RTX Corporation

The Raytheon Technologies Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Olivia, and I'll be your operator for today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. On the call today are Greg Hayes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Neil Mitchell, Chief Financial Officer, and Jennifer Reed, Vice President of Investor Relations. This call is being carried live on the internet, and there's presentation available for download from Raytheon Technologies' website at www.rtx.com. Please note, except where otherwise noted, the company will speak to results from continuing operations, excluding acquisition accounting adjustments and net non-recurring and or significant items, often referred to by management as other significant items. The company also reminds listeners that the earnings and cash flow expectations and any other forward-looking statements provided in this call are subject to risk and uncertainties. Retion Technologies' SEC filings, including its Form 8-K, 10-Q, and 10-K, provided details on important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Once the call becomes open for questions, we ask that you limit your first round to one question per caller to give everyone the opportunity to participate. To ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You may ask further questions by reinserting yourself into the queue as time permits. With that, I will turn the call over to Mr. Hayes.

Thank you, Olivia, and good morning, everybody. As you can see in the press release this morning, RTX had another solid quarter of growth led by commercial aerospace and extremely strong demand for our products. with over $22 billion of awards in the quarter. It's important to note our balanced aerospace and defense portfolio, along with operational resiliency, remain the key differentiators, which enable us to deliver on our commitments despite some near-term macro challenges and uncertainties. Not sure what that noise is. I think it's also important to know we've overcome some significant headwinds in 2022, from transitioning out of Russia to record inflation and a strained supply chain. I think it's important. Those are short-term issues. And while we continue the day-to-day work to mitigate those challenges, we also continue to grow our $168 billion backlogs and invest in the future through over $9 billion of R&D, capital expenditures, and customer-funded research and development. Those investments, coupled with strong demand for our systems across each of our businesses, positions us for significant growth runway as the near-term headwinds recede. Before I get to the results, let me just spend a few minutes discussing the trends we're seeing in some of our end markets. On the defense side, no surprises. The elevated threat environment has significantly influenced how the U.S. and our allies are thinking about their defense capabilities and readiness. And as a result, this has driven global defense budgets substantially higher, a trend we expect to continue for the foreseeable future. Just as an example, in Europe, Switzerland recently signed a $6.25 billion contract to buy 36 F-35 jets, modernizing their fleet and driving demand, of course, for our F-135 engine through the end of the decade. We're also seeing significant global demand for advanced air defense systems, especially in Eastern Europe. as the Russians and Ukraine conflict unfortunately continues. This includes two of our NASAM system, which is the surface-to-air missile system that will help protect the people of Ukraine, and we expect more orders beyond those two to follow shortly. The heightened threat environment continues to drive strong orders. During the quarter, we saw strong domestic and international demand for our products with a number of significant defense awards. which resulted in a book-to-bill of $1.22 and a backlog that's up about $2 billion sequentially. Of particular note, our missiles and defense business was awarded $1 billion to develop the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, or HACM, for the U.S. Air Force. It's a first-of-its-kind missile that leverages air-breathing scramjet propulsion technology and that can travel at hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 or greater. Additionally, RMD completed the systems requirement review for the hypersonic glide phase interceptor program prototype. This is designed to protect the United States from increasing hypersonic missile threats. Both of these accomplishments demonstrate that Raytheon Technologies is a leader in the race to develop and deploy operational hypersonic and, importantly, counter-hypersonic systems, a key strategic priority for the Department of Defense. RMD also was awarded about a billion dollars from the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and international customers for Advanced AMRAAM, which is the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile. These missiles have been upgraded with the most sophisticated technology needed to maintain the edge over adversaries of the U.S. and our international allies. At RIS, we saw an additional $1.6 billion in classified awards in the quarter. The team was also awarded $215 million from the FAA to upgrade their wide area augmentation system to enhance safer air travel in support of the National Aerospace System. At Pratt & Whitney, the team recently delivered the 1,000th F-135 engine and was awarded over $800 million in the quarter to continue supporting the F-135, which is the safest, most capable, and best value military jet engine in operation. We're working on the F-135 engine core upgrade, known as the Enhanced Engine Package, or EAP. This will allow the F-135 to provide even more thrust, range, and electrification to the aircraft. The EAP offers the most cost-effective and lowest-risk solution to enable the F-135's Block IV upgrade. At Collins, we received a $583 million IDIQ award for the MAPS Gen 2 program, which maintains the integrity of positioning and timing in a GPS-contested or denied environment, and it's an important award to ensure mission success within a more connected battle space. As you can see, the defense pipeline remains robust, and we expect continued order strength in the future as we continue to win key awards and successfully demonstrate our technology leadership and innovation capabilities. Moving to the commercial side, air traffic remains strong as third quarter global revenue passenger miles reached 75% of 2019 levels. In the U.S., travelers through TSA checkpoints reached 91% of 2019 levels, with Labor Day domestic traffic exceeding 2019. And we continue to see steady improvement in long-haul international traffic, with widebody hours flown up nearly 40% year-over-year. The strong demand? The strong commercial aerospace recovery was driving demand for our commercial products and services, and we continue to innovate to deliver value for our customers. For example, just a few weeks ago, Pratt began development flight testing of the GTF Advantage engine on the A320neo aircraft in Toulouse, France. The GTF Advantage reduces fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by a total of 17% compared to the prior generation engines. Extending the engine's lead is the most efficient power plant for the A320 family. Also during the quarter, Pratt completed the first flight test of the GTF-powered A321XLR, or Extra Long Range, two significant milestones for the GTF family of engines. So even with some near-term challenges, we continue to invest in innovation for continued growth in air travel and to meet the strong defense demand. Okay, with that as a background, let's turn to slide two, some highlights in the quarter. In the quarter, we delivered another strong organic sales growth of 6%. Adjusted EPS was ahead of our expectations at $1.21, and free cash flow was also ahead of our expectations despite a $1.5 billion additional tax payment we made related to the R&D amortization. Sales growth was again led by strong commercial aftermarket sales that were up 24% over the prior year. However, we continue to see challenges related to supply chain and labor availability in each of our businesses. On the capital allocation front, we repurchased over $600 million of shares in the quarter, putting us at $2.4 billion year-to-date, and we remain on track to repurchase at least $2.5 billion for the year. Through the end of the third quarter, we've returned over $12 billion of capital to shareholders since the merger. and we're well on our way to our commitment to return at least $20 billion in the first four years following the merger. Before I hand it over to Neil, notwithstanding the strength and demand that we're seeing across our businesses, the industry-wide challenges we're facing remain the same. You've heard me talk about them before, supply chain, labor, and inflation. But we continue to focus on what we can control by proactively managing the businesses through these dynamic times. Let me give you some examples of what we're doing. On the microelectronics front, we're working closely with our distributors and the OEMs to bring more capacity online. We also have direct engagement, which has led to higher deliveries and acceleration of expected recoveries for certain wafers and ships. At RMD, we're working hand-in-hand with our rocket motor supplier, holding daily senior management meetings to track work in progress and solve technical problems real-time. We're also leveraging RTX's contract labor agreements to help source labor in our supply base. To mitigate the impacts of inflation, we've been taking multiple actions. For example, we're leveraging our raw material contracts from the business from RTX to get best prices for our suppliers as well. And while supply chain disruptions are frustrating, we are seeing some stabilization, and we're encouraged by the demand signals across the business. That said, these headwinds continue to pressure the business. So as we finish out the year, just a couple of thoughts. We're going to have to adjust our full year sales outlook slightly to a new range of $67 to $67.3 billion. We're going to bring up the bottom of our adjusted EPS range by a dime, $470 to $480, and we're continuing to see free cash flow of about $4 billion for the year. With that, let me turn it over to Neil and Jennifer to take you through the details.

Neil? Thank you, Greg. Before I get into the full year, let's look at our Q3 results on slide three. Sales of $17 billion grew 6% organically versus the prior year, with organic growth at Collins, Pratt, and RIS more than offsetting a decline at RMD. The ongoing recovery of commercial air travel and a strong summer travel season drove our aerospace performance while we continue to see challenges in the supply chain, as Greg mentioned. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.21 was down 4% year over year, but ahead of our expectations on better commercial aero. Segment operating profit growth of 12% was more than offset by the absence of a prior year tax benefit and lower pension income. Gap earnings per share from continuing operations was $0.94 per share and included $0.27 of acquisition accounting adjustments and restructuring. And free cash flow of $263 million was also ahead of our expectations and included the impact of the $1.5 billion cash payment that Greg just mentioned. On the cost reduction front, We achieved an incremental $105 million of gross merger cost synergies in the quarter, bringing our merger-to-date total to $1.3 billion of our $1.5 billion commitment in the four years following the merger. Before I hand it over to Jennifer, a few comments on our full-year outlook. The commercial air recovery remains robust, and we continue to expect that global RPMs will recover to about 90% of 2019 levels as we exit this year. Domestic and short-haul international travel also remains strong, and we continue to see a steady recovery in long-haul international travel. However, as Greg discussed, while we're seeing some stabilization in certain areas of the supply chain and labor market, these constraints continue to put pressure on our businesses. As a result, we're reducing our full-year RTX sales outlook to a new range of $67 to $67.3 billion, which translates to between 5% and 6% organic sales growth, This is down from our prior range of $67.75 to $68.75 billion. However, despite the lower sales outlook, we're raising the bottom end of our adjusted EPS range by $0.10 to $4.70 to $4.80 per share from our prior range of $4.60 to $4.80. Continued aftermarket strength, favorable OEMX, and cost containment actions across RTX are partially offsetting lower sales and lower productivity in our defense businesses. You'll also recall that we previously assumed the legislation requiring capitalization of R&D expenses for tax purposes would be repealed or deferred this year. Since that hasn't happened, we've realized an EPS benefit of about 11 cents year-to-date and estimate that the full year impact is about 15 cents per share. And on the cash front, we continue to expect free cash flow of about $4 billion for the full year. In the fourth quarter, we're expecting lower tax payments and several large international receipts. And finally, We provided an updated outlook for the segments and some below-the-line items in the webcast appendix. So with that, let me hand it over to Jennifer to take you through the third quarter segment results and updated outlooks. Jennifer?