Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the first quarter 2022 HII earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you need further assistance, please press star, followed by zero, and you'll be patched through to an operator. I'd now like to hand over the call to Christy Thomas, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mrs. Thomas, you may begin.

First quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With us today are Chris Kastner, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tom Seeley, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, statements made in today's call that are not historical fact are considered forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities law. Actual results may differ. Please refer to our SEC filings for a description of some of the factors that may cause actual results to vary materially from anticipated results. Also, in their remarks today, Chris and Tom will refer to certain non-GAAP measures Reconciliations of these metrics to the comparable gap measures are included in the appendix of our earnings presentation that is posted on our website. We plan to address the posted presentation slides during the call to supplement our comments. Please access our website at hii.com and click on the Investor Relations link to view the presentation as well as our earnings release. With that, I will turn the call over to our President and CEO, Chris Kastner.

Thanks, Christy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Earlier this morning, we reported solid performance across each of our operating divisions with our focus on execution and growth, positioning us to reaffirm our previous revenue margin and free cash flow guidance. Our shipbuilding and mission technologies teams continue to execute well, despite facing some headwinds in the areas of human capital and supply chain disruption. Like the economy broadly, we are facing challenges created by the lingering effects of COVID. and its impact on the labor market, making it challenging to hire and retain employees. Moreover, our suppliers are being impacted by the same shortage of labor, as well as inflation issues, which creates risk of delays in delivery of key materials for our shipbuilding programs. We are aggressively working these challenges with our suppliers and our customers. In light of both of these challenges, I'm extremely proud of the resilience and the dedication of each of our 44,000 employees. to continue to focus on the mission of delivering on their customer commitments. Now, shifting to our results, sales of $2.6 billion for the quarter were 13% higher than 2021, and diluted EPS of $350 billion for the quarter was down from $368 billion in 2021. New contract awards during the quarter were approximately $2 billion, driven by the award for DDG 139. This results in backlog of $47.9 billion at the end of the quarter of which $24.8 billion is currently funded. At Ingalls, LPD-28, Fort Lauderdale, completed sea trials and was delivered to the Navy. LPD-29, Richard M. McCool, Jr., was launched, and we laid keel for LPD-30, Harrisburg. On the LHA program, LHA-8, Bougainville, is progressing well, and long-lead material procurement has begun for LHA-9. On the DDG program, DDG-123, Lena Steadcliffe-Higbee, achieved main engine light off, and DDG 125 Jack H. Lucas was christened this quarter. And finally, on the NSC program, serial production continues on NSC 10 Calhoun, launched in April. At Newport News, SSN 794 Montana completed sea trials and was delivered to the Navy, and SSN 796 New Jersey floated off in April. Also, as discussed in our fourth quarter call, SSN 725 USS Helena was re-delivered in January, which demonstrated the successful reconstitution of our submarine maintenance capability in support of the Navy. On the carrier front, Newport News and the Navy celebrated a centennial of U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and CVN 78 USS Gerald R. Ford was re-delivered to the Navy in the first quarter after completion of its inaugural maintenance and modernization period. Progress continued on CVN 79 Kennedy which is 83 percent complete. And CVN 80 Enterprise has begun erecting steel on the dry dock. On the RCOH program, CVN 73 USS George Washington is progressing in the testing phase and is 95 percent complete. And CVN 74 USS John C. Stennis is approximately 25 percent complete. A few weeks ago, we renamed our Technical Solutions Division Mission Technologies to better reflect our portfolio of capabilities. and our commitment to delivering advanced technologies and multi-domain expertise to our support of our national security customers. Contract awards at Mission Technologies have had a slow start to the year, but this was largely due to the continuing resolution and the resulting lack of adjudication of awards. Looking ahead, we are very excited about our pipeline of new business at Mission Technologies and are confident it will support our growth objectives. We currently have almost $6 billion of proposals in evaluation with $3 billion in proposal development and a total qualified pipeline of more than $25 billion. We had a significant win in unmanned with the selection of our Remus 300 vehicle as the U.S. Navy's next-generation small UUD program of record. We also recently released Odyssey, a suite of advanced autonomy solutions that offer scalable autonomy across a variety of platforms and is aligned with the industry open architecture standards. Regarding our shipbuilding workforce, I'm glad to report that we finalized the collective bargaining agreement at both shipyards. Our annual apprentice school graduation at Newport News Shipbuilding saw 170 graduates, and over 200 individuals will complete their apprenticeship program in May at Ingalls Shipbuilding. And we continue to work with local high schools and community colleges on our core hiring and development needs. Through the end of the quarter, we had hired over 1,000 craft personnel towards our plan of over 5,000 for the year, we remain focused on hiring and retaining a strong workforce as we continue to face the headwinds of a tight labor market. Turning to activities in Washington, Congress finalized appropriations for fiscal year 2022 in March. We saw continued bipartisan support for our programs reflected in the Final Defense Appropriations Act, including funding for two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and two Virginia-class attack submarines. Additionally, The appropriations measure provided $250 million for advanced procurement funding for LPD32, advanced procurement for DDGs, as well as funding for our other programs. Also in March, the President submitted his fiscal year 2023 budget request, now under consideration by Congress. The proposed budget reflects continued investment in our shipbuilding programs, funding two amphibious ships, LPD32 and LHA9, two DDG51 surface combatants, and two Block 5 Virginia-class submarines. The budget request continues funding Ford-class nuclear aircraft carriers and aircraft carrier refueling programs and construction of Columbia-class submarines, as well as investment in the submarine industrial base. Beyond shipbuilding, the fiscal year 2023 request reflects an emphasis on research and development with increased investments in capability enablers such as AI, cyber, electronic warfare, C5ISR, and autonomous systems. that align well with our advanced technology capabilities of our mission technologies division. In conclusion, we remain well positioned to execute on our shipbuilding backlog and leverage it to generate significant free cash flow while continuing to capture anticipated work and growth within our mission technologies division. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Tom for some remarks on our financial results. Tom?

Thanks, Chris, and good morning. Today, I'll briefly review our first quarter results. For more detail on the segment results, please refer to the earnings release issued this morning and posted to our website. Beginning with our consolidated results on slide four of the presentation, our first quarter revenues of $2.6 billion increased approximately 13% compared to the same period last year. This was largely due to revenue attributable to the acquisition of a line in the third quarter of 2021. Operating income for the quarter of $138 million decreased by $9 million from the first quarter of 2021. An operating margin of 5.4% decreased 110 basis points. These decreases were largely due to lower segment operating income driven by lower risk retirement at Newport News Shipbuilding, partially offset by more favorable non-current state income taxes and operating fast cash adjustment compared to the prior year. Our effective tax rate in the quarter was approximately 20.5% compared to approximately 14.5% in the first quarter of 2021. The lower rate in the first quarter of 2021 was primarily due to divestitures during that quarter. Net earnings in the quarter were $140 million compared to $148 million in the first quarter of 2021. Diluted earnings per share in the quarter were $3.50 compared to $3.68 in the first quarter of 2021. Turning to slide five, cash used by operations was 83 million in the quarter, and net capital expenditures were 43 million, or 1.7 percent of revenues, resulting in free cash flow of negative 126 million. This compares to cash from operations of 43 million and net capital expenditures of 59 million and free cash flow of negative 16 in the first quarter of 2021. Cash contributions to our pension and other post-retirement benefit plans were 10 million in the quarter, of which less than $1 million were discretionary contributions to our qualified pension plans. During the first quarter, we paid dividends of $1.18 per share, or $47 million. We also repurchased 51,000 shares during the quarter at an aggregate cost of $10 million. Moving on to slide six, Ingalls revenues of $631 million in the quarter decreased $18 million, or 2.8%, from the same period last year. driven primarily by lower revenues on the DDG program, partially offset by high amphibious assault ship revenues. Ingalls operating income of 86 million and margin of 13.6% in the quarter were down slightly from last year due to lower risk retirement on the LHA and DDG programs, which was largely offset by increased risk retirement on the LPD program following the delivery of LPD 28. At Newport News, revenues of 1.4 billion decreased by 17 million, or 1.2 percent from the same period last year due to lower aircraft carrier and naval nuclear support service revenues largely offset by higher submarine revenue. Newport News operating income of $81 million and margin of 5.8 percent were down from last year primarily due to lower risk retirement on the BCS program, partially offset by higher risk retirement on CBN 78. At Mission Technologies, revenues of $590 million increased 331 million compared to the first quarter of 2021, primarily driven by the acquisition of line in the third quarter of 2021, partially offset by the divestiture of oil and gas business and the contribution of the San Diego shipyard to a joint venture in the first quarter of 2021. Mission technologies operating income of 9 million compared to an operating income of 7 million in the first quarter of 2021. First quarter 2022 results included approximately $24 million of amortization of Alliant-related purchase intangible assets. Mission Technologies evened a margin in the first quarter with 7.3%. Turning to slide 7, we are reaffirming our 2022 sales, margin, and free cash flow expectations and have slightly revised our pension expectations. During the quarter, we reached a labor agreement with the United Steelworkers at Newport News Shipbuilding. The contract includes increases in pension benefits triggering a pension remeasurement, which also takes into account discount rate changes and asset returns through late February. Regarding our near-term outlook, our first quarter results were positively impacted by a very high-quality delivery for LPD-28, which allowed us to retire a significant amount of risk for that ship in the first quarter, as reflected in the Ingalls operating margins. The remaining shipbuilding milestones we expect to achieve in 2022 are back and weighted. Given that backdrop, we expect the second quarter shipbuilding revenue to be relatively flat sequentially and shipbuilding operating margins to be approximately 7%. Regarding mission technologies, we expect results will ramp through the year with second quarter sales up approximately 5% sequentially and operating margin in line with our full year guidance of approximately 2.5%. Regarding our longer-term targets, we remain confident in our free cash flow of $3.2 billion from 2020 through 2024. This outlook does assume the continued expensing of research and development costs for tax purposes. As a reminder, we believe the impact to 2022 free cash flow would be approximately $100 million if the current R&D amortization treatment remains in place. On slide 8, we provided a walk from our 2022 to 2024 free cash flow outlook. This is consistent with the chart we began providing last quarter. Additionally, we are reaffirming our capital allocation priorities, which include significant deleveraging in the near term, along with continued modest dividend growth and balanced share repurchases. We will continue to evaluate M&A, but see no significant capability gaps today. In closing, we are pleased with the operational milestones achieved in the first quarter, along with the financial results. Notwithstanding the challenges of the current environment, we remain enthusiastic regarding our long-term outlook. With nearly $50 billion in backlog, strong budgetary and customer support for our shipbuilding programs, and a mission technology business that we believe is poised for very strong growth, we are laser-focused on consistent execution and generating sustainable long-term value. Now I'll turn the call back over to Christy for Q&A.

Thanks, Tom. As a reminder to everyone on the call, please limit yourself to one initial question and one follow-up so we can get as many people through the queue as possible. Operator, I will turn it over to you to manage the Q&A.

Thank you very much. If you would like to ask a question, reminder, press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our first question goes from Robert Stallard from Vertical Research. Your line is now open, Robert. Please go ahead with your questions.

Thanks so much. Good morning.

Good morning, Rob. Good morning.

Chris, I'll start off with you, a bigger picture question. On the FY22 request, it looks like the Navy is changing its plan for amphibious vessels, at least proposing to do this. How do you think this could play out, and what's potentially the risk to HII? And then secondly, a more numbers question perhaps for Tom. You mentioned on slide eight the potential for margin growth in mission. I was wondering what the sort of better long-term margin could be for this division because 2.5% is pretty low compared to other companies in the industry. Thank you.

Yeah, okay, Rob. I'll start with the budget, the 23 budget request, and then Tom can talk about emission technologies margins. One thing we should always remember with the budgetary process is this is the first step of the process. Uh, so we'll work through that, uh, uh, throughout the year. Um, all our major ship building pro, uh, programs were supported. Uh, the one, uh, line we do have to work on, uh, is the amphib line as, as you identified. Uh, we need to get, uh, LPD 32 under contracts. We need to get LHA nine, uh, under contract. Then we need to work on LPD 33, uh, and ensure that we support the Marines and the Navy and the Congress really. in analyzing that program going forward. So you're right, we do need to work on the Anfield line, but I'm positive as we work through this process that we'll get to a solution that makes a lot of sense. From a long-term, big-picture perspective, I think that the budget really does support our long-term growth rate, and I'm comfortable with the 3%.

Sure, Robin, and then I'll pick up the question on MTC. from a margin perspective, at 1.5%. So we guided 1%, so it's higher than the guidance. That's coming off 2.7% Roth last year, or 2.7% last year for Q1, and 2.9% for a quarter ago in Q4. I would tell you that because of the purchase intangibles, both with MT, about $30 million, and Alliance specifically for 24, that return on sales metric is not probably a good indicator. lead indicator as far as where we want to land. That's why we kind of give you the EBITDA perspective from 8% to 8.5%. The quarter here was 7.3%, not unexpected because we've got to do, you know, from a Roth perspective only at 1%. I would say with the CRA award sales, light and obviously the margin will follow the sales. So we're comfortable with where we stand and from our perspective and where we could go. You know, we've told you for the year it's 8% to 8.5% from an EBITDA perspective. as a percent of revenue. And, you know, from now going through 2024, we've highlighted that it's more appropriate to think about 8% to 10% as a range of where MT can land. All right?

That's fair. Yeah, that's great. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Rob.

Our next question comes from Pete Stavinsky from Amrik Global. Pete, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Chris, also a question on the fit-up. One thing that's always a little bit harder to tell timing-wise is just shipbuilding maintenance trends. Can you give us a sense of, if you look at the fit-up, should maintenance be a tailwind for you guys or start to flatten out? I was just wondering what your thoughts were.

Yeah, I think it's pretty flat. They're coming through the submarine maintenance schedule and how they're going to proceed with LA-class and Virginia-class submarines from a maintenance standpoint. But we think it's pretty flat from our perspective. A lot's going to go into how they execute the SIOP, but we think it's pretty flat.

Okay, okay. And then one last question kind of off the beaten path. There was an export notification back in December for emails and advanced arresting gear to France. and both you guys and General Atomics were cited. Is that any kind of a meaningful or real revenue opportunity for you guys? And just curious about the timing as well on that.

Yeah, not for us, no. Remember, we don't, you know, GA provides those systems, so not for us, no.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Seth Simon from J.P. Morgan. Seth, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, thanks very much, and good morning, everyone. Good morning. I think you mentioned on the last call you mentioned, Chris, that you guys had a lot of confidence in the hiring, your ability to hire this year. And you started off this call focusing especially on the tight labor market. So maybe if you could just give a little bit of color on, you know, how things are tracking there, any metrics we can think about, kind of, you know, what you need to do and then kind of, you know, where the risk would be in the financial plan if, you know, to the extent that the hiring situation gets tougher.

Sure, Seth. Thanks. You know, January and February were tough. Omicron really impacted our attendance But in March, attendance recovered, and we're back to attendance levels that we're used to seeing within both of our shipyards. We've hired over 1,000 people through the end of March. We need to hire over 5,000, so we're a bit behind, but we're really focused on our relationships with our apprentice schools, our high schools, community colleges, and we expect that to ramp over the summer months as graduations happen. it's definitely a watch item. Uh, we need to, uh, we need to hire, we need to train and we need to be productive. So, uh, still comfortable with our, our guidance, uh, but labor's a watch item for us as we move through the year.

Right. And, and just to follow up, is it more about, I mean, I would think, you know, people come in in the summer, there's, you know, there's probably only so much contribution they can make in, in, in a couple of months. And so, you know, is this, you know, is this really more about kind of, uh, setting up for 23. And then to the extent you have an idea of how you're set up for 23, that would affect the risk tolerance that you have in your estimates of completion.

Yeah, when they come out of the apprentice school, they're ready to go. And if they can come out of the community colleges and the high schools where we have programs in place where they're learning, they're going to fill a critical role within the shipyard. Now, they're not going to be first class shipbuilders right away but they're going to be earning they're going to be making progress and executing it's all incumbent on our shipbuilding teams to make sure they're trained up and they've got the right mentorship and we do that very well so yeah they're not going to be first class shipbuilders coming out of the gate but we expect them to contribute okay thanks very much sure

Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Harnard from Bernstein. Doug, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. I'd like to just spend a little bit of time on Virginia class. I mean, it was identified as a margin headwind in this quarter and in Newport News. If I go back to when you had the issues back in 2020, and it was the Montana, the New Jersey, the Massachusetts, those, I mean, the Montanas delivered, New Jersey flowed off. And one of the big issues then was this question of lots of new people in a complex environment needing to train them. And so some of the issues you had then were attributed to that. If you look at the situation of Virginia class today, Where does it stand? Because it seems that you might run into some of these similar issues as you try and bring a lot of new people in. So how are you looking at the Virginia class performance right now?

Yeah, Doug, it's a good question, and I appreciate it. Remember the issues we had previously, and we were in the heart of COVID, right? And we had significant outs and significant labor issues within Newport News, which drove which drove a lot of that. But what we're seeing now is it's interesting. We talk about serial production a lot, but the VCS program is really a production line. And when you miss schedule, there's a knock-on effect. So as you know, we missed a couple schedules at the end of the year that drifted into Q1. We've accomplished those. And it's really had an impact on the future shifts and And so we've had to deal with that in the quarter, reassessed our risk and you see the results in Q1. That being said, there is some stability in that workforce now. The attendance has recovered. We're a bit short of our hiring plans, but it's not like what happened during COVID. The team is very focused on meeting their interim milestones, working their operating system very diligently. I got a lot of confidence that there's actually some upside. as we move through the next couple years on the VCS program.

So if you look at going forward, you're finishing the Massachusetts, your own boats in Arkansas, and then you'll go into Block 5. How should we think about performance and margin trajectory as you move through those, as well as the work that you're doing for the electric boat, the modules for electric boat? How is this risk retirement likely to move in your thinking?

Yeah, so we've assessed the REACs and the risk on not only Block 4 but Block 5 boats and reset the EACs based upon how we project them to perform over the life of both of those blocks. So we don't necessarily give margin guidance at a program level. But I do see after resetting that risk on Block 5 going forward, there's potential for upside if we're able to meet our milestones.

Okay. Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Thanks, Doug.

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Miles Walton from UBS. Miles, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your questions.

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to ask about carriers for a second, and in particular the 79 and the 73. So on the 79, I think the progress, the completion metric you guys provide in the press release every quarter, it really hasn't moved in the last several quarters. And I know one of the adjustments was for the single-phase delivery, but I don't think that would have played out here in the first quarter. So any reason why there wasn't progress there? And then just a comment on the 73 and if the slip to 2023 made any difference for your financials. Thanks.

So I'll take the 73 one on the back end of that. So right now, we're still bringing that ship home and trying to target for a year-end completion. Through the EAC process, we are evaluating some risks to schedule on that. That was incorporated into the Q1 EACs here.

Yeah, 79 miles. We're absolutely making progress on that ship. We're heavily into the volume part of that ship, completing compartments. If you walk through the base on that ship right now, you see a lot of insulation and paint, which is a good place to be when you think about an aircraft carrier attacking that volume and then starting the test program. I don't know specifically about the math around the progress. Christy will fill you in on that after the call. But they're very dedicated and making progress really on a weekly basis on the aircraft carrier.

So no movement to the expected delivery on that vessel?

No, absolutely not. Okay, thanks.

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Guatnam Khanna from Cohen. Guatnam, your line is now open. Please ask your question.

Hey, thanks, guys. I was wondering if you could refresh us on how your contracts adjust for higher input costs, so whether it be steel, what have you. Everything, like you mentioned at the outset, is moving up in price. How do you recover those? What does that do to margins? Is it just a pass-through where it actually dampens margins? Just if you could walk through the mechanics there. Thanks.

Sure. It's time here. Good morning. So from an inflation perspective, and I'll break that down. I know your question is focused just on the existing contracts and how that hits off. I'll hit that. But also, we're watching inflation as it applies to our new bids. So it's like a two-part answer here. But from the mechanics that we have on how that hits, as we spoke about this at other earnings calls, it really starts with our understanding of what we're buying and how we contract for with these contracts being anywhere from 48 years long. long lead contracts up front with an understanding of the material and the bill of materials. We have a very disciplined and dedicated process to make sure that we have live quotes and bids and we go hand in glove making sure the quotes have the procurement side and ourselves locked into the contract value from a starting standpoint. So while we have clear understanding of what we're buying and at the onset of these contracts, we have a good bid from our suppliers. We do run in from time to time as we move forward where the contracts awarded things are purchased after that and or there's a pop-up commodity buys and we do see increases from time to time on raw materials and commodities. I will tell you that when we're in a long lead phase of a contract, it operates almost like a cost type contract and we're rolling those axles into the construction, the eventuality of the construction awarded that bid, so that's helpful. Another piece of that is when you look at, you'll see in the queue, we kind of break out across the three divisions. the percentage of cost type versus fixed price contracts. But from an HII, from an entirety perspective, it's about 52-48 fixed price and cost. So there's recruitment there in the contract type. Mission Technologies is over 90% cost type, and Nucut News is 50-50, so that helps there. Several of our contracts do have EPA clauses, which kind of recognizes things that we don't put on contract immediately, and we have that risk covered with our bids. There's an estimated cost from bids that we receive at the time of reward, and then the actual cost that we pay can get adjusted depending on inflationary indices of the industry. So that helps us out on that side as well. Even our fixed flexibly priced contracts, there's a shell on that, so we work ourselves through that as well. So I think the tool set that we have on how we manage our existing contracts as well as the change management process when we take on new orders to make sure that we maintain the equity of those contracts, keeps us in a relatively safe space. The last one I'd add to you, too, is a large majority of the cost of our existing contract is on the labor side, and we come through our union agreements a four-year down at Ingalls and a five-year at Newport News. So we understand those costs, and there's a schedule of increases, and we use that when we – put things on contract. I think overall it's a well-founded process on how we handle it, and it plays well against these inflationary times. On the new bids, I'll tell you that we are seeing on new bids price increases along the lead times, and we're seeing higher costs year over year, but we ensure that we follow that same dedicated process of getting live quotes. Our customer sets are understanding of that. I mean, they're seeing inflationary pressures across the industry, and we bring that cost and pricing data for evaluation and make sure that we strike a reasonable risk balance here for inflation against the new awards.

And just the mechanics, if you wouldn't mind, on, you know, if, in fact, you have an EPA and you've got to make the adjustment, is that just an increase in revenue and cost and, therefore, a document to report a profit margin? Yes.

So with all that as the backdrop, the mechanics of that, obviously, we go through our discipline, quarterly EAC process. I mean, we're getting costs weekly, a monthly program review, and then obviously our quarterly EAC process. So we can see how the material is trending, both against the existing orders that we have and material requirements and any pop-up requirements. We'll evaluate that, whether the EAC is improving or degrading and or the associated risks that where we're going to be retired for the quarter and the rest of the remaining scope on those contracts. That will get incorporated into the EAC. If there is an increase, obviously, there will be an increase in cost. We'll run that through our profit tables, and it will revise the booking rate accordingly. So all that gets factored in by ship by ship across the program, and then it kind of rolls up into our adjustments that you see here. I guess, portfolio.

Yeah, I'd also add that if there is EPA protection, it's an increase in sales without the resultant impact on margins. So that does provide us additional protection, and that's in our EAC process as well, every quarter.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Alan.

Our next question comes from Robert Springarn from Mellis Research. Robert, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your questions. Thank you. Good morning.

Chris, a couple of questions, sort of higher level. A lot of talk about upside-to-defense spending from Europe, and while the export opportunity probably isn't great for the shipbuilding side, what kind of products and services from MT do you think will interest European countries?

Yeah, that's a really good question. We think about it a lot. Unmanned, we've sold internationally about 30% of our unmanned sales have historically been international to NATO countries in nature. And then you think about ISR surveillance, big data platforms, cyber, intel, all of that as part of mission technologies gets some traction internationally. So we work on that. We're very tactical in how we do that. We make sure the opportunity is valid. But all those are opportunities in Europe, and actually any NATO country, actually.

Okay, and then on the domestic side, the Navy leadership's been talking about priorities as follows. Top priorities, Columbia class, then readiness, modernization, and lethality improvements, and then third, capacity. So knowing that the commitment to Columbia is rock solid and capacity is really a function of the budgets, future budgets, how do we think about HII's access to the middle part, the readiness and the modernization part? And then again, how does that tie into MT?

Yeah, so interesting. Readiness and modernization. MT has very interesting tools related to big data and data analytics that absolutely support that. So it definitely helps provide tools and access for our customer to improve their readiness. So I actually thank you for that question. It's a very interesting thing we're working on with our customer. It's all upside, right? But it'll just give our customer additional capabilities. So thanks for that.

Chris, do you see any timing or any visibility on when these things start to come through?

No, I think unmanned can happen very quickly. The award of small is very important. Provides us additional opportunity to sell that internationally. The other stuff, we'll just have to see. But I don't see a short-term opportunity. sort of upside related to it.

Got it. Thank you.

Sure.

Our next question comes from David Stratus from Barclays. David, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

Thanks. Good morning. Good morning, Dave. Hi. Hey, Chris. I think it was on the last call you talked about discussions with the Navy in terms of additional investment in the shipyards and how that was potentially going to be split and what it meant potentially for the expected CapEx drawdown. Can you just update us on where things stand there?

Yeah, we're still working on it. I think you saw on the 23 budget additional funding allocated to capital in support of infrastructure and the supply base. We're in discussions with the Navy on that now, and we'll just continue to discuss that with them in order to make the investments to support that critical program. Okay.

Tom, on the working capital side, I think net working capital, the percent of sales that you guys calculated was around 10% this quarter. I think that's the highest we've seen in a while, even kind of adjusting for typical seasonality. Can you just talk about the working capital trend through the course of this year and, again, kind of what you're baking into that free cash flow forecast for 23 and 24 from a working capital perspective?

Thanks. Sure, David. Yeah, so it was 10%. And that's just up front, just the timing on the working capital that we have. It's both the timing on the receipts for the accounts receivable and the collections, the payments for the accounts payable. We anticipated that it would be high on the front end here right now. A little bit of a draw as we talked about these milestones kind of have just stretched a little bit on the VCS program. And as we work through the back half of the year, I see that coming down. We will see finish the 2020 year out higher than we were in 2021, but then it starts to come back and break our way into 2023.

Okay, and what are you targeting for my networking capital as a percent of sales, you know, in 23 and 24 specifically?

We don't give guidance specifically on that. We tell you that a normal range of our expectations is, you know, 6 to 8 percent. This 10 percent is a little bit higher on that range, but not unexpected for how we saw the quarter playing out and then the impacts that we've discussed here. I would tell you that we'd get back more into that range, and we get into 23. Twenty-three is a help on cash, and then for 24, it's about neutral. We've talked about more ship milestones and deliveries in the out years, and that helps to facilitate that working capital coming down from 10% and be more to that 6% to 8% range.

All right. Thanks very much.

Thank you very much, and our next question comes from George Sharpeau from Sharpeau Research. George, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

Yes, Tom, I was wondering if you could just provide what the net EACs were in the quarter by division.

Sure, yeah. The net EACs, George, were $45 million, and the split of that was 90% angles and 10% admission technologies.

Say that again. I missed the last comment.

It was 107 favorable, 62 unfavorable for a net of 45.

Okay. And then you had said that the LPD 28 was a major help in the quarter. Is that a singled out number in the queue or no?

You'll see that for a $17 million favorable team adjustment, yeah, and both of the clean DD250 or delivery that we had in Q1. We usually, you know, after those deliveries, the following quarter, we'll do a hot wash of the remaining work, and there's sometimes some profitability that will happen in the next quarter, so that's been pulled into this quarter, too. That kind of factored in into my opening remarks of a 7% shipbuilding expectation in Q2 as we pull that margin into the Q1 timeframe.

And then if the second quarter is 7%, it would imply that the third and the fourth quarters got an average at least as good as the first quarter, if not a little better. So if you had this one-time major benefit in the first quarter, what are the benefits you get in the Q3 or Q4 to get that margin better than 8.3% to have the year at 8 to 8.1%?

Right, so we have several milestones on the back half of the year as we continue through the construction process on the LPD program. There's milestones that we have on those shifts. And as we bring people back on board, sales will rise with a margin perspective, and there's some efficiency that gains on that. So we still feel comfortable with the 8 to 8, 8.1%. We kind of highlighted at the beginning on the February call that it would be wide up front, and both the sales and the margin will come out on the back half of the year.

Okay. Thanks very much.

Thank you very much. I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd now like to hand the call back over to Mr. Kastner for any closing remarks.

Thank you again for joining us on today's call. Your interest in HII is appreciated. We welcome your continued engagement and feedback. We'll see you out there.