Curtiss-Wright Corporation

Welcome to the Curtis Wright first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit yourself to one primary question and one follow-up. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Jim Ryan, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Chelsea, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Carter Straits' first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Chair and Chief Executive Officer Lynn Bamford and Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Chris Farkas. A copy of today's financial presentation and the press release are available for download through the investor relations section of our website at curtiswright.com. A replay of this webcast will also be available on the website. Our discussion today includes certain projections and forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance. We detail those risks and uncertainties associated with our forward-looking statements, including the impacts of tariffs and our public filings with the SEC. As a reminder, the company's results and guidance include an adjusted non-GAAP view that excludes certain costs in order to provide greater transparency in the Curtis-Wright's ongoing operating and financial performance. Gap-to-non-gap reconciliations are available in the earnings release and on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Lynn to get things started.

Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone. We are off to a great start in 2025 as we delivered fantastic results that exceeded our expectations. Before getting into the details, I would like to say a few words about the momentum that continues to build with respect to our Pivot to Grow strategy and how that translates into value for all of our stakeholders. First and foremost, I commend the team for embracing our strategy and their drive and execution, which has yielded better than expected results in both growth and efficiency. As we discussed at our May 2024 Investor Day, we continue to enhance customer engagement while leveraging our strong domain expertise as a highly valued supplier of mission-critical technologies to help solve our customers' most challenging problems. In addition, we are implementing the core principles of our operational growth platform, remaining focused on both commercial and operational excellence to expand margins and free up funding opportunities for investments that will accelerate profitable growth across the portfolio. Regarding our improved 2025 outlook, we take pride in meeting our commitments and being a company that investors can rely on to deliver strong results, even in the face of macroeconomic uncertainty. Whether it was the quick return to providing guidance during the pandemic with minimal margin dilution or the rapid response of our team to the electronic supply chain challenges in 2022, in all cases, our team has responded quickly to adapt as needed and to deliver superior results. This is a testament not only to our strategy but also to our leadership positions in our end markets as well as the people, the systems, and the processes that we continuously invest in to ensure that Curtiss-Wright is built for long-term success. As a result, and in the face of a number of macro-level uncertainties, we are confidently raising our overall full-year 2025 guidance. With that, I'll turn to today's presentation. Starting with our first quarter 2025 highlights, sales of $806 million represented an increase of 13% year over year, or 11% on an organic basis, driven by stronger than expected growth in our airspace and defense markets. Operating income increased 34% year over year, once again exceeding our sales growth and resulted in 260 basis points of overall operating margin expansion. This performance reflected the strong growth in sales, the benefits of our corporate wide restructuring actions initiated last year to support future growth and efficiency and our ongoing commercial and operational excellence programs. Diluted earnings per share increased 42% year-over-year, which also exceeded our expectations and was primarily driven by our higher A&D sales. Free cash flow, while typically a first-quarter outflow, reflected a year-over-year increase of 5% while we continued to support investments across all three segments. New orders increased 13% year-over-year to a record of more than $1 billion and resulted in an overall book-to-bill of 1.26 times. Within our A&D markets, we experienced strong demand for neighbor nuclear propulsion equipment, supporting the U.S. Navy's current and next-generation submarine programs. Orders within our commercial aerospace market were mainly driven by higher demand for avionics equipment within our defense electronics segment. Within our commercial markets, we continued to benefit from increasing demand for commercial nuclear aftermarket products supporting the upcoming spring outage season, advanced SMRs, and the contribution from ultra-energy. Overall, we reached a new record backlog in excess of $3.6 billion, which provides us great visibility and confidence in our long-term growth outlook. Regarding our full year guidance, we have raised our overall outlook for sales, operating margins, and earnings per share, and are on track to deliver strong top and bottom line growth this year. We now expect overall sales to increase 8% to 9%, reflecting an improved outlook in the majority of our A&D markets and the strength of our order book. In addition, the organization's continuous drive for commercial and operational excellence is fueling some tremendous margin expansion this year. We now anticipate an increase of 80 to 100 basis points in pursuit of a record operating margin of 18.3 to 18.5%, and we expect to generate these strong returns while maintaining incremental investments in research and development. In addition, we expect to overcome the impact of tariff-related headwinds, which Chris will cover in more detail in a few minutes. Diluted EPS is now expected to grow 14% to 17%. In addition, we raised our free cash flow guide to reflect higher confidence in the full-year outlook and continue to expect strong free cash flow conversion. In summary, Curtis Wright remains well-positioned to deliver another exceptional performance in 2025. Now I would like to turn the call over to Chris to provide a more in-depth review of our financials.