very focused on the SA Photonics acquisition because we believe that our role in space would not be in building satellites, but actually by both doing mission payloads that ride on all LEO, GEO, MEO satellites, as well as optical communications. We were very successful this past month. As I mentioned during my prepared remarks, to be able to close an optical link in space, which is a great step forward for CACI, for our satellite partners, as well as DARPA and SDA. I would also tell you that these two experimental payloads that we have being launched, I believe it's January 23, is very important and worth spending a couple of minutes on. because it's very germane to what our space strategy has been. You know, we're looking at an alternative PNT solution that will work in a contested space domain, and it won't completely replace GPS, but it will greatly support systems out there when GPS signals are jammed or when they're attacked. Our plan for our solution to be more resilient and less vulnerable to jamming And there are billions of dollars that are going to be spent over the next five years within space to continue to ensure non-contested GPS to the warfighter. The second area, and the tactical ISR area, is very basically taking our mastodon-type terrestrial solutions today for tactical ISR, since they're very low size, weight, and power. They're very low cost. and making certain that we can space qualify those boxes and those assets so that we can continue to prosecute all of our growth strategies within the space domain.
spk13: Our next question comes from Toby Summer from Truist Securities. Please go ahead, Toby.
spk11: Hey, good morning. This is Jasper Bibb on for Toby. I was just hoping you could comment on your experience with recruiting and retention of existing staff. Some of the private companies have described issues with staffing up new contracts. Has that been an issue for you at all in these past few quarters?
spk05: Yeah, thanks. Look, demand for talent still remains high. As I've said many, many times, the hiring environment remains very competitive. and very challenging, but it's no different than it has been over the last several years. You know, I'm a big trend line person, and looking at trend lines of STEM graduates out there, you know, we can throw this great resignation wave in the middle of that, as well as wage and inflation. We're doing an outstanding job with it. Look, we strive to be the employer of choice within our sector. We've got two great programs, one's hashtag making moves, And one is our highly successful referral program. Hashtag making moves is really about ensuring that as people want to do different work within the company, that they have the ability to, in fact, do that. And that reduces attrition. We've invested a lot internally. We are very focused on exciting and important work, not only on the expertise side of our business, in the technology side and that very much differentiates us within our sector uh we we make certain our employees know how much we value diversity and inclusion um and just just to share a few a few points uh attrition for us continues to be lower even post coded which is an outstanding um signal that we are doing something right and sort of flashes back to everything that we can control we're doing an outstanding job in. One in four of our JRs is filled internally, which is significantly better than it was just a few years back. Our positive referral trends, you know, one out of three hires is a referral and that's great for retention. It's also great for filling new roles out there. So I'm not going to leave this without saying that it's really, really tough. I mean, our talent acquisition group and our HR organization does a phenomenal job. At the end of the day, we're not immune to it, but I like the position we're in so that we don't find ourselves in a dire talent shortage because of the great renegotiation wave as well as wage inflation.
spk11: Thanks. And then I just want to ask about customer exposure from the initial O&M request. A team like Navy and Air Force might be relative winners at the expense of Army. Can you just talk about how your positioning stacks up with each of those customer accounts?
spk05: Yeah, let me take Air Force first because when I hear about Air Force, I think about the intelligence community. I quickly tie myself back to space. So, you know, we are very well positioned within where the Air Force is going to be spending money throughout 2023 and beyond. We like to focus on space there. Within the Army, whether it's battlefield comms, whether it's SIGINT, those types of collection technologies, those continue to be very well funded within the Army's budget. We're not as major of a Navy player, but one very important area where we are. We are responsible for the majority of the system engineering that's done on all surface ships. So as the Navy's shipbuilding program continues to be greatly funded, we are right in the sweet, sweet, sweet spot there. At the end of the day, we've been very, very focused to ensure that we are in those swim lanes where the customers are going to spend money. cyber IT modernization and the like. You know, one example in IT modernization is using the acquisition that we did with OLGS. Their network design team won the Army OSP job, about a half a billion dollar job, which is going to be transforming all of the Army's networks here and abroad, you know, making certain that they can handle faster data rates in a much more secure manner. And that is extremely well funded, and just another great example of CECI, one, investing ahead of need, and two, investing in those areas that are going to have long-term funding streams as we move forward.
spk13: Our next question is from Matt Sharp at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Matt.
spk02: John, Tom, good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my question.
spk05: Yeah, good morning.
spk02: Good morning. New business as a percentage of contract awards, I think, dropped off pretty materially this past quarter, I think 45%, whereas the long-term average is north of 60. I believe last quarter was 70. So my question is, Now, how did your win rates fare in the quarter? And more broadly, what's the competitive environment look like right now? Are your peers getting more aggressive as the end market has tightened or is it sort of par for the course?
spk05: Yeah, Matt, thanks. I'll start and, you know, Tom will probably have something to add on this. Look, I guess my simple answer to every awards question, right, is awards are lumpy. You know, it's why we don't get really high on a great, you know, book to build quarter and why we don't get low on, you know, something which is lower. You know, the numbers that you mentioned relatively sound in range, but, you know, that the new business we have versus re-competes, those numbers bounce around. If I talk a little bit about competitive pressures, I really take it back to our to our framework, which is we put in place a plan that really looks at the dynamics of the expertise pursuits we have out there and the technology pursuits we have. And it's exactly that aggressive bidding stance and trying to drive very low rates and trying to be the most cost-competitive provider out there, which is which is a strategy that CACI moved away from a number of years back. You know, Better Buying Power 1 and 2, 2.0 and LPTA really opened the market up for people providing expertise to the federal government. You can call them consultants or they'll be like, which is why we've been very, very judicious at what we want to bid in within that space. If you look at some of our re-compete work, the majority of the re-compete work that we haven't been successful on in the last 36 months has predominantly been in that enterprise expertise quadrant. Because, frankly, at the end of the day, we want to be a growing company, both top and bottom line. We want to be generating profit dollars to invest in the technology side of our business where we see much greater funding streams. So has it become more aggressive in an hourly pricing rate area? Absolutely so. And you can see that Because we are one of those few companies that, although it's tough to find talent, as somebody asked earlier, 50% of our business is pure technology, where we direct the efforts of our people each and every day, where our people can take the training classes they need to make us a much more productive company. And that is the one differentiator that we continue to point out. is that we aren't that company out there talking about we can't find talent because we haven't been an overly aggressive bidder. And again, back to what we can control, we're going to continue to bid work that we can responsibly deliver on. Tom, anything?
spk04: Yeah, I would just add that if I take a step back and look at our business development activities, I feel positive about those. Our total backlog, $23 billion in a significant amount of backlog for us, kind of winning some large contracts. Durations have increased materially over time. This quarter, $1.2 billion awards. There are some lumpiness in awards. So we look at it on a trillion, 12-month basis, kind of 1.5 times kind of book to bill, kind of looking at capture rates for both new business and to re-complete business. They're, you know, quite respectable. You know, you're happy with those. So I all in all feel positive about our ability to win new work. Consistent with my prepared remarks, we have a significant amount of activity under evaluation or to be submitted, so in opportunity-rich environments.
spk02: Got it. Okay. Thanks, Paul. That's very helpful. Maybe just as a follow-up, Tom, looking at the implied 4Q REV guide, it looks like I think 6.5 percent or so growth at the midpoint and 2-ish on an organic basis. Fairly large step-ups relative to 3Q, and even if I look at it on a sequential basis, a notable jump. How much of 4Q is already in backlog, and should I think about the quarter as having any sort of catch-up from 3Q disruptions, or is there anything else going on in the background to consider? Maybe Afghanistan headwinds fading a little bit.
spk04: Yeah, so if I look at the fourth quarter, here we are in April, so we're one-third done. You feel pretty good about that. The funding issues which impacted us in the third quarter are turning the corner, but it's going to take some time for that, even if we get the funding, to translate it into revenue. But a lot of visibility as to where we stand between now and the end of the year. you know, feel, you know, positive about that. It'll have a lot of line of sight on where we stand. There are some product deliveries which we're tracking very closely. There are some material sales which we're tracking, you know, very closely, but we feel, you know, pretty comfortable about those. So, you know, all in all, you know, again, you know, confident in the guidance that we provided.
spk13: Our next question comes from Scott Forbes at Jefferies. Scott, please go ahead.
spk10: Morning, John. Morning, Tom. Morning. You know, margin guys came down 20 bips on these kind of short-term funding items. Is there any way to sort of frame the margin bridge into FY23? I mean, what are the major moving pieces as we move into next year? And what's the right way to think about the underlying margin base for fiscal 22?
spk04: Yeah, so, you know, very good question. We're spending some time kind of looking at you know, that as well. You know, the kind of margin did decline from our prior guidance, 10.7 to 10.5, and that was, you know, primarily due to the slippage or the reduction in high margin technology sales. Some of the technology we sell, we disclosed previously with the Mastodon and ABT acquisitions in the 30, 40% kind of EBITDA margin range. So it has a material, you know, impact. One of the questions is, you know, will those rebound? Will there be a bow wave, et cetera? A lot of kind of discussions internally as we build the plan to try to assess that. Right now we're seeing ever-increasing margins. And we still have yet to think about what the appropriate takeoff point is. You know, 10.5% is kind of lower than we anticipated. So let us spend some more time as we prepare our FY23 plan with some degree of fidelity to kind of be more specific with regards to that.
spk05: Hey, Scott, let me also add, on the revenue side, you know, there will be questions around whether the revenue didn't show up in the fourth quarter. Is that going to be delayed, or is it lost? And I think it's very helpful to share a couple comments on the revenue side as well, you know, because we're looking at that as we start to assess our FY2023. You know, on the expertise and the enterprise tech side, Our new business business wins and any contract mods think of additional work that the customer has given to us Those are those which are expending Experiencing funding short and shortages those are going to cause delayed starts and ramp ups You know so that work will be recouped over time but time is defined over the life of that contract so it could be a You know, one year, it could be three years, it could be as long as five. The mission technology source cycle deliveries that Tom mentioned, in most cases, we're going to look at those as being delayed because of the funding issues. You know, we'll have more on that as we complete our FY23 assessment, and I really want to get a good handle on the next two months' worth of funding orders, whether that trend line continues to move to move forward. On the material sales, those are really a mix. And just as an illustrative example, if a customer typically buys 100 units of something each year and they didn't buy it in FY22 because of funding delays, are they going to buy 200 units next year or are they going to buy 100 or some other number? So again, that's an ongoing assessment. As much as we're looking at margins, we're looking at revenue that can drive those margins as well. So sort of a mixed bag, more delayed than lost, but again, it's going to be that element of time.
spk04: And the last comment I'll make on that is as we look to 23, both John and I in our prepared remarks expressed confidence in FY23. We certainly have the backlog. We have the demand signals by the customer. We have the technology. We people in place. So when we put all that together, that bodes well for FY20.
spk10: Thank you.
spk01: Thanks, Scott.
spk13: Our next question comes from Colin Canfield from Barclays. Colin, please go ahead.
spk12: Hey, good morning, guys. So just crystallizing the growth conversation a little bit, organic guidance walked down, you know, 3% through the year. in multi-sense R&D, cyber, offensive IT, all growing 10%. You discussed funding orders that, you know, growing at kind of 8% through the month, which probably should accelerate through the year. So then if we think about looking at the FY23, you know, what are the kind of pain points that stop you from achieving high single-digit organic? Is it more a program exposure perspective or a supply-side perspective?
spk05: Yeah, Colin, I'm not going to break my 11-year track record. I'm not talking about 23 until August. But I'll be respectful of your question. Look, we do expect our customers to begin to execute on their fully-appropriated budget that finally went through the middle of this month. We do expect funding to revert to normal in early 2023. Again, we're going to watch it the next couple of months You know, a $300 million 20% dip in the third quarter, as you would imagine, causes us some level of pause. We really want to watch where these funding orders go. Supply chain, still going to be an issue, but consensus is that that should get better in the back half of our fiscal year. You know, we're not trying to give guidance per se. What we are trying to do, though, to the point of your question, is sort of convey the confidence that the headwinds we are seeing are short-term. And we have plenty of backlog. We have plenty of ongoing growth on our current programs. There's nothing more frustrating than having everything we absolutely need, having a well-run business, a very cost-effective business, and not getting a funding order, which allows us to, you know, clearly generate revenue. So... We're going to provide formal guidance with all those details and report in mid-August because I do think it's still prudent for us to review the funding picture through the fourth quarter. But having said all of that, you know, this is more funding than it is customer demand signals.
spk12: Got it. And in terms of the demand signal environment, what sort of demand signals are you seeing that you're investing in low Earth orbit constellations? And kind of how does your capability sit within the framework of high-end classified stuff versus some of your commercial peers like Spire, Pocket, 360, and the like?
spk05: Yeah. You know, I would tell you that our absolute focus is on our DOD and Air Force customers and how they utilize space. You know, it's true that in the commercial world, there will be many constellations put up at LEO. And that was absolutely why we did the SA Photonics acquisition. What we picked up with LGS and their photonics business is a phenomenally well-run business that is driving high-end, geo-based, bespoke solutions. Think low-quantity, think very, very highly accurate, carrying both unclassified and classified information accurately. over high bandwidth links. What SA Photonics gives us is a different look at our algorithms, but also the ability to produce those types of optical solutions at a higher volume, lower price target level. What I like about the SA Photonics acquisition is combining what we did with LLGS We now have high-end bespoke and high-volume legal-based solutions that will both, over time, collapse to the same type of baseline, making even our high-end bespoke ones more cost-effective. So there could not be a better example, frankly, Colin, than what we're doing in that space to OMAIN. Yes, there are other folks out there working on optical cross-links. There are other satellite providers saying they're going to go you know, create their own. As I mentioned, when we did the asset for tonnage acquisition, we're looking at volume and margins improving as the market picks up in the FY24 time period. You know, this was a very timely acquisition for us. So we did buy it on the lower end of that growth curve. So as we just closed about four to five quarters more of strong investments there. But again, the success we just had on this Mandrake 2 mission has been outstanding. And it really does set the tone for us seeing, you know, greater out-year growth and being a long-term growth company. You know, we need to be focused out in that 23, 24, 25 timeframe.
spk01: Our next question is from Matt Akers, Wells Fargo.
spk13: Matt, please go ahead.
spk03: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. I wonder if you could put maybe a finer point on some of the slowdown, Q3, Q4. I mean, it sounds like some of it was like technology product kind of shifting out. Was that the biggest part or any color you can give on how that broke out kind of by customer or end market?
spk04: Yeah, so thank you, Matt. This is Tom. There's two kind of major impacts of that shorter-term funding. Some of the longer five-year programs, you know, we get funding on a regular basis. We have a large number of people working on either expertise or technology programs and that is somewhat immune from these short-term funding fluctuations. The, you know, funding, you know, impacted some of the shorter cycle activities in two categories. What are material buys? Sometimes the government, DOD customers, Army customers, will ask us to procure not necessarily commodity-like materials, but specialized capabilities. Think a satellite dish with special features and technology embedded upon it, where we would procure it and under one of our contracts provide to the government. Then we have our own technology. You could think Mastodon, ABT, and the like. The former category, the materials, you know, are higher revenue but lower margins, you know, since we're getting a material handling fee on those. So that slowdown in funding impacted revenue. On our own products, you know, very high margins, Those were also impacted, had a disproportionate impact not on revenue, but on margin. So those were the types of challenges we had with the funding. You know, think some specialized material at lower margins, higher revenue, and then think our mission technology, lower revenue contribution, but materially higher margins. So that was the two major components of that.
spk03: Got it. That's really helpful. Thanks. And also, on the free cash flow, you were able to maintain the free cash flow guide despite some of the slowness. Was there an offset to help you to still get to the 720?
spk04: Yeah, absolutely. So a few things. Operating cash flow, if I go excluding the tax issues, kind of down a little bit around $10 million. kind of largely driven by some of the reduction in our net income from where we initially had it pegged. But that's offset by some better collections, kind of DSO at 51 days, you know, extremely low kind of number for us and among our peer groups. So, very proud of that. Slightly lower CapEx as well. So, the lower operating cash flow somewhat was offset by the lower CapEx. The collections have certainly improved, and so we're able to maintain that free cash flow guidance.
spk13: Our next question is a follow-up from Gavin Parsons at Goldman Sachs. Gavin, please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, thank you for the follow-up. I just wanted to ask if you could give us a sense of your total product revenue in a normal year and what that looks like this year.
spk05: Yeah, Gavin, we're going to keep our disclosures around technology and expertise. And that's clearly just due to competitive reasons. We do believe that you all can measure how the mission tech sector is going. We do show what those growth rates are. I highly respect your question. We're just not going to provide too much additional information there.
spk08: Totally fair. Totally fair. And this might be a little nitpicky, but what was the cadence of the 3Q funding decline? You know, was that pretty concentrated in January as a result of Omicron, or was that kind of more widespread as a result of the CR?
spk04: Yeah, so, Gavin, good question. You know, to be candid, you know, we did not look at it on a month-by-month basis. And so I do not have that fidelity. I would just be speculating. Yeah. The triggering against those... In the triggering event, one of the triggering events was the passage of the budget on March 15th. And so I would guess, and we can get back to you, that once the budget was passed, there was probably some more positive trends.
spk05: Gavin, I'll add one other item, frankly, around that second question. You know, we've been trying to study what the most likely reason was for that. You know, because as we mentioned, when we got to the second quarter, we were pretty much flat with where we were last year. You know, our assumption and probably best well-founded reason is it's another issue we talked about during the second quarter. You know, when the Ukraine crisis started, it just became yet another compounding factor on a government customer that was already spending below what their, you know, what their CR budgets were. It's sort of like throwing another ball in that six ball juggling act of how am I going to fund everything that I have? You know, that's frankly where we believe that that, you know, funding issue starts. As for the specifics by, you know, month to month, I'm sure Dan and George can get you the rest of the information. But as we talk about funding, You know, I want to continue to reiterate funding to us is a very short-term headwind. You know, the national security priorities are important as ever. The FY22 and FY23 plan budgets are very constructive. We've got a large and growing addressable market. We're investing in and aligned to all of these key spending areas. What we can control is being run exceptionally well. You know, and we're, you know, looking forward to closing out FY22 with our updated guidance and then driving future growth in FY23. Makes sense.
spk08: Thank you again. Appreciate it.
spk13: Yeah, thanks, John.
spk01: Thanks, Kevin.
spk13: We also have a follow-up from Colin Canfield at Barclays. Colin, please go ahead.
spk12: Hey, just going back to the low earth orbit constellation narrative. So you mentioned producing of kind of these like subcomponent tree optical links, but at the same time, you're cutting your CapEx guide. So then how do we think about kind of how that LEO narrative interacts with CapEx and when do we, or kind of what sort of CapEx inflection should we assume from CATI kind of on a year-on-year basis or percentage of sales?
spk04: So let me start off with CapEx kind of generally speaking, because you can Three major buckets for capital spending for CCI. One is facilities. We continue to look at our real estate portfolio and make appropriate investments. Sometimes we're doing some consolidation, and that requires a good long-term capex to support that activity. The second major bucket is internal IT spending. Some of it's the simple replacements of laptops and desktops and audio-visual equipment. And we do make investments in some enterprise capabilities. Think of budget systems, think of contract systems, think of other data repository systems which drive capital spending. And the third bucket is capital spending associated with programs. And we have a series of laboratories. They require very sophisticated test equipment, kind of manufacturing capabilities and the like. And so that's the piece that you're looking at. And so with that, I'll turn it back to John, and you can talk more specifically about some of the requirements for some of the space activities.
spk05: Yeah. So, you know, Colin, actually beyond space. Everything we do in that mission tech quadrant, you know, the first nine months, CapEx was around $40 million, which tells you that, you know, it's sort of tiny. You know, the slower funding environment, this slow, some of the ramp-up of some of that work, nothing slowed down what we were doing in SA Photonics, nothing to slow down what we were doing in the Heritage Mastodon project. business. Some is just normal delays. But let me be very, very clear. We're not backing off on investments for growth because of these very, very short-term headwinds. Headwinds are near-term. Investments drive long-term results. And we will not cease any of those investments as we continue to support new and growing customers, especially when it's backed by very strong funding streams. Our mantra of investing ahead of customer need does not take time out because of the, you know, one to two quarter short term funding issue, which is predominantly the majority of the issue why we had to take down guidance to close our FY 2022. You know, unfortunately, our fiscal year is sort of falling out that for others who have a January through December fiscal year, you know, as many of you have already written, you know, you all are expecting growth starting in those companies' third quarters. That happened to be our first quarter of FY2023. So there's nothing alarming. There's nothing shocking. There's nothing going on inside the company overall. We're going to continue to invest in how the customer needs in that mission tech quadrant as well as in the enterprise tech area because that's what's going to fuel future growth and future market expansion.
spk12: Got it.
spk01: Appreciate the follow-up. Yeah, thanks, Colin.
spk13: We have no further questions on the call, so I will hand the floor back to John.
spk05: Thanks, Seth, and thank you for your help on today's call. We would like to thank everyone who dialed in or listened to the webcast for their participation. We know that many of you will have follow-up questions. Tom Uttren, Dan Lethberg, and George Price are available after today's calls. Please stay healthy, and all the best to you and your families. This concludes our call. Thank you all, and have a great day.
spk13: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your line.
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