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Conference Call Operator
Operator
And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Lockheed Martin fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star then zero. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Greg Gardner, vice president of investor relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Thanks, Greg and good morning, everyone. I hope you've all had a great start to the new year and that this call finds you and your families safe and healthy. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2020 earnings call as we review our results, strategic new business activities, key accomplishments and our outlook for 2021. Before I begin, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the loss of Michelle Evans. Our aeronautics business area leader who passed away earlier this month. Michelle dedicated 34 years of service to our company and touched the lives of countless people, both inside and outside the corporation. I knew Michelle for years and I can say that she lived a life of strength and grace. And while we mourn her loss, we also are thankful to have had her as part of our Lockheed Martin family. We'll all miss Michelle. As we look back to the year from a broader perspective, 2020 introduced personal and professional challenges to each and every one of us. I'll begin my summary of Lockheed Martin's results today by thanking the men and women of our company and their families for stepping up to deliver outstanding performance during the extremely difficult time. It was through their dedication and commitment that we were able to drive operational and financial results which not only exceeded many of our expectations, but also set records in several areas. The coronavirus outbreak remains an ongoing pandemic and we're continuing to take actions to mitigate its impacts. Vaccines are also becoming available to help combat this disease and we're hopeful for a return to a more normal business environment as we progress throughout the year. Our dedicated workforce and our resilient supply chain continue to perform with excellence during these demanding times, supporting our global customers and their important missions and I'm very proud of their accomplishments. Moving to our results, we delivered another year of outstanding performance in 2020, strategically, operationally and financially. Ken will discuss our financial results in more detail and provide our full year 2021 financial outlook, but I'd like to provide a few highlights from the past year. A period in which we set high watermarks in sales, earnings and cash from operations. First, sales and segment profit each grew 9% over 2019 and our 2020 earnings per share increased by 11%. We had a strong year of cash grant generation achieving $8.2 billion of cash from operations even after a $1 billion voluntary pension contribution and after accelerating payments to our supply chain to help mitigate COVID impacts. We are continuing this practice, prioritizing our vulnerable and small business partners. We recorded over $68 billion in orders in 2020, growing our backlog by $3 billion, resulting in a robust $147 billion year end total backlog. These results reflect the high level of execution being achieved across the company, providing critical security and deterrent solutions for our customers. As we look to 2021, our broad portfolio has us positioned for continued growth in all four of our business areas. We expect our cash generation to remain strong and we plan to continue our balanced cash deployment actions, investing in innovative technologies and strategic opportunities to provide our customers with enhanced capabilities and still returning cash to shareholders. Turning to defense budgets, the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act has been passed into legislation and the Department of Defense appropriations were approved as part of the FY21 Omnibus Funding Bill. Both of these congressional actions adhere to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which established spending levels for discretionary defense budgets with a total fiscal year 2021 national defense spending target of approximately $740 billion. Also, Congress passed a $900 billion COVID relief package, which extended section 3610 of the CARES Act to March 31st, providing federal agencies the authority to reimburse contractors who are temporarily unable to work due to facility closures or other restrictions. Lockheed Martin programs were well supported in the FY21 Appropriations Bill, with Congress adding funding of over $1.7 billion for 17 additional F-35 aircraft and other development and integration activities for the program. Adding nearly $900 million for nine additional C-130Js plus support work for that airplane. And over $400 million for Sikorsky programs, including additional CH-53K and Black Hawk helicopters. And also the initiation of an 8th Thad battery for the U.S. Army. Turning to our portfolio, I'd like to touch on several notable achievements, demonstrating our focus on strategic growth and operational performance. As we announced last month, we have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne, an action that once finalized, will bring long-term strategic value to our entire portfolio. As we commented then, our 21st century warfare strategy includes enabling growth areas such as hypersonics, tactical and integrated air and missile defense, and space systems domains. Aerojet's expertise in propulsion systems will benefit our existing hypersonic programs as they progress from development to production. And it'll improve our tactical missiles and air and missile defense products while continuing Aerojet Rocketdyne's legacy as a merchant supplier to the entire industry. We believe this combination will deliver innovations and improve efficiencies that will offer more timely and affordable solutions for all of our customers, including the Defense Department, the domestic manufacturers, and our international partners. And we're very excited about this transaction. Moving to the business areas, in aeronautics our F-35 team finished the year strong, delivering a total of 120 F-35 aircraft. Our aeroproduction organization, our partners, teammates, and the supply chain all worked to overcome manufacturing issues introduced by this pandemic. We've now delivered over 600 airplanes since the program's inception with nearly 360 jets still in backlog, and domestic as well as international opportunities ahead of us. Over two thirds of the jets in the plan of record are still to be ordered. So the aircraft continues to perform well, it's operating from 26 bases and ships around the globe, and the Royal Australian Air Force recently declared initial operating capability in December, the seventh country to do so since the program began. Also in our aeronautics business, the US Air Force awarded a $900 million contract for us to provide sustainment and support services for F-16 aircraft, including maintenance and modification activities. Of course, the F-16 is one of our longest running production programs, and we will look to optimize the Air Force's F-16 fleet for greater capability, readiness, and performance via this new sustainment contract. Moving to our space business area, we recently won a $4.9 billion award for our next generation Overhead Persistent Infrared, or OPIR, contract. This award funds the production of three geosynchronous satellites and ground systems to provide initial warning of ballistic or tactical missile launches anywhere in the world. These new space vehicles will have more powerful sensors and greater resiliency to enhance our nation's air and missile defense capabilities well into the 21st century. Keeping with our space organization, we're pleased to be selected for one of the awards to develop a prototype payload for the new Evolved Strategic Satellite Communication System. ESS is designed to be the successor to the Advanced Extremely High Frequency Constellation of Satellites, one of our signature programs that provide secure and survivable strategic communications for national leaders and tactical commanders alike. This is our OPIR satellites. The ESS constellation is intended to provide improved resiliency, survivability, and increased capabilities. We look forward to participating in this opportunity as we work to enrich our platforms with more mission systems content, which is another key facet of our 21st century warfare strategy. I'll close with our rotary and mission systems and missiles and fire control business areas, which recently led Lockheed Martin's participation in an exercise Valiant Shield 2020. This is a biannual joint effort for the US Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Our combined team used a virtualized Aegis weapon system to conduct a pioneering joint multi-domain long fires demonstration. By delivering machine to machine interfaces across joint force systems, this effort accelerated speed of decision making and then to action. It demonstrated a primary premise of our 21st century war fighting strategy by networking separate sensors, communication links, and weapons across multiple platforms. The result is more effective joint all domain operations that provides enhanced capabilities and greater effectiveness to the commander in a field of operations. These achievements highlight our strategy to help address emerging threats with 21st century capabilities, to invest in new and innovative technologies, and leverage our signature programs to provide powerful deterrents to future military conflicts. That's our mission, and with that, I'll turn the call over to Ken. Thanks, Jim,
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
and good morning, everyone. As I highlight our key financial accomplishments, please follow along with the web charts that we've included with our earnings release today. So let's begin with chart three and an overview of results for the year. Sales, segment operating profit, cash from operations, and earnings per share from continuing operations close with record annual highs. We generated $8.2 billion of cash from operations after a $1 billion discretionary contribution to our pension trust this quarter. And we continued our cash deployment actions, returning $3.9 billion of cash to our shareholders for a combination of dividends and share repurchases while continuing to invest in the strategic growth of the business, including acquiring I-3 and record investments in IRAD and capital expenditures. We also entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Aerojet-Rocodyne in the fourth quarter with the close expected in the second half of 2021. I will note that our 2021 outlook excludes all results associated with this transaction. While backlog declined approximately $3 billion in the quarter due primarily to the timing of the F-35 lot 15 production order, 2020 represented the sixth consecutive annual increase in year-end backlog for the corporation. In summary, it was an outstanding year for the business and Lockheed Martin is well positioned for continued success in 2021. Turning to chart four, we compare our sales and segment operating profit this year with last year's results. Sales grew 9% in 2020 compared with last year to $65.4 billion, continuing the strong performance over the first three quarters, while segment operating profit also increased 9% over last year to nearly $7.2 billion. On chart five, we compare sales by business area with last year's results. As Jim mentioned, all four of our business areas experienced strong sales growth in 2020, led by aeronautics and missiles and fire control at 11%. Aeronautics growth was driven by development and sustainment increases on F-35 and F-16, as well as growth in advanced development programs. Missiles and fire control's growth was primarily from production volume and tactical strike missiles and air and missile defense lines of business. I will note that all four of our business areas achieved record highs for sales in 2020. Chart six shows our earnings per share for 2020. Our EPS from continuing operations of $24.50 was up $2.55, or 12% higher than our results from last year, driven primarily by increased volume and sustained performance. On chart seven, we'll discuss our backlog. Driven by annual increases at three of our four business areas, we maintained a book to bill ratio above one for the full year of 2020. This continued backlog growth, combined with further visibility of our 2021 orders, provides additional confidence in our increased sales outlook for 2021. On chart eight, we'll discuss the cash return to our shareholders in 2020. Subtracting our capital expenditures from approximately $8.2 billion of cash from operations, our free cash flow is greater than $6.4 billion, nearly a 6% increase over to 2019. This growth was achieved despite accelerating more payments to our supply chain than we received from the favorable DOD initiated progress payment increases and the deferral of payroll taxes under the CARES Act. We increased our dividend by more than 8% and executed our planned share repurchases for the year with $1.1 billion in total shares retired. This brought our total cash return to shareholders to $3.9 billion for the year, or 60% of free cash flow providing a solid returns to the shareholders in 2020. Moving on to chart nine, we provide our outlook for the year ahead. Our outlook for sales ranges from $67.1 billion to $68.5 billion. The midpoint of this range represents nearly a 4% increase over 2020 and improving from our October estimate, even after incorporating the impact of the UK MOD's decision to in-source contract support for the atomic weapons establishment. The $700 million sales reduction for this change is reflected in our outlook for the space business. Were it not for this decision, our estimated sales increase would have been approximately 5%, which is greater than the estimated 3% sales growth we discussed in the last earnings call. We have incorporated the known COVID impacts into our 2021 financial outlook. We will continue to work with our US government customers to monitor COVID risk to our operations and the supply chain, and we will continue exploring potential paths to recovery of cost impacts where appropriate to minimize future impacts. The range for segment operating profit is estimated to be approximately $7.4 billion to $7.5 billion. Our estimated FASCAS tension adjustment is approximately $2.3 billion. Our estimated range for 2021 earnings per share grows to between $26 to $26.30. The midpoint of this range represents approximately an 8% increase over 2020 results. Cash from operations is now projected to meet or exceed $8.3 billion, and I will discuss this in greater detail on the following chart. Our chart 10, we will walk through our future cash expectations, folding in the $1 billion discretionary pension payment we made last quarter. Strong operational performance drove a reduction in working capital, which allowed us to increase our cash outlook for 2021 to greater than or equal to $8.3 billion. We now see approximately $8.7 billion of cash flow from operations in 2022, increasing our three-year cash generation estimate by $900 million over our prior assessment. And as we sit here now, we see 2023 cash from operations of approximately $9 billion. I should note, this outlook and trends are prior to an estimated R&D tax deduction impact from the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act change that would impact 2022 cash by approximately $2.1 billion and lower 2023 cash by approximately $1.8 billion. On chart 11, we break down our sales and segment operating profit outlook by business area. All four business areas are positioned for continued sales growth in 2021, approximately 4% for the corporation, led by Aeronautics at 5%. Segment operating profit growth is also projected to grow at approximately 4% in the aggregate, with our largest growth in Aeronautics at 6%. And finally, on chart 12, we have our summary. We believe 2020 was an exceptional year for Lockheed Martin during these challenging times. Our team diligently worked to minimize the impacts of the pandemic to our business and our supply chain. We have increased our estimates for 2021 for all key financial metrics. Our results in 2020 exceeded previous highs and have positioned us well for continued growth and value creation this upcoming year. We remain focused on cash generation and growth in 2021. We will continue to invest in discriminating technologies and strategic initiatives to deliver value to our customers while providing strong cash returns to stockholders. And with that, we're ready for your questions, Brad.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press one then zero on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the one then zero command. If using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question at this time, please press one then zero. And our first question today comes from the line of Ron Epstein with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thank
Ron Epstein
Analyst at Bank of America
you for the question. Jim, can you speak to your broader space strategy? And I appreciate your comments on Aerojet and your prepared remarks. But can you be more specific on how it creates value, particularly in the absence of maybe a broader strategy? Or is it actually part of a broader roll up strategy? I mean, are you guys thinking about doing more strategic actions in space? And how are you thinking about space for Lockheed Martin?
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Well, Ron, I came into this role with Lockheed Martin being the leader in national security space as it is. And the benefit of the position of the company is that we have a strong position in the, I'd say classic large bus military defense satellites and then intelligent community satellites. But we also have the ability to go down range into medium and low orbit as well as geosynchronous orbit. So the whole playing field in national defense space is open to Lockheed Martin. And what we're doing in the business is we're introducing these 21st century technologies and taking advantage of that space platform. And so you see us winning recently a low orbit transport layer contract, which is a pioneering initiative of the Department of Defense to start introducing 5G and other modern networking technologies into the space domain. We're part of that. And what we've been able to do is to connect our space assets already using some of those newer technologies and AI and also distributed compute into our aerospace, land and sea forces as well, the platforms that we deploy there. So we have a broad space strategy, which is to take 21st century networking, storage and compute technologies into our space domain as really a competitive advantage versus other defense contractors that don't have that asset available to them. The second part of your question is, well, how does Aerojet Rocketdyne create value in doing this? And it really goes hand in hand with our hypersonic strategy which is part of our 21st century war fighting initiative. I view Lockheed Martin's benefit or role in defense enterprise is adding velocity to it. The world is moving faster, both kinetically if you will, and in a networking and AI perspective as well. And we need to speed up. And just taking one dimension of that, hypersonic missiles and countering hypersonic missiles requires a much better, tighter integration of the propulsion system into the body of the missile. The heat generated by these hypersonic missiles is incredible and just managing that heat and thermal issue is one of the reasons we invested in I-3 as well. So we are selecting what we think are the most important defense platforms and connectivity capacities for the future of warfare. And we're investing in those. And Aerojet Rocketdyne is part and parcel of that investment strategy. Propulsion integration into hypersonic missile glide bodies is essential. The other benefit of us working in a more integrated fashion with Aerojet Rocketdyne is we'll be able to bring our broad engineering expertise, our capital and our operational experience into Aerojet Rocketdyne and bring the best of Lockheed Martin to the propulsion side of missiles in space. So there are incredible synergies here. I know Ken can speak to a little bit more on those later, both revenue and cost, but given my long answer, I'll stop there.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question for the line of Pete Skibitsky with Alembic Global. Please go ahead.
Pete Skibitsky
Analyst at Alembic Global
Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Jim, can you talk about kind of your updated midterm view of the DOD budget now that we have, obviously a new SECDF and administration, but maybe even more importantly, a change in control of the Senate? I'm just wondering what you're kind of seeing and hearing tealy wise in terms of the budget outlook.
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Sure, Pete, the administration has unveiled its actual plan or trajectory for defense budgets, but I take solace in a couple of things. One is that the national security and intelligence and international affairs team that President Biden is proposing or has brought on is experienced. They are professionals in that realm of many of them having decades of senior government experience dealing with these issues. And so you're gonna have, we believe, a lot of continuity in policy and also in focus on how important strong defense is for this country. So I think the proposed team is a plus. And unfortunately, frankly, the threat outside against potentially the United States is growing. It's accelerating too, by the way. And when we look at the national defense strategy, it reorients itself and reorients our defense enterprise towards great power competition. And it's something you cannot just sit still and watch go by because we will be overtaken because of the aggressiveness of our potential peers. So I'm taking solace in these trends as far as the defense budget goes, that you have professional experienced people leading it for the administration and that the threat environment is greater versus lesser. We feel that supports a stable defense budget going forward.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Joseph Denardi with Stifle, please go ahead.
Joseph Denardi
Analyst at Stifel
Oh, thanks, good morning. Can you talk a little bit about the R&D tax impact and I guess relative to the political backdrop, do you now see that playing out as more likely or is there still an outcome where that's less onerous? I mean, are you now planning differently than you were a few months ago in terms of the potential cashflow impact from that? Thank you.
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
You bet. So yeah, Joe, I have socialized with you guys as much as we could once we concluded our view of what the tax law, the interpretation of that was. And as I stated a few times now, it looks like it's about $2.1 billion in 2022, $1.8 billion in 2023 and it'll continue trending down. One of the reasons we are extremely focused on cash, you heard in my prepared comments, the amount of cash that we're generating in 22 and 23. I stated we took a pause for roughly the second half of last year before we started talking to the key constituents about that impact. It is still our belief that we think there's some likelihood it will either be repealed or altered so it doesn't include entire research expenses which would include our cost plus contracts, but would be just our research and our IRAT, our research and development costs, which would not be a material impact to the outlooks I gave you. We still think there's a good likelihood that's gonna happen, because if you think about it, in 2022 we have $2.1 billion less of cash. This is just Lockheed Martin. And as you know, Joe, this is not just Lockheed Martin and not just A&D, this is all of industry. So this is gonna hit pharma hard, it's gonna hit high tech hard. These are dollars that we're not gonna have the ability to plow back and invest into our portfolio and into our technologies. And I think that is a compelling story and I think at the end of the day, that's gonna rule the day. Now having said that, we are still generating large amounts of cash. In fact, as you know, we ended the year in excess of $3 billion cash on hand. Right now, assuming our dividend assumptions and our share repurchase assumptions for 2021, we're gonna end 2021 with over $5 billion of cash. That number's gonna continue to grow and frankly, that's a good opportunity for us to do the things Jim described from an investment standpoint and then to continue our robust cash deployment strategy that we have historically had with our shareholders.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Hunter K. with Wolf Research, please go ahead.
Mike Mongerion
Research Analyst at Hunter K. with Wolf Research
Hi, good morning, it's actually Mike Mongerion for Hunter. Hi Mike. Hi, so according to your filings from 2009 to 2017, square footage in your spaces that you leased or owned fell eight and a half million square feet or 15% while you were still growing revenue. So I know that you have an investment in Palmdale coming up but in the next budget down cycle flattening whenever it should come, facility consolidation, is that a lever you'd be willing to pull or able to pull again?
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, thanks for the question Mike, it's Ken. So I think this year or 2020, we're gonna end with roughly 72 million square feet and there's four pieces to that. One is the space we actually own and a large share of that is gonna be manufacturing space and that's about half of our real estate and then the other half is a combination of lease space, Gogo which is government owned, contractor operated much like our Fort Worth facility and then GoGo which is government owned, government operated which is AWE. And so there's a couple, just short term, there's a couple puts and takes. Assuming the UK government does take over the management of AWE, we lose about four and a half million square feet out of that 72 million squares. When we're successful with the Aerojet-Rocodyne acquisition I believe they have about three million square feet that we would add back. You mentioned Mike, the Palmdale building that we're building. We also have a little bit of real estate that we're expanding in space and in RMS and in missiles and fire control and that nets about a million square feet. So at the end of the day we're gonna be down about a half a million squares. But now the opportunity comes. Right now we have roughly half of our employees working remotely. Some of them are periodically coming in but we have over the last couple months have rolled out a plan. Frankly looking at Lockheed Martin Forward is what we call it and it's frankly the future of work. And we are gonna start looking at getting out of some of that lease space as our leases expire. You can expect us to reduce our footprint by at least a couple million square feet in the next couple years if not more. We'll go to more hoteling. We'll allow people that where it makes sense for them to work from home and we'll make sure this is a competitive and strategic advantage for us.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Christine Lee-Wogg from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Christine Lee-Wogg
Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Good morning guys.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
Morning Christine.
Christine Lee-Wogg
Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Jim, maybe I'm following on with the question on a new administration but in a slightly different way. How do you think about opportunities and challenges regarding foreign military sales? With a new administration do you see more headwind or more tailwind than before?
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Good morning Christine. As far as international business including foreign military sales, the tendency of the people in the Biden administration and the president's own statements reiterate his view that alliances are important, that they need to be cultivated and that they have real value and deterrence in national defense. And so I do think that we'll have a more open environment for FMS and direct commercial sales to our international partners. The other benefit, you've seen it recently in the press is that we have some fantastic and unmatched products that are in great demand and highly desired by many countries. So you've seen F-16 sales coming back. F-35 was a pivotal element of the Abraham Accords we believe and that system is so highly desired by our allies and the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere that it actually helped bring a modicum of peace to the Middle East. So between our products and the Biden administration's stated proclivity to enhance our alliances, I think we're in a better position going forward.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question for the line of Carter Copeland with Mellies Research, please go ahead.
Carter Copeland
Analyst at Mellies Research
Vlad and good morning gentlemen. Hey Carter. Figure Q4 is probably the best time to ask a question like this just to get some color on it, but classified has obviously been a big component of bookings and growth and your focus. I wondered if you might can give us some more color if you can around how much classified grew in 2020 or some more color on bookings growth or if you can't do that even relative growth versus the rest of the business, just any kind of sense you can give us on the sort of seed corn projects that will fill out the revenue outlook in the next three to five years and beyond.
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
You bet. Hey Carter, and unfortunately I do have to be a little cryptic and I apologize for that, but I'll try to give you color to the best of my abilities. We have seen our classified business from an order book standpoint and from a sales standpoint growing faster than the corporation. If you go around the horn, I've mentioned in the past, we won a strategic program in Palmdale where we're starting to see the benefits of multiple customers starting to want that system. In fact, we're also in a conversation with an international partner of the United States of their interest in that system. And back to Mike's question, that's the reason for the capital growth out in Palmdale. There is some other things going on out there that unfortunately we can't talk about that I think will reap the benefits of. Some of them are hypersonics, some of them are other platforms. At Missiles and Fire Control, we've talked about the large development program that we won. It is progressing well. It's gonna continue to grow in the future, probably as fast if not faster than the rest of Missiles and Fire Control. And then probably the other big place to talk is space. We won a couple rather large strategic programs in 2020. We're also pursuing a few in 2021. And also from a sales standpoint, as I mentioned for across the corporation, growing faster than top line than our business in the aggregate is. From a margin standpoint, margins in aeronautics for Palmdale, the classified work right now is dilutive just by the nature of the contract types. Same with Missiles and Fire Control. These programs are gonna be dilutive, growing faster than the rest of the portfolio, but from a margin standpoint, gonna be dilutive. The good news also is, but from a contract type standpoint, they're not an impact to working capital. So there'll be reasonably good cash flow. In the space business, some of these programs are fixed price, but most of them are gonna be cost plus as well. So just slightly dilutive to the overall portfolio. But again, I apologize. That's about as much as I could say about the portfolio.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Robert Stallard with Vertical Research. Please go ahead.
Robert Stallard
Analyst at Vertical Research
Thanks so much, good morning.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
Good morning,
Robert Stallard
Analyst at Vertical Research
Robert. Jim, a question for you. Given the recent share price performance and the valuation on the stock and of course the very low interest rates here, do you think it's the best use of the balance sheet to continue to pile up more cash? And perhaps you should be more aggressive on the share buyback here.
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Well, we're balanced in our cash application and always have been as a company and it's my legacy back at my prior company as well. And there are many competing parts, right? So we have an opportunity set and a desire to grow. And we're pursuing that growth strategy while caring for cash deployment to shareholders. So again, to be a little cryptic, we've got all the keys on the piano at our disposal and we're gonna work our way through some decisions and opportunities here in the near future. But yeah, I may accolade of the notion that when share prices blow intrinsic value that you aggressively to the extent that you can buy it back based on regulatory and other matters that go on. And so, and opportunities that may be being looked at or not. And so we'll work our way through all of those issues, but I can assure you that if we're in the clear and intrinsic value is greater than the share price, you'll see Ken and I diving back in the market.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Sheila Krialu with Jeffreys, please go ahead.
Sheila Krialu
Analyst at Jeffreys
Hi, good morning, Jim and Ken. Good morning Sheila. Just given three to 4% EBIT growth this year versus nine in 2020, how do you think about some of those drivers as it relates to your 9 billion OCF target in 2023? Is it sort of steady as she goes in terms of your earnings outlook? And then I guess the age old question of is there an opportunity where earnings growth exceeds revenue growth going forward given decelerating budget environment?
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
Hey Sheila, hi, good morning. I hope you're doing well, you and your family. Thank
Sheila Krialu
Analyst at Jeffreys
you very much.
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
So yeah, you know, we see, if you look at our cash and as you noted, we see 8.3 cash remops in 2187 before the tax impact due to R&D of in 22 and then 9 billion in 23. We see, right now, we see margins pretty steady at 11%. So most of that is, I've talked to Wall Street about our focus on cash. What we've called it is a culture of cash where generally over the last couple years, it's not just frankly a balance sheet issue is not the finance community just to solve, it's the entire corporation where say production operations understands the consequences of making or missing deliveries and how that impacts cash. So we see more opportunities going forward, managing the balance sheet, specifically contract assets and inventory and ensuring that if they're going to grow, they're growing at the most efficient way possible. And then also, as Jim mentioned, we see opportunities, I'm not gonna talk about specifically FMS but probably more direct government sales where there's an opportunity for us to get cash advances. To answer your second part of your question, we do see some opportunity though to be better than 11% and that's specifically our programs that will start to mature. Take F-16, we're generally in the beginning of the production cycle again. We're gonna deliver eight airplanes in 2022 and then we'll get up to significant double digit deliveries in 23 and beyond. There is an opportunity for us to have margin improvement there. F-35, everybody wants to talk about F-35, we do still think there's opportunities there from a margin standpoint with production. We've talked to you about the PBL concept, to the performance-based logistics concept that we've had that we do think there's some margin opportunity there for industry, assuming we perform, assuming we hit the critical service level agreements that we want. Hypersonics, we'll soon get out of development and hopefully go into limited rate production and production that will help us. All the helicopter programs that we've talked about, you'll start to see CH-53K moving out of development into production. Presidential helicopter, of course, is moving into production. You have combat search and rescue that'll move into production. Those are just a couple examples, Sheila, I think that'll give us an opportunity to enhance our margin over time.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Doug Harned with Bernstein, please go ahead.
Doug Harned
Analyst at Bernstein
Thank you, good morning. Morning. Jim, earlier you said that a goal would be to enrich your platforms with mission systems content. And I have to say, this to me sounded like something I could have heard back in the Vance Kauffman, Norm Augustine days, something that didn't really work out well because of DOJ concerns, DOD concerns. So now with the, in trying to do that, and then also, you talked about the advantages you could get from the Aerojet Rocketdyne acquisition, and then Raytheon with the acquisition of Blue Canyon, that's, they make buses that do work for you guys, for L3 Harris, for Northrop Grumman. I mean, are we seeing, do you think we're seeing a different structure to this industry going forward with much more vertical integration? Can you comment on this from a, from sort of a philosophical standpoint?
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Sure, Doug, I mean, if you go all the way back to the primary notion that we're back into a world of great power competition, it's important to look, I think, beyond our own defense industrial-based structure, but outward to those of the competitors, which are China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, for example, and compare our capabilities in the, if I'm in government, comparing our defense industrial-based capabilities to those of the peer group. How does China operate its defense industrial base? How does it organize it, and what are the capabilities and velocity, again, that comes from that? And from that perspective, my view would be that vertical integration concerns from a classic antitrust perspective are dwarfed by the lack of velocity and inability to integrate an added cost, frankly, that comes from the existing defense industrial-based structure that's stratified with a supply chain that's quite fragmented. I think it's better for the country and for the defense enterprise to enable industry to make logical proposals for bringing in the mission systems, if you will, the supply chain that goes into the major platforms into a more integrated organization. So I think that's the philosophical basis. On the other hand, we cannot predict the decisions of individual regulators and those coming into office, but I do think that it's critical that those decisions look through the lens of great power competition and how we compare to the defense industrial base, certainly, of China.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Noah Poppenack with Goldman Sachs, please go ahead.
Noah Poppenack
Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
Morning, Noah.
Noah Poppenack
Analyst at Goldman Sachs
How much revenue is your hypersonics franchise generating in the 2021 outlook? And then how much revenue could your hypersonics franchise be generating closer to the middle of the decade?
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
Okay, Noah, I'll take that. You do like these long ball answers, so I'll do the best of my abilities on the second part. But if you look at our high-tech, our hypersonics portfolio through 2020, our total order book was north of $3 billion. We generated about a billion two in hypersonics sales in 2020, and think of that as mostly development and cost plus programs. And actually, we had a couple risk retirements at the end of the year, so our programs are performing. For 2021, Noah, the best of our abilities, right now we see hypersonics sales being about a billion five and still dilutive margins just based on contract type and the type of work that's being done. You know, we're going to have a handful of these programs will have first launch continued demonstration of capabilities. This year and next year, and then as I've stated in the past, you'll start seeing some of these programs neck down as you saw last year where we had one program terminated, but we actually saw the funding start to go to some of our other platforms. So, you know, for us, really not a harm, and it intuitively made sense. So by the middle of the decade, it's conceivable that that number could be closer to $3 billion. You'll start to see some of these limited rate production programs happening. Some of these programs will actually start going into full-scale production. So it's conceivable that our sales will more than double by the middle of this decade. And also the contract type will start changing, and they'll either be fixed-price incentive or fixed-price contracts.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question from the line of Richard Safran with Seaport Global. Please go ahead.
Richard Safran
Analyst at Seaport Global
Jim, Ken, Greg, good morning. Thank you, Rich. So I wanted to ask you about the international. You know, we've known the Trump administration went to extensive measures to promote U.S. defense exports. I'm just wondering, you know, maybe you could dovetail up to the comments you were made, you know, coming from your government affairs people about the new administration. Do you see any changes with how the new administration is looking at exports? Do you think there's going to be continued growth there? And do you think this could be a benefit to the international sales of air defense equipment?
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Richard, it's Jim. And again, it's too soon to tell what individual policymakers are going to do since they haven't been named or confirmed in large part yet. But if you go back to the first principles of the administration based on candidate Biden and now President Biden's campaign, jobs and economic recovery are incredibly important to him and to his administration. And there are no better source of jobs than international military sales for this country and in large part because these tend to be engineering, STEM, high salary, and manufacturing jobs also, high wage, reliable, dependable jobs with companies that have strong benefits, et cetera. So if jobs and the economy are important, the promotion of international defense sales, one would surmise, would also be important. So from that perspective, I expect that we're going to get strong support, let alone from, as I mentioned earlier, the interest and desire to have increased collaboration and cooperation with our allies. And as an ex-pilot myself, I can tell you that there's no better way to get a tighter bond with an ally than sell them fighter aircraft because all the way back in the mid-'80s when I was in Then when I was at Pratt & Whitney, we built an F-100 engine overhaul and repair shop in Saudi Arabia that further cemented our collaboration with that country. It's just two tiny examples. And then you've got, again, the training collaboration, you've got industrial collaboration, you're doing exercises together, you're using the same cockpit avionics, just goes on and on how you can increase your alliance stickiness, if you will, with major defense sales. So I think on those two dimensions at least, we would expect some positive momentum.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question for the line of Miles Walton with UBS. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good
Miles Walton
Analyst at UBS
morning. Just a quick one on space. It looked like there was some implied margin erosion or compression sequentially into 2021, but I would have thought that AWE would have helped that. Is there something else that moved around in the mix that you would point us to?
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Hey, Miles, it's Ken. Yeah, the big driver is if you look at United Launch Alliance due to the mix of launches, we're going to see less profit next year at ULA than we had in 2020, but you're right. Unfortunately, that more than offsets the ULA, I'm sorry, the AWE dilution.
Conference Call Operator
Operator
And we do have a question for the line of George Shapiro with the United Launch Alliance. And that's from George Shapiro research. Please go ahead.
George Shapiro
Analyst at United Launch Alliance
Yes. I wanted to go through some of the margins, Ken, in aeronautics. I mean, you had this increase in C-130 profits and it didn't look like revenues changed much. Otherwise you would have spelled it out. And then you had a reduction in the F-16 margin. And it looked like you had to have an increase in the production margin on the F-35 to get the big increases you had. So I just wondered if you could clarify that a little bit more.
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
Hey, George, I got a clarifying question for you. Are you talking about fourth quarter of 20 or you want to talk about 21?
George Shapiro
Analyst at United Launch Alliance
Talk about the full year 2020.
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
Oh, full year 2020. Well, it probably just makes sense then to talk about the fourth quarter because that's the most current information. So just in aggregate, I'll talk top line and bottom line for aeronautics. So we saw development top line increases. Generally they were mid-singled digit increases. And that was driven by follow-on modernization. I mean, we're still seeing a lot of success there, a lot of demand by our customers set for increased technology on the platform. Production was down in the quarter, year over year in the fourth quarter, George, and that was mid-single digits as well. That was probably more of a timing issue than anything else. To statement, we saw strong growth. And we're going to see strong growth into 2021. That will be the fastest growing piece of F-35 in 2021. We saw strong increases on F-16. You're starting to see production kick in and you also had strong sustainment. C-130 sales were up 3%. So think of that as low single digits. ADP, the Skunk Works, is strong double digit increases there as well. And I'll go to profit for you. So for the quarter, we were up 7%, roughly 10.8 margins versus 10.6. But F-35, to your point, was down. That was driven by production. So we had high single digit margins. I mean, it was almost 10%, but down a little bit versus last year, which were stronger double digit margins. And that was just, frankly, driven by less risk retirements in the fourth quarter of 2020 than 2019. Sustainment was up a little bit. F-16 margins for the quarter, George, were up. Both were double digit margins. But fourth quarter this year, we were almost 20% margins on F-16. That's because we had a risk retirement on an international sustainment program. C-130 margins were up in the fourth quarter as well. And that's because we had risk retirements on our FIOC-4 and our FIOC programs. And ADP was up. And most of that was volume. But we actually, good news, had some risk retirements there as well.
Greg Gardner
Vice President of Investor Relations
So hopefully
Ken [Last Name]
Chief Financial Officer
that helped give you some color.
Greg Gardner
Vice President of Investor Relations
Hey, Brad, it's Greg. Before I hand it off to Jim, I've been informed that some listeners might not have heard the forward-looking statement at the beginning. So let me just reiterate for a minute that statements made in today's call that are not historical facts are considered forward-looking statements and made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions. So please check our SEC filings for more discussion on the risks and historical facts. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jim for closing comments.
Jim [Last Name]
President and CEO
Okay, Greg, thanks. Look, our business performed exceptionally well in 2020 under extremely difficult circumstances. And again, I want to thank the men and women of Lockheed Martin for stepping up to that. We delivered outstanding program execution and operational performance for our customers and strong financial performance for you, the stockholders. So our robust backlog, our broad portfolio, and our long-term strategic focus have us well positioned for continued growth, we think. So we thank you again for joining us on the call today. And we look forward to speaking with you on our next earnings call in April. And that concludes our call today, Brad. Thank
Conference Call Operator
Operator
you. And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Conference and Service. You may now disconnect.
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