General Dynamics Corporation

Press star 1 a second time. Please note this event is being recorded, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Nicole Shelton, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the General Dynamics First Quarter 2024 conference call. Any forward-looking statements made today represent our estimates regarding the company's outlook. These estimates are subject to some risks and uncertainties. Additional information regarding these factors is contained in the company's 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K filings. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. For additional disclosures about these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures, please see the slides that accompany this webcast, which are available on the investor relations page of our website, investorrelations.gde.com. On the call today are Phoebe Novakovic, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Kim Correa, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Phoebe.

Thank you, Nicole. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for being with us. As you can discern from our press release, we reported earnings of $2.88 per diluted share on revenue of $10.7 billion, operating earnings of $1.36 billion, and net earnings of $799 million. These results compare quite favorably to the year-ago quarter. Revenue is up 8.6% against the first quarter last year. Operating earnings are up 10.4%. Net earnings are up 9.5%. As a result, earnings per diluted share are up 24 cents, or 9.1%, more than the year-ago quarter. The operating margin for the entire company was 9.7%, a 20 basis point improvement over the year-ago quarter. Overall, these numbers represent a very strong quarter and a good start to 2024. However, we fell below our own expectations for the quarter and below analyst consensus, which is predicated, at least in part, on our forecast. The rather obvious explanation is that we forecast 15 to 17 G700 deliveries in the quarter, which did not happen. We received FAA certification for the G700 at the very end of the quarter, too late to make any G700 deliveries. This obviously impacted revenue and earnings in the aerospace group in the quarter. The good news is that we now have certification and the delay in deliveries does not change our outlook for the year. Gulfstream still plans to deliver 50 to 52 G700s this year. So our aerospace forecast for the year remains unchanged. I'll give you a little more color on this later in my remarks. And other good news, as you can see, was strong performance across the defense portfolio. In short, we performed very well in the quarter over those things within our control. At this point, let me ask Kim Carrier, our CFO, to provide details on our order activity, solid backlog, and cash activity before I come back with segment observations. Thank you, Phoebe, and good morning.