8/7/2025

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Good afternoon and thank you for holding. Welcome to the Motorola Solutions Second Quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. The presentation material and additional financial tables are posted on the Motorola Solutions investor relations website. In addition, a webcast replay of this call will be available on our website within three hours after the conclusion of this call. The website address is .motorolasolutions.com forward slash investor. All participants have been placed in a listen only mode. You will have an opportunity to ask questions after today's presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star five on your telephone keypad to be placed in the queue. You may also press star five again to remove yourself from the queue. I would now like to introduce Mr. Tim Yocham, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Yocham, you may begin your conference.

speaker
Tim Yocham
Vice President of Investor Relations

Good afternoon. Welcome to our 2025 Second Quarter earnings call. With me today are Greg Brown, Chairman and CEO, Jason Winkler, Executive Vice President and CFO, Jack Malloy, Executive Vice President and COO, and Mahesh Saptarishi, Executive Vice President and CTO. Greg and Jason will review our results along with commentary and Jack and Mahesh will join for Q&A. We've posted an earnings presentation and news release at motorolasolutions.com slash investor. These materials include gap to non-gap reconciliations for your reference. During the call, we referenced non-gap financial results, including those in our outlook unless otherwise noted. A number of forward looking statements will be made during this presentation and during the Q&A portion of the call. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from these forward looking statements. Information about factors that could cause such differences can be found in today's earnings news release, in the comments made during this conference call, in the risk factor section of our 2024 annual report on form 10K or any quarterly report on form 10Q, and in our other reports and filings with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward looking statements. And with that, I will turn it over to Greg.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks Tim and good afternoon and thanks for joining us today. I'll begin with a few thoughts of the business before turning it over to Jason. First, Q2 was another outstanding quarter with record Q2 revenue and earnings per share that exceeded our guidance as we continue to see strong customer demand across all areas of the business. Revenue was up 5% in the quarter, highlighted by 15% growth in software and services. We also expanded operating margins by 80 basis points, which led to record Q2 operating earnings and strong operating cashflow growth, which was a record for the first half of this year. Second, investments in public safety and security continue to be a priority for our customers, highlighted by our record Q2 orders, up 27% versus last year, inclusive of 10% growth in products. We also ended the quarter with over 14.1 billion of backlog, including 10.7 billion of software and services backlog, which is our highest S&S backlog ever and up 1 billion versus last year. And finally, based on our strong Q2 results and our increased expectation for the remainder of the year, we're raising our full year guidance for sales, earnings per share and operating cashflow. Now I'll turn the call over to Jason, who will take us through results and outlook before I return for

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

some final thoughts. Thank you, Greg. Revenue for the quarter grew 5% and was above our guidance with growth in all pre-technologies. Foreign currency tailwinds during the quarter were $9 million, while acquisitions added 39 million. Gap operating earnings were 692 million or 25% of sales, up from .5% in the year ago quarter. Non-gap operating earnings were 818 million, up 8% from the year ago quarter and non-gap operating margin was .6% up 80 basis points, driven by higher sales and improved operating leverage. Gap earnings per share was $3.04, up from $2.60 in the year ago quarter. Non-gap EPS was $3.57, up 10% from $3.24 last year, driven by higher sales and operating margins, as well as a lower diluted share count in the current year. OpEx and Q2 was 615 million, up 22 million versus last year, primarily due to acquisitions. Turning to cashflow, Q2 operating cashflow was 272 million, up 92 million versus last year and free cashflow was 224 million, up 112 million. The increase in year over year cashflow was primarily driven by higher earnings and improved working capital. And for the first half of the year, operating cashflow was a record, 783 million, up 39%, versus the first half of 2024. For the full year, we're raising our operating cashflow expectations to 2.75 billion, up 15% from last year and is inclusive of $75 million of transaction fees related to the Silvis acquisition, as well as incremental interest to financing the deal. Capital allocation for Q2 included $218 million in share repurchases at an average price below $415 a share, $182 million in cash dividends and $48 million of CapEx. And subsequent to the quarter end, we closed the Silvis acquisition for 4.4 billion of upfront consideration, which was primarily funded through 2 billion of long-term notes that we issued in Q2 and 1.5 billion of new term loans drawn subsequent to quarter end. The remaining consideration of 900 million was settled through a combination of cash on hand and issuance of commercial paper. Moving to our segment results in products and SI, sales of 1.7 billion was flat compared to the year prior while operating earnings of 442 million or .7% of sales was comparable, inclusive of additional tariff costs and continued investments in video during the current year offset by lower material costs. Some notable Q2 wins and achievements in this segment include an $82 million P25 system upgrade for Tri County systems in the St. Louis region, a $30 million P25 device order for the city of Miami, Florida, a $22 million P25 system upgrade for the state of Michigan, a $15 million fixed video order for a US federal customer and an $11 million P25 device order for the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. In software and services, revenue was up 15% compared to last year, driven by strong growth across all three technologies. Revenue from acquisitions was $39 million in the quarter. Operating earnings in the segment were 376 million or .8% of sales up from .3% last year driven by higher sales and improved operating leverage partially offset by acquisitions. The notable Q2 highlights in SNS include a $44 million command center order for a US state and local customer, a $29 million P25 system upgrade and LMR services order for the city of Chicago, a $12 million LMR cybersecurity order for the state of Victoria, Australia, an $11 million services order for the state of New Mexico and finally a $9 million LMR services order for a US federal customer. Looking next at our regional results, North America Q2 revenue was $2 billion up 6% on growth in all three technologies. International Q2 revenue was 738 million up 4% versus last year driven by growth in LMR. Moving to backlog, ending backlog for Q2 was 14.1 billion up $150 million versus last year and up $19 million sequentially driven by strong demand including record Q2 orders which were up double digits in both of our segments. In the products and SI segment ending backlog decreased 902 million versus last year and 172 million sequentially due to continued strong LMR shipments. In software and services backlog increased $1 billion compared to last year and 191 million sequentially driven by strong demand for multi-year contracts across all three technologies and the impact of foreign currency partially offset by revenue recognition for the UK Home Office. Turning next to our outlook, we expect Q3 sales growth of approximately 7% with non-GAF EPS between $3.82 and $3.87 per share. This assumes a weighted average diluted share count of approximately 169 million shares and an effective tax rate of approximately 24%. For the full year, we now expect revenue of approximately 11.65 billion or .7% growth up approximately 250 million from our prior guidance of .5% growth and expect non-GAF EPS between $14.88 and $14.98 per share up from our prior guidance of $14.64 to $14.74. This full year outlook assumes an effective tax rate of approximately 23%, which is unchanged and now assumes a weighted average diluted share count of approximately 169 million shares. Before I turn the call back to Greg, I'd like to share a few thoughts regarding the Silvis transaction. First, when we announced the transaction in May, we shared the strong financial profile of Silvis with expectations of 475 million of full year 25 revenue at approximately 45% adjusted EBITDA margin. Our full year outlook assumes 185 million of revenue contribution from Silvis this year, representing the stub period following the transaction closed yesterday. It also assumes that Silvis will be slightly diluted for EPS and Q3 and neutral for 2025. Second, as it relates to our three technologies, we are expanding our LMR technology category to include Silvis under the new name of Mission Critical Networks or MCN. With the inclusion of Silvis, this year we expect MCN to grow mid single digits. And from a segment perspective, the majority of the business will be reported under products and systems integration. And finally, our balance sheet remains strong. Following the acquisition of Silvis and the financing plan I described earlier, and all three rating agencies have affirmed our triple B level ratings. We maintain a balanced maturity profile with approximately eight years of duration and an average coupon of just under .6% on our senior notes. Strong growth in our earnings power cash generation has significantly expanded our leverage capacity, which we expect to continue to grow with Silvis, providing us flexibility to deliver on our capital allocation framework, which includes share repurchases as well as additional acquisition. With that, I'd like to turn the call back to Greg.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Jason. First, I'm very pleased with our Q2 results, which highlight the durability of our business and the strength of our portfolio. We continue to invest both organically and inorganically in solutions that are continuing to provide us with sustainable long-term growth. Some recent examples include our announcement of SCX, which is a first of its kind video remote P25 speaker mic that converts secure voice, video and AI and eliminates the need for a separate body worn camera. We started shipping SCX just a few weeks ago and the customer feedback has been strong. Since the launch, we've received orders from over 30 agencies with the majority coming from customers that do not currently use a Motorola body camera, highlighting the opportunity we have to capture future market share in the US public safety body worn camera space. In drones and unmanned systems, we've made several investments this year that allow us to capitalize on this fast growing space. With our acquisition of Silvis, we're now a leader in mobile ad hoc networks, which provides the high speed infrastructure list communications backbone for unmanned systems in the air, on the ground and in the water that have become increasingly important in today's defense environment, as well as border security and public safety. In drone as a first responder, our strategic alliance with Brink provides us with an American made purpose built public safety drone that allows customers to reduce emergency response times and deliver critical supplies to those in need. And in drone detection, our alliance with SkySafe integrates their advanced solutions into our command center software and allows customers to detect, identify, track and analyze drone activity. And finally, we've introduced our next generation Astro P25 LMR infrastructure, featuring our D series base stations and access consoles, which bring many benefits, including increased capacity, improved energy efficiency and greater interoperability through leveraging complimentary technologies such as low earth orbit satellites. We received several large orders this quarter, including from the St. Louis Tri counties and the state of Michigan, and we're building a strong pipeline of large multi-year network refresh opportunities with expanded scope and software and services that we expect to convert to orders over the next several years. Second, I'm very encouraged by our differentiated approach to AI. We began utilizing AI when we entered the fixed video space several years ago to solve complex video security problems with AI enabled cameras and video management software. And it continues to be an important driver of growth in video software, which actually grew 25% in Q2 and has grown over 20% annually over the last five years. Our investments in AI have continued to expand. And just a few months ago, we announced our public safety AI platform assist, which is built around the objective of helping everybody involved in the incident workflow. From 911 call takers to frontline responders make better decisions and save precious time. This comprehensive approach allows us to do things no one else is doing in key areas such as AI assisted report writing, where our AI solution leverage a holistic view of the incident, including the 911 call, dispatch and responder voice communications, as well as body worn video recording. When implementing AI, we're also making sure that we continue to build trust, both with our customers and the communities they serve, which is reflected in our recent launch of AI labels in industry first. These labels provide transparency as to what, how and where AI is used in customer workflows, which is a critical step in the path to product trust and adoption and further differentiates us from our competitors in this area. And finally, I'm very excited about the Silvis acquisition, which is the culmination of discussions that lasted more than a year. When allocating capital for acquisitions, we remain committed to a very disciplined approach, prioritizing long-term value creation for our shareholders. With Silvis, we're acquiring a technology leader in a rapidly growing industry that's seen impressive customer adoption and has a very strong financial profile. Their business compliments our leadership in LMR and video and provides us with opportunities to leverage our strong customer relationships. Additionally, I'm particularly excited about the exceptional engineering and technical talent that the Silvis team brings us, and I look forward to working closely with them to drive meaningful revenue and earnings growth for years to come. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Tim and open it up to questions.

speaker
Tim Yocham
Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, Greg. Before we begin taking questions, I'd like to remind callers to limit themselves to one question and one follow-up to accommodate as many participants as possible. Operator, would you please remind our callers online how to ask a question?

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The floor is now open for questions. If you have a question or comment, please press star five on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press star five once again. We do ask that while you pose your question, please pick up your handset to provide optimal sound quality. Thank you. The first question is from Joseph Cardosa with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

speaker
Joseph Cardosa
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for the question. Greg, maybe I just wanted to start off. Last quarter, you put out this mid-threes product, our mid-3 billion product backlog bogey out there for a year end, and which based on the two queue orders looks like you're well on track to. Maybe you can just take a moment and talk about like on a product level, where you're seeing this growth in the product orders across your portfolio. Obviously it sounds like the P25 devices are doing well. You mentioned a couple of deals on the base stations. I mean, as well as anything else that you can think of you think is really driving the momentum there. And then, as you kind of think about that bogey that you put out for year end, how are you feeling about momentum tracking towards that bogey and particularly any updates just given now that you have silver under the belt and it sounds like that's gonna be levered towards product size. And thank you and then I have a followup.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So Joe, in regards to the zip code of mid-threes in product backlog, which I mentioned last quarter, if anything, I feel as good, I actually feel better about that. And just to be clear, that color did not include anything associated with Silbus. So I still feel very good about the mid-threes even better than I did in May. And you're right, coming out of Q2 with 27% record orders, 10% of that in product, I feel really good about that. I think the strong Q2 orders was driven on the product side by LMR device refresh, by LMR infrastructure and the Astro NEXT V-Series and Apex consoles. I mentioned we've also had strong fixed video orders and one of the largest fed orders we've ever had in regards to Silent Sentinel. So it was multi-product. And on software and services, we had one of our largest command center orders ever at 44 million. So it was across the board, really good strength coming out of Q2, which further supplements even more confidence in quote unquote, the mid-threes are slightly better.

speaker
Joseph Cardosa
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

No, I appreciate the thoughts there, sounds wonderful. You know, and maybe as my second question, it's more of a big picture question, like obviously it's been like a little bit more than a month since we've had the beautiful bill get passed. There's various programs in Europe that are aiming funds towards areas that look right for Motorola, particularly now with service under the covers here. You know, so just maybe one curious, as you look across these opportunities, where are you feeling most excited about? And then in both the US as well as internationally, and if there's any difference between like the opportunities between the two areas. And then two, how do you think investors should think about the timing around these opportunities materializing for Motorola? And then, I mean, just to kind of hit it on the nose, are you seeing any of these opportunities trickling into your orders today?

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Trickling into what? Orders. Okay, so let's start with Silvis. I mean, look, we love Silvis, we spent a lot of time on it as a team. You know, I've heard from some people that said, you know, this thing actually looks too good to be true. And we spent a lot of time on it, and we love the fact that it's a market leader. We love the fact that it was the tip of the spear and has been tested from an efficacy and a performance and a scale standpoint in Ukraine. You know, we expect Silvis to grow about 20% in 2026. It's EPS neutral for the stub period this year, and we expect it to be at least 20%, sorry, 20 cents, accretive in 2026. And I love the fact that, look, Silvis powers a number of defense and military drone platforms, including Andorol and Aerovironment, and it's certified with over 100 leading manufacturers. When I think about the revenue contribution, particularly around Ukraine and Silvis, you mentioned Europe and international, we expect the revenue from Ukraine as it relates to Silvis revenue expectations this year to be less than 15% of overall revenues, and we expect Ukraine revenue for Silvis next year to be even less than that. So I like the fact that it's driven by a wide space of US defense ex-Ukraine and unmanned systems, and I think there'll be a lot of attention and interest in European allies to invest in technologies that I think Silvis will be front and center as an opportunity. As it relates to the One Big Beautiful Bill, and maybe Jack, you might wanna talk about that a little bit? Sure, Joe, I think the first thing I'd address is, think of the One Big Beautiful Bill, it's funding over the next four years. So it's a four-year horizon, and it's good news for Motorola. From a DOD standpoint, they've increased funding $150 billion, which would have been good before, but it's even better now that we've acquired Silvis, and as Greg just articulated, their defense, border, and unmanned systems trajectory. Also, there's money in there, another $70 billion for customs and border, two customers, a big customer of ours, as well as ICE, another $75 billion. A lot of that funding is being directed at refreshing technology, both video, secure communications, and services as well. The last thing I'd say, which probably has been underappreciated, is for our enterprise customers. Think of our PCR channel, the accelerated depreciation of CapEx provides them an opportunity to go talk to manufacturing, healthcare customers, and the like, and go talk about refreshing their network and some of the tax benefits that they have. So we're excited about the One Big Beautiful Bill. I would add the final piece of it is the timing of it, given it was signed on July 4th, and that there's a 90-day window. We're expecting some of that funding to actually kick in in early Q4 this year, and that's in flight nerd guide.

speaker
Joseph Cardosa
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Yep, got it. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Jack. Appreciate all the comments.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from the line of Andrew Spagnola with UBS. Your line is now open.

speaker
Andrew Spagnola
Analyst, UBS

Thank you. I wanna follow up on the question on syllabus. The question I've gotten mostly is, people are trying to understand why syllabus, and it's interesting, it reminds me a little bit about a vigilante, because when you made that acquisition, it wasn't clear why you wanted to be in video, and it obviously became a much bigger part of public safety. So are you thinking about syllabus that way? Do you see this technology becoming something much bigger to public safety, and it's gonna be incorporated into your LMR technology longer term? Or is this a new avenue that you're going down, and we're gonna see you investing more in defense tech and acquiring more and creating a new business line? How should we think about it?

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Andrew, I think about it as, first, I love the fact that it's a market leader, and it's a market leader that gives us exposure to a market we don't participate in today. Unmanned systems in the air, in the water, on the ground. So it's new. Having said that, it's video and data-centric. So it's all about ad hoc, high-speed infrastructure list, mobile and data and video communications. We see it in defense. We see it on border security. Obviously, to your point, we see it in mission-critical deployments, primarily on the battlefield, and adjacencies where there's intense conflict. But having said that, we also see it as complementary. Complementary to LMR and complementary to video. We lead in land mobile radio infrastructure and devices. This gives us an opportunity to lead in infrastructure-less ad hoc mesh networks. Given both Silvis and our heritage in LMR have a radio frequency or RF centricity, I like the fact that I think there's a one plus one equals three proposition in terms of expansion to new markets. This is a great, great product. I think one of the limiting factors of their growth is their ability to reach outside the United States and capitalize on a global footprint where like in Motorola Solutions, Malloy has people in dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. So I think in the federal business, internationally, it's a new market, but I also think of it as complementary as well to LMR and video. And maybe you wanna talk, Mahesh, a little bit about the thinking, not just in what they do today, but some of the possibilities

speaker
Mahesh Saptarishi
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

going forward. So besides really offering highly resilient communication, the other element of Silvis is spectrum monitoring. And it's probably very important to talk about in the context of drones, being able to detect drones in this case. So as part of our overall drone strategy, the ability to detect drones, not just with radar, which is the most common way of detecting drones today, but also through RF, I think we believe really enhance us and positions us very uniquely in that space. The other very important element of Silvis is that, and Greg mentioned this, it's data, it's data-oriented communication. And it allows for any IP device to be attached to it, including cameras. So we believe that there's an opportunity there with cameras as well that's coming in the future. So the only thing I'd

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

add, and as we discussed, Greg, is that similar to Motorola Solutions, our LMR business, as well as our video security business, there's an opportunity to add recurring revenues by way of service providing, just given the nature of the customer base as well. I agree.

speaker
Andrew Spagnola
Analyst, UBS

Perfect. Thank you very much.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Andrew.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from the line of Keith Husom with North Coast Research. Your line is now open.

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Good afternoon, guys. Hey, question for you on, maybe a little bit off the wall here, but the base station that you guys are introducing here. I remember perhaps the last time you actually introduced a new base station here. And is there a pent-up demand here that could perhaps be a little bit more of a growth driver than some of us are thinking here?

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so you're right, Keith. It's been, I think I'm gonna, you're jogging my memory here, but I think it has been, it was probably about, it was about 12 years ago that we last had our base station. But the D series, which we're talking about, does a few things. Number one, better capacity, provides better coverage, but also it leverages less capacity. So think of it as a green base station, less energy consumption, which a lot of our customers have been asking for. It also adds a layer of redundancy with low worth orbit capability to extend in certain places. But we're really pleased. And I think, as Greg said, we've got a few big wins out of the gate. We had wins in the state of Ohio. We had wins with the state of Michigan, who's one of the largest LMR customers. And the way to think about it is, we've got a significant footprint of statewide, county-wide, city-wide networks that all need now to be refreshed. It'll be a multi-year phenomenon in terms of that growth. The other thing to think about is this continues to build, this continues to extend our capabilities and need for us to deliver more services for our customers, meaning cybersecurity services, which are up substantially for us this year, as well as new software monetization services for the new DSUR station. The last piece of it, we're really pleased, is the access, which gives us a new dispatch console through these investments we've made. And an example of that is the city of Chicago, really proud. Our hometown, we went and displaced a competitor and had a significant pickup and a command center win by way of access console. So again, great opportunity for us. I think it's multi-year horizon, but also lends itself to new service selling capabilities as well. And Keith,

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

most of our customers are on software agreements that keep them current and ready. What this opportunity presents is in a hardware refresh with a lot of attributes, and to Jack's point, comes with yet another opportunity to sell them additional software and services around that new hardware. So we view it as benefiting us long-term for sure. Great, appreciate it. And if I could just ask one final question on the backlog, obviously there's a lot of focus on that recently, but how do we look at the backlog, the makeup of that? Is it similar to the disaggregation of revenue you guys have in the presentation here, or is there a different mix we should be thinking about within that backlog? Well, most of the backlog within S&S, services and software, comes from LMR. So I'd say the power hitter in our backlog contribution, particularly for SMS, is LMR because of the nature of our long-term contracts and the services and software business that we've built over the years. That would be one indicator. And then the size of LMR includes, even in products, it's our largest business. So I think those two things give you some insights around the makeup of backlog. And to Greg's point earlier, as we began the year, we expected quick turn to accelerate, and it's done that with our record Q2 orders and 10% growth in products. And we expect that growth to continue into the second half. That's long been a part of our outlook, and our outlook's improved.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Helpful, thank you. Thanks, Keith.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from the line of Tim Long with Barclays, your line is now open.

speaker
Tim Long
Analyst, Barclays

Thank you. Two quick ones, if I can. Greg, you talked about SCX and some of their early momentum, understanding it's only been out a month or so. Could you guys talk a little bit about what you think that will do from a revenue ramp perspective, as well as impacting maybe the upgrade cycle to APEC Next? Number one, and number two, if you can talk about the video business, still strong growth there, very much driven by the software side. The hardware piece of that still kind of flat to low single digit type of growth. I get there's a cloud impact, but maybe can you just touch a little bit on the product side there and what we could expect to see to potentially reaccelerate growth there? Thank you.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, just on the SCX, and Jack and Mahesh can jump in, but as I mentioned, first of all, I'd say the orders are outpacing our expectations. That's number one. Number two, I love it because we're not selling a product per se, we're selling an ecosystem, and that's just not hyperbole, but SCX is anchored and runs off of an APEX Next. We upgraded that device, we upgraded it to dual banded to include LTE, 4G or 5G, to get all the benefits of a dual banded radio, and you see us enhancing that, we're driving more applications and recurring revenue off of the APEX Next, and now we have the speaker mic, which is tied to every radio we sell virtually, and it displaces the need for a body camera. It's kind of like if you want an iPod, buy a body camera, but if you want a multi-dimensional full function device, you would just go with the SCX, and SCX is really an ingestion point that does a lot more than just body cam, which is why I referenced earlier, it's the tipping point that ingests more information on situational awareness, AI, around dispatch information around 911, audio logs around the radio P25 system, as well as the body cam video. So it does more than that, and I like the early traction, it'll take time. I also like the fact that we're right in the middle of going through FedRAMP certification process, so that continues to go well, and I'm optimistic about the timeline for that. Which will in turn open up more opportunities for us as well.

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Greg, the rest of the portfolio, as I think about internationally in the body worn cameras that we've been refreshing, we've made some pretty significant wins in Romania, Scotland, France, Bulgaria, and a number of agencies in the UK. So our international body worn camera business, which is not SCX, attached to Apex Next, which is more North America, continues to do

speaker
Mahesh Saptarishi
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

well also, I agree. And perhaps the last thing I'll say on SVX is, we believe we're creating a new category here. This is a body worn assistant versus a body worn camera. It's not just recording evidence, it is all about capabilities like translation. And SVX is a gateway into assist, so you can ask questions about either situational awareness questions, it's integrated to assist chat. So at the end of the day, we're creating a new category here, it's not just a body worn camera.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And I think, Tim, the last piece of it is just related to the fixed video business, really pleased with our Q2 performance. And I'd say, refresh portfolio largely with Alta, Alta leading the engine, meaning our cloud business driving that growth. And I think we continue to see incremental investments we make in our -to-market team, continue to expand our reach, not only here in the US and in Canada, but also overseas. We've made surgical investments in Europe and in Australia, and we're starting to see the benefits of those investments that we've made there as well.

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

And those investments continue to show up in higher software growth within video. While the category of video or the technology, we expect to grow 10 to 12%, the software portion of that continues to grow much faster.

speaker
Tim Long
Analyst, Barclays

Okay, thank you guys.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from the line of Metta Marshall with Morgan Stanley, your line is now open.

speaker
Metta Marshall
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great, a couple of smaller questions for me, just on, you guys have been talking about kind of this software transition, particularly on the video side of the business, is that any meaningful headwind to revenue growth at this point, clearly kind of helping the backlog transition? So just a question there, and then just second, kind of any update on Apex Next adoption rates, thanks.

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

On cloud adoption within video, as Jack mentioned, we continue to see the fastest growth within our cloud platform of Alta. Orders are greater than sales. Although we're able to manage through the deferred revenue transition, we haven't outlined a number this year as to what that is, because we're managing through it and still printing significant growth. So I'd say cloud is on path in video. And then the second question in terms of Apex Next adoption,

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Jack? Yeah, sure, so Apex Next, couple things. Q2, let's start there, double digit order growth with Apex Next, we just spoke about SPX, but it's important to note that the SPX is exclusive to the Apex Next family, which helps, which from the collaborative aspect there, benefits both SPX as well as Apex Next. The last thing that I would note that we talked about for is it's also driving our application service business. So for every Apex Next radio, and we've got greater 90% attachment rate, $300 a radio and application services per year. So we continue to see the benefit. I think SPX has also been a tailwind in terms of customers making that conversion and looking to move from Apex original to Apex Next.

speaker
Metta Marshall
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great, thank you.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Matt.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question is from the line of Amit Dharianani with Evercore ISI, your line is now open.

speaker
Amit Dharianani
Analyst, Evercore ISI

Thanks, and I just have two as well. Maybe to start with, operating margins are even better than our and street expectations. So can you just touch on, A, what the tariff headwinds were in the quarter for you folks, and then B, just what's the durability of the leverage that helped the operating margins here?

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, so gross margins were up on higher S&S sales and operating margins were up on both margins in S&S as well as leverage elsewhere. So an update on tariffs, we are estimating that this year's tariff impact will be about 80 million, down from the 100 million. That's in part due to mitigation, exercise, medications and other things that have changed. We began seeing the tariff impact in late Q2, most of that 80 million is in front of us in the second half. So the operating margin expansion that you saw didn't have a significant impact from tariffs. It was more core to the business on improved mix and S&S.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And Amit, we, a quarter ago, we said gross margins would be comparable for the year. We now expect gross margins to be up year on year. And to your point on operating margin expansion, we envision about 100 dips, 100 basis points expansion year over year.

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

And that improvement is coming not just from the addition of syllabus, but from also the core business. Both are helping gross margins and operating margins this year. Thanks, Amit.

speaker
Amit Dharianani
Analyst, Evercore ISI

Super helpful. And then maybe we can just shift gears a bit. Can you just talk about how do you think your position to address sort of this growing focus in the unmanned systems market as you go forward and how big do you think this can eventually become for you folks? I get syllabus gives you a really good presence there, but I just wanna understand like, on longer term, how big do you think this unmanned systems market can get? And then maybe somewhat specific, do you think syllabus enables you to participate in like some of the initiatives that the Pentagon has, like Replicator or the DIU autonomy pushes are making? Thank you.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, Amit, let me just talk about the TAM first. We see the TAM for unmanned at about $3 billion and growing, probably one of the fastest growing TAMs we have now with the addition of syllabus now in the portfolio. And we would expect that TAM not be surprised to double it in the next four years.

speaker
Mahesh Saptarishi
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

And maybe just focusing a bit on drones per se, if you think about our drone strategy right now, we have three elements to it. There's drone as a first responder. This is our strategic alliance with BRNC in North America. We also have a solution for international. Given the increased FAA waivers in 2025, we see that as a significant force and that strategic alliance with BRNC, I think is important. And we see our mission critical networks, syllabus in particular, also integrating with BRNC in that scenario. For communications, we just talked about it. I think syllabus is dominant in terms of being able to be the most resilient communication mechanisms, low probability of detection, low probability of intercept for drones, which I think is a key driver and that continues to grow. And finally, drone detection and forensics. We have a partnership with SkySafe and as I mentioned before with syllabus, we have the ability to detect drones leveraging their spectrum monitoring functionality as well. So across those three things for drones as a specific instance of unmanned systems, that is our strategy there.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Next question is from the line of Ben Bolin with Cleveland Research Company. Your line is now open.

speaker
Ben Bolin
Analyst, Cleveland Research Company

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking the question. The first one, I'm interested in your thoughts on what the syllabus sales motion looks like. Could

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

you

speaker
Ben Bolin
Analyst, Cleveland Research Company

maybe compare and contrast it to your existing sales motion? Any preliminary thoughts you have on getting your existing sales team up to speed and out there accelerating this and driving more attached? And then I have a follow-up.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure, so their sales motion, they've had, it's amazing the success that that team has had. When we first started a year ago, they had a relatively small sales team that was largely focused in the U.S. And some of the U.S. sales resources focused outside the continental United States would call on bases, et cetera, in Europe and other points abroad. It's a direct sales motion largely, given the size and the strategic level of the selling process. There's also an element of this that sells to, I think as Jason or Greg articulated, that sells to the primes and the integrators, the anderols, the air environments. We're gonna get, so that's where it was. Where is it gonna go? You heard Greg mention earlier, we're gonna put a pretty concerted effort to have local resources in allied countries around the world. Anywhere where we're seeing a dial up in military exercise, we're gonna quickly be putting salespeople over there. We've already invested in channel salespeople as well to get after new channels to sell the syllabus Mane software into those elements. And I think the last component of it is lobbying. They have had limited resources in lobbying. We have a government affairs arm in DC. We will be looking to address not only lobbying on the Hill for approves for DOD, but also lobbying into the different branches of government where I think we can articulate our story. It's U.S. made technology. It plays really well, I think, with where we wanna go. But yeah, so we're really excited. We've run this playbook before when we got into the video space. I think it's a different playbook, a different end market, but it starts with just having a strategic idea of where we wanna go, where we wanna invest. And I think you'll quickly see that we're gonna be making moves in the next coming weeks and months ahead there.

speaker
Ben Bolin
Analyst, Cleveland Research Company

Okay, that's great. I guess the followup, probably more for you, Jack. I'm interested, a lot of the U.S. states closed their fiscal year in June. How do you think budgets are coming together into fiscal 26? Just any high-level thoughts on what you're hearing? I understand the orders have been exceptional. Just interested if you've got much visibility into incremental fiscal 26 budgets at this point. Thank you.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, sure. So I think as you articulated record Q2 orders, we've raised our annual guide, but we just took a look because we know we don't have a view to what the 26 states and local budgets look like. And the reality is we just had a, went through this in detail with our strategy team a couple of weeks back, the budgets look very good. So the budget situation remains very strong. The other piece of it that we always think about is we're a little different because we can tap nine or one funds. We get the benefit of the increase in property taxes, sales taxes, because the reality is, the selling environment is still good. And then we have income tax and incomes are relatively steady. So across the board, the situation looks good. And I think that really advises our confidence in the back half of 25 and beyond.

speaker
Ben Bolin
Analyst, Cleveland Research Company

Thank

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

you. Thanks,

speaker
Ben Bolin
Analyst, Cleveland Research Company

Ben.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Once again, if you have a question, you may press star five on your telephone keypad. The next question is from the line of Tomer Zilberman from Bank of America Securities. Your line is now open.

speaker
Tomer Zilberman
Analyst, Bank of America Securities

Hey guys, question for you on the core LMR business. If I think about the long-term of historical growth trajectory of this market, it's anywhere between one to 3%. You know, last two quarters, you've been growing three to 4%. And I believe you previously guided for that similar type of growth rate, three, 4% for the rest of the year. My question more so is, as we think about next year or the next few years, are these trends that you're talking about about in regards to this ecosystem with Apex Next and SVX and the other positive trends you're seeing enough to sustain these kind of above market growth rates? Or do you think that these trends have a long enough tail that we might be more exposed to cyclical growth, fluctuations of growth over the next few years?

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, from a technology standpoint, we, as Jason mentioned already, we are relabeling LMR to MCN, Mission Critical Networks. And as a result, we now expect Mission Critical Networks, inclusive of LMR, to be mid single digits for this fiscal year. We're obviously not gonna comment yet on 26, but I think that the strong Q2 orders print, the gaining confidence in the product backlog, even though it is transitioning more to a quick turn business, but our confidence is incrementally higher than it was a quarter ago, i.e. these would be the mid threes. I like that trend. Now, remember also, we're coming off of record years last year and the year before. So we're, and as somebody earlier mentioned on the call, given the ecosystem that you just referenced, we're trying to drive more forward recurring revenue, forward more applications revenue, forward more revenue as a service. So as long as we can continue a healthy, robust company-wide revenue growth, and then continue our focus on operating expense, operating leverage, improved cashflow, operating margin expansion, and continuing to build backlog, particularly around multi-year services or recurring apps revenues, that's the profile we want for the firm. So, we'll come in and out of quarters, we'll come in and out of years, but when we take a look where we are now and going forward, and I think of the long-term durability and the criticality of 13,000 networks for LMR that compose both critical infrastructure and enterprise, as well as public safety, as well as North America and international. And again, just to come back to Silvis, I love Silvis because it's intelligent, high growth, high performance infrastructure. It can support lots of different drone platforms, lots of different drone manufacturers. We've had a lot of experience and I have in selling quote unquote devices or commodities. You could call the drone market, depending upon which one you define as a commodity. We've been very purposeful to invest where we think we can differentiate, where we think the revenues and the competitive advantage are sticky, and where we can build a competitive advantage and adjacency for public safety, critical infrastructure, and national security. That's the strategy we're implementing and I feel good about it, and I definitely feel good about exiting Q2 and what we need to get done between now and the end of the year. And Tomer, as you know, we'll update you on next year in November.

speaker
Tomer Zilberman
Analyst, Bank of America Securities

Got it. Maybe as a quick follow-up, just a housekeeping question, apologies if I missed it earlier. Your guidance raise includes a mix of the Silvis acquisition, but also core improvements. Did you break out what you expect Silvis to contribute in Q3 versus Q4? I know you have the stub period going on, so any direction you can give us would be helpful.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So we're flowing through the Q2B. We're flowing through the improvement of FX, and we're articulating that Silvis is about 185 million in the stub period of revenue for the remaining five months, post-close. We haven't specifically broken out Q3, but if you wanna use weeks,

speaker
Jason Winkler
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

it's a pretty good approximation of where to put the 185. Weeks remaining. Got it,

speaker
Tim Long
Analyst, Barclays

thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thanks, Tomer. Our final question today is from the line of Louis DePalma with William Blair. Your line is now open.

speaker
Louis DePalma
Analyst, William Blair

Greg, Jason, Jack, Mahesh, and Tim and Vicki, good afternoon and congrats on closing Silvis.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Louis, how you doing? Thanks.

speaker
Louis DePalma
Analyst, William Blair

Great, I was wondering, does Silvis give you a competitive advantage for your drone as a first responder offering on the law enforcement side? Today, nearly all of Silvis revenue is for the battlefield, but it seems you can significantly enhance their first responder capabilities, especially with that scale. Or alternatively, do you view today, do you feel this is too powerful of a solution for law enforcement? So are you gonna focus all of your efforts on the battlefield? What's the strategy there with the Silvis expansion?

speaker
Mahesh Saptarishi
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

Louis, I think in the near term, at least, our biggest limitation is going to be spectrum availability in North America, because we need to operate within a certain spectrum to be able to take advantage of Silvis' technology within drones, specifically licensed spectrum. So we think it'll happen, but it'll happen in the future. In the meantime, the other important element of us supporting DFR operations is being able to track and being able to detect drones in airspace. And that's where spectrum monitoring comes into play, and being able to do that not just with radar, but also to do it with RF, I think that gives us the ability to integrate that as part of our DFR program while we figure out the spectrum challenges. And there are a couple of instances

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

with public safety agencies in the US that have had spectrum waivers where they've been implemented and granted, Silvis has played a role there.

speaker
Silvis

So

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

there's more we can do. Yeah, and the other thing, I think the last thing I'd say is we can't sleep on the borders, because really, I think, as Greg said earlier, what Silvis does is Silvis basically builds a bridge to our LMR or the Voice Mission Critical Networks, the video, and they're going to secure the borders leveraging this technology. And with that, it's going to pull through video opportunities for us as well.

speaker
Louis DePalma
Analyst, William Blair

That makes sense. And Greg, you mentioned Leo satellite connectivity being integrated into your network. Can you elaborate further there or maybe Mahesh, are you partnering with Starlink or FirstNet via AST Space Mobile there?

speaker
Mahesh Saptarishi
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

I think it's what Jack referred to in the context of our LMR infrastructure there, Louis. We will support Leo via our base stations because I think that's the better way to attack redundancy and have high bandwidth connectivity with low Earth orbit satellites. And we are having conversations with all the appropriate Leo providers there to give us that flexibility.

speaker
Louis DePalma
Analyst, William Blair

Great, thanks everyone. Thanks, Louis.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Greg Brown, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for any additional comments or closing remarks.

speaker
Greg Brown
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I just want to close and say thank you to all the people at Motorola and all of our partners. Really pleased with the strong Q2 performance on revenue earnings per share and cash record Q2 orders in particular up 27% as we talked about. And as was mentioned earlier on the call, it's fairly broad-based, the performance on record orders. So that's even more foundational and gives us even more confidence. I'm pleased with the fact that mid-year here, we're able to raise top line, bottom line and overall raising operating cashflow in the face of 80 million of tariffs headwind, the majority of which is in the back half and an increased interest expense as well as 75 million of fees associated with the Silvis acquisition and expanding gross margins and expanding operating margins. So I'm excited about Q3 and Q4 and really excited about Silvis joining the firm. All the capabilities, engineering, technical talent, the sales organization that's coming over as well. I think it's going to be a great mix and a great team and I'm excited about it. And I look forward to talking to everybody again in three months. Thanks for listening.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

This does conclude today's teleconference. A replay of this call will be available over the internet within three hours. Website address is .motorolasolutions.com forward slash investor. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines at this time.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-