Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc.

one on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you need further assistance, please press star zero. And I would now like to hand the call over to Christy Thomas, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mrs. Thomas, you may begin.

Thank you, operator, and good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to the HII fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today on the call are our President and CEO, Chris Kastner, and Executive Vice President and CFO, Tom Steele. As a reminder, statements made today that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to be materially different from future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Please see our SEC filings for important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from expected results. Also in their remarks today, Chris and Tom will refer to certain non-GAAP measures. For reconciliations of these metrics to the comparable GAAP measures, please see the slides that accompany this webcast, which are available on our website's investor relations page at ir.hii.com. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our president and CEO, Chris Kastner. Chris?

Thanks, Christy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. 2023 was a strong year for HII. We continue to invest both in our shipyards and in IRAD to both expand capacity and develop new products and solutions for our customers. Our growth rate for the year of more than 7% and our free cash flow generation of almost 700 million demonstrate that we're entering a period of accelerated growth and increased free cash flow generation. In addition to record sales growth with 2023 revenues of 11.5 billion, fourth quarter revenue was especially strong across all three divisions with 13% year-over-year growth and a record 3.2 billion of revenue. In 2023, net earnings were $681 million, 18% higher than the prior year, and strong free cash flow of $692 million was 40% higher than 2022. We also had $12.5 billion of contract awards in 2023, resulting in backlog of $48 billion at year end. At Ingalls, we delivered DDG-125 Jack H. Lucas, the first Flight 3 ship, and NSC-10 Calhoun. Our DDG 51 team was also awarded the contracts for seven destroyers in the FY23 multi-year procurement competition. In our amphibious ship programs, we were awarded a $1.3 billion detailed design and construction contract for LPD 32 and launched LHA 8 Bougainville, the third big deck amphibious warship in the America class. Ingalls expects to complete sea trials and deliver LPD 29 Richard M. McCool Jr., in the first half of 2024. At Newport News, we re-delivered CBN 73 USS George Washington after completing her refueling and complex overhaul and continued to progress on the test program for CBN 79 John F. Kennedy. In the Virginia class program last year, we were awarded the long lead time material for two additional Block 5 boats and the first two boats of Block 6. We completed work on SSN 796 New Jersey and expect to deliver in the first half of 2024. And SSN 798 Massachusetts is nearing float off, which we anticipate in the first quarter of 2024. In addition to the 2024 milestones, we've included our 2025 milestone outlook, which reflects our continued focus on execution. Regarding our workforce, I'm pleased with the positive progress in hiring. We hired over 6,900 craft personnel in 2023 and continue to see progress early this year. For 2024, we have a hiring target of approximately 6,000 craft personnel. The competition for skilled labor in shipbuilding and the larger manufacturing sector continues to impact our shipyards and our supply base. With our Navy partner, we will continue to invest in our team to improve worker retention and proficiency. both within our shipyard and in the supply chain, to ensure we fulfill our contractual commitments and meet our financial objectives. At Mission Technologies, we delivered another outstanding quarter, performing ahead of plan across all business units, leading to strong revenue growth in 2023. In addition to the record revenue growth, Mission Technologies booked new and re-compete contract awards with nearly $6 billion in total contract value. Also, mission technologies ended the year with a robust business pipeline of $75 billion, which makes us optimistic about potential growth opportunities in 2024. Key growth drivers include support for mission readiness in artificial intelligence, cyber and electronic warfare, advanced modeling and simulation, LVC, and C5ISR. Turning to activities in Washington, D.C. for a moment, we are pleased with the passage and enactment of the Defense Authorization Bill for fiscal year 2024. The FY24 NDAA strongly supports our shipbuilding programs, including multi-year procurement authority for Virginia-class Block VI submarines and incremental funding authority for LPD 33. The Defense Authorization Act also includes necessary authorities to support the implementation of the AUKUS agreement. Looking ahead over the next five years, we expect revenue growth of more than 4% and cash generation of 3.6 billion. Our expectations are grounded on the assumption that we must deliver on our commitments to our customers. Also, while the trajectory may not be linear due to the timing of ship milestones and material timing, we expect that HII will be generating approximately $15 billion annually in revenue by the end of the decade. As always, fundamental to our expectations for the business is executing on our contracts and developing and providing solutions to our all domain customers. We take this responsibility very seriously and remain focused on executing our program commitments. So with that, I will turn the call over to Tom for some remarks on our financial results and guidance. Tom?