L3Harris Technologies, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to the L3 Harris Technologies third quarter calendar year 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Rajiv Lawani, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may now begin.

Thank you, Rob. Good morning and welcome to our third quarter 2022 earnings call. We published our investor letter after the market closed yesterday. Today's call will primarily be focused on answering your questions. Joining me for the call are Chris Cubasic, our CEO, and Michelle Turner, our CFO. A few words on forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Forward-looking statements involve risks, assumptions, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please see our investor letter and SEC filings. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in the investor relations section of our website, which is l3harris.com, where a replay of this call will also be available. Before going to questions, Chris will make some brief comments.

In the midst of quarterly results and financial outlooks, we can easily lose sight of the importance of the mission. Delivering the technology so our war fighters are never in a fair fight is imperative. Earlier this week, we lost a great American in pioneer and defense. Dr. Ash Carter fostered collaboration between Silicon Valley, the Defense Industrial Base, and the Pentagon. He successfully changed the way we combat terrorists, and he opened combat roles to women. Many of us at L3 Harris, including our board of directors, either knew or worked for Ash Carter. We all send our deepest condolences to his family and friends. Before jumping into questions, as we normally do, I'd like to make a few comments. By now, you have read our investor letter, and much like you've heard from our peers, it's clear that we're operating in a dynamic environment. Starting with the good news, my team's energy and excitement continues to build as our trusted disruptor strategy is yielding tangible results and is well aligned with the recently released national defense strategy. We've carved out a leadership position as a non-traditional prime with a record quarter of over $5 billion in funded orders and a book to bill of roughly 1.2. These were driven by notable prime position awards related to armed overwatch for SOCOM, responsive space with the SDA tracking tranche one, and network systems for the U.S. Navy. We also announced our first acquisition since the merger. We're acquiring ViaSat's tactical data link business and gaining access to the ubiquitous link 16 network. This product line fits nicely in our comms and networking-centric portfolio, enabling us to bring the DOD's JADC2 effort to life. Our momentum is building, and I'm optimistic about the value creating opportunities ahead. Conversely, on the not-so-good news, we right-sized our 2022 guidance based on current realities. We previously highlighted a steep ramp in the back half of the year, and while we're making progress, today's backdrop necessitates a more measured approach. Let's start with the top line. We grew for the first time in four quarters at 3%, though fell short of our mid single digit expectations. This is because of two primary factors. First, we were previously selected for a Mideast aircraft missionization program that included a profitable sale to a key customer. But the formal signing of the contract has now been pushed out as the shifting geopolitical landscape continues to hamper the timing of certain international awards. This would have supported two points of growth for the full year alongside profit and cash. Second, supply chain headwinds continue, and although improved, the recovery was not aligned with our expectations. As a reminder, with our commercial business model, 25% of our revenue is tied to end unit deliveries. We need 100% of the parts to assemble our products, such as a radio, in order to make deliveries and recognize revenue. Thus, we are taking a more prudent approach in the fourth quarter as the availability of mainly electronic components remains volatile. So our expectations is for a 2% decline in 2022 versus the roughly 1% growth we pointed to previously. We ultimately view these as deferrals versus lost sales. Next on segment margins, the approximately 16% in our previous guide is going to be closer to 15.5% and in the range of our year-to-date average. This is a result of net higher inflationary input costs offset by proactive cost actions focused on controlling what we can. As expected, the reduced revenue and margins are driving the guidance decline in EPS and free cash flow. On 2023, I know there's a lot of focus here. and will properly guide with year end results as we typically do in January. That being said, our expectation is for improving revenues and relatively steady margins while growing free cash flow and free cash flow per share year over year. This remains a work in process for the next couple months. So a tough but necessary financial update. We remain focused on executing our strategy of being a trusted disruptor and controlling the controllables in today's dynamic environment. With that, Rob, let's open up the line for questions.