Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc.

2024 HII Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you need further assistance, press star 0 to reach an operator. 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 Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today on the call are Chris Kastner, our President and CEO, and Tom Seeley, Executive Vice President and CFO. 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, and good morning, everyone. The HII team remains focused on executing on our programs and meeting our commitments to our customers. In the second quarter, our Shipbuilding Division delivered two ships, and our Mission Technologies business achieved another quarter of strong performance. The alignment of our products and services to the United States National Security Strategy continues to provide strong visibility to our long-term revenue forecast. To start, I'd like to discuss our results. Second quarter revenue was $3 billion, up 6.8% from a year ago, and diluted earnings per share was $4.38 for the quarter, up from $3.27 in the second quarter of 2023. New contract awards during the quarter were $3.1 billion, which resulted in backlog of $48.5 billion at the end of the quarter, of which $27 billion is currently funded. At Mission Technologies, we had the seventh consecutive quarter of record revenue, with sales of $765 million. 19% over the second quarter of 2023. In addition to very strong revenue, Mission Technologies' trailing 12-month book-to-bill is 1.15, and its new business, Opportunity Pipeline, is over $83 billion. Mission Technologies continues to offer leading-edge technologies aligned with the capabilities our customers need, and its growth in a competitive sector confirms for us that our technology portfolio is ideal for today's market requirements. In shipbuilding, we remain focused on directing our resources toward meeting our delivery commitments to the Navy. Significant efforts continue in each of our shipyards to create labor stability, improve proficiency, and increase capacity, all aimed at meeting our throughput goals. The long-term investments we are making in capital and employee development, coupled with Navy industrial-based investments, will stabilize and improve performance as our portfolio shifts towards new contracts. And our ability to meet scheduled projections and performance goals will support achievement of our financial commitments to our shareholders. In the second quarter at Ingalls, we delivered LPD 29, Richard M. McCool Jr., and are looking forward to launching LPD 30, Harrisburg, later this year. Other milestones, including the launch of DDG 129, Jeremiah Denton, and the delivery of LHA 8, Bougainville, have been adjusted based on workforce availability, the most efficient utilization of shipyard facilities, and levels of system completion to support predictable downstream execution of future milestones. At Newport News in the second quarter, we delivered SSN 796 New Jersey and continued to make progress toward our remaining milestones that are planned for later this year. During the quarter, SSN 798 construction team experienced a minor disruption to Massachusetts test program due to some equipment replacement identified during testing. The disruption has been resolved, and the team is back into the test program, making steady progress. It does, however, shift delivery from late 2024 to early 2025. We are reaffirming our shipbuilding margin outlook for the year, and as we've discussed, we are already in negotiations and expect several significant contract awards by the end of this year, including Block 6 Virginia-class submarines, Build II Columbia-class submarines, and additional amphibious ships. Turning to activities in Washington, we continue to see bipartisan support for our programs reflected in the fiscal year 2025 defense appropriations and authorization bills as they progress through both chambers of Congress. We are pleased that the two authorization committees have shown strong support for shipbuilding, including support for additional advanced procurement funding authority for CVN-82, additional funding authority to support Virginia-class construction, and then multi-ship procurement of amphibious ships. The Senate authorizers also included additional funding authority for LPD Flight 2 and DDG 51 Flight 3 ships. The House Appropriations Bill continues to support our major shipbuilding programs and notably includes investment of $4 billion into the submarine industrial base. We await Senate appropriations positions, and the final outcomes will depend on eventual respective conference negotiations by the Appropriations and Authorization Committees. Now turning to labor, positive trends continue in talent acquisition as we have hired over 3,800 craft personnel year-to-date, which keeps us on track to achieve our full-year plan of approximately 6,000. In summary, I'm confident that the team's focus on the execution of the fundamentals in our programs positions us positively for the future and look forward to the second half of the year as we meet more milestones and deliver on our commitments to our customers and shareholders. And now I will turn the call over to Tom for some remarks on our financial results. Tom? Thanks, Chris, and good morning.