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Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Teledyne fourth quarter earnings call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity for your questions, and instructions will be given at that time. If you should require any assistance today, please press star followed by the zero, and an AT&T operator will assist you. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. This time, it's my pleasure to turn the conference over to our host, Mr. Jason Van Wees. Please go ahead.
Jason Van Wees
Thanks, Tom, and Thanks, everyone. This is Jason Van Weese, Vice Chairman. I'd like to welcome everyone to Teledyne's fourth quarter and full year 2013 earnings release conference call. We released our earnings earlier this morning. Joining me today are Teledyne's Executive Chairman, Robert Moravian, and our new but familiar management team, CEO Edwin Rocks, President and COO George Bob, Senior Vice President and CFO Steve Blackwood, and also Melanie Civic, EVP and General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Secretary. After remarks by Robert, Edwin, George, and Steve, we will ask for your questions. Of course, so before we get started, attorneys have reminded me to tell you that all forward-looking statements made this morning are subject to various assumptions, risks, and caveats as noted in the earnings release and our periodic SEC filings. And of course, actual results may differ materially. In order to avoid potential selective disclosures, This call is simultaneously being webcast and a replay, both via webcast and dial-in, will be available for approximately one month. Here is Robert.
Tom
Thank you, Jason. Good morning, and thank you for joining our earnings call. In the fourth quarter, we achieved all-time record sales and gap and non-gap earnings per share. Sales increased primarily... due to the performance of our marine, medical, and aerospace businesses, which were more than able to compensate for the previously announced headwind in the industrial automation and laboratory instrumentation market. Furthermore, overall record orders exceeded sales in every business segment, but were particularly strong in our marine and defense businesses. Leverage declined further to 1.9, and our balance sheet remains healthy. Finally, we continue to acquire complementary businesses as shown by the acquisition of Xena networks in the fourth quarter. Compared with last year, fourth quarter and full year non-GAAP operating margins increased 27, and 57 basis points, respectively. Our broad-based strength in orders was encouraging, especially in the uncertain global macro environment today. Nevertheless, it's worth noting that most of the increase in orders was in our backlog-driven longer cycle businesses. So converting the orders to sales will take a little time. In terms of 2024 outlook, we therefore think the quarterly sales and earnings ramp will be a bit greater than in recent years. So while we see annual 2024 sales growth of about 4%, we believe the typically seasonally low first quarter will be slightly under $1.4 billion, or roughly flat with last year. I will now turn the call over to Edwin and George, who will further comment on the performance of our four business segments.
Jason
Thank you, Robert. This is Edwin, and I will report on the digital imaging segment, which is 56% of Teleline's portfolio. And like Teleline as a whole, this segment is a mix of longer cycle businesses, such as defense, space, and healthcare, combined with shorter cycle markets, including industrial automation, semiconductor inspection, and infrared components and cameras for application ranging from factory condition monitoring and maritime navigation. Fourth quarter 2023 sales were slightly lower compared to last year. Double-digit sales growth in each of X-Ray products FLIR surveillance systems, and space-based infrared imaging detectors offset a significant year-over-year decline in sales of industrial imaging systems and microelectrical mechanical systems, or MEMS. Fourth quarter sales of unmanned systems were at the greatest level in 2023, but declined year-over-year due to a tough comparison. For the second quarter in a row, the FLIR businesses collectively were positive contributors to overall segment margin, In addition, FLIR quarterly sales increased year over year, and we're at the highest level in the last two years. George will now report on the other three segments, which will represent the remaining 44% of Teladoc.
Robert
Thanks, Edwin. The instrumentation segment consists of our marine, test and measurement, and environmental businesses, which contribute a little over 23% of sales. For the total segment, overall fourth quarter sales increased 2.8% versus last year. Sales of marine instruments increased 14.7% in the quarter, primarily due to strong offshore energy sales, but also continued growth in global defense and ocean science markets. Sales of electronic testing measurement systems, which include oscilloscopes, digitizers, and protocol analyzers, were flat year over year. We continued to see some softness in sales of analyzers for electronic storage and data centers applications, but this was largely offset by continued strong sales of oscilloscopes, and a small amount of incremental sales from the Xena acquisition. Sales of environmental instruments decreased 7.3%, with greater sales of air quality and gas and flame safety analyzers, more than offset by lower sales of drug discovery and laboratory instruments. Overall instrumentation segment operating profit increased over 14% in the fourth quarter, with gap operating margin increasing 284 basis points to 27.1%, and 278 basis points on a non-GAAP basis to 28.1%, both all-time records for the segment. In the aerospace and defense electronics segment, which represents 13% of Teledyne sales, fourth quarter sales increased 3.4%, primarily driven by growth of commercial aerospace products. GAAP and non-GAAP segment operating profit decreased approximately 5% year-over-year, primarily due to a tough comparison with last year's all-time record segment margin. For the engineered system segment, which contributes 8 percent to overall sales, fourth quarter revenue decreased 3.8 percent, but operating profit increased with margin up 325 basis points. I will now pass the call back to Robert.
Tom
Robert Adler Thank you, George. In conclusion, we were pleased with our record performance in 2023. In the near term, we will continue to focus on growth in those businesses with favorable markets while cutting costs and protecting margins in businesses which are more challenged. And at the same time, we'll be acquiring and integrating complementary businesses. When certain markets like laboratory instrumentation, industrial automation, or electronic test and measurement recover, we will keep our cost structure in check and benefit handsomely. But if there are global or macroeconomic shocks in 2024, we will do what we've done in the past, execute well, generate record cash flow, and complete some of our best and potentially larger acquisitions. I will now turn the call over to Steve.
Robert Adler
Thank you, Robert, and good morning. I will first discuss some additional financials for the quarter not covered by Robert, and then I will discuss our first quarter and full year 2024 outlook. In the fourth quarter, cash flow from operating activities was $164.4 million, compared with $237.7 million in 2022. Free cash flow, that is cash from operating activities, less capital expenditures, was $124.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared with $203.6 million in 2022. Cash flow declined in the fourth quarter since we made $139 million of additional tax payments, which we were allowed to defer from the second and third quarters of 2023 due to IRS disaster relief. Without these catch-up tax payments, quarterly cash flow would have been an all-time record. Capital expenditures were $40.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared with $34.1 million in 2022. Depreciation and amortization expense was $77.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2023, compared with $81.8 million in 2022. We ended the quarter with approximately $2.60 billion of net debt. That is approximately $3.24 billion of debt, last cash of $648.3 million. Now turning to our outlook. Management currently believes that GAAP earnings per share in the first quarter of 2024 will be in the range of $3.73 to $3.86, with non-GAAP earnings in the range of $4.55 to $4.65 per share. And for the full year of 2024, our GAAP earnings per share outlook is $17.15 to $17.53. And on a non-GAAP basis, $20.35 to $20.68. The 2024 full year estimated tax rate Excluding discrete items is expected to be 22.5%. I will now pass the call back to Robert.
Tom
Thank you, Steve. We would now like to take your questions. Tom, if you're ready to proceed with the questions and answers, please go ahead.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen on the phone lines, if you wish to ask a question today, please press 1 followed by the 0. Now you'll hear a tone indicating you've been placed in queue. Take yourself out of that queue by simply pressing the 1-0 command. Again, And we ask you to please pick up your handset before pressing the buttons. And 1-0 for questions. We'll begin today with a question from Jim Ricciuti, representing Needham & Company. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Jim Ricciuti
Good morning. I wanted to see if we could dig a little bit more into the way you see the year unfolding. It sounds like Q1, a little bit more seasonality. And I guess with respect, to the full year guidance. As you think about the balance of the year, are you making some assumptions of recovery in the shorter cycle business in the latter part of the year, particularly some of the areas that have been weaker, like the lab instrumentation and the industrial automation machine vision area?
Tom
Good morning, Jim. Yes. Good morning. We're right now expecting... uptake in those businesses in the second half of the year. We think that what will happen is that we will have a linear ramp in sales and earnings throughout the year with about average revenue increase of about 4% and earnings, as we've outlined, up to $20.68, which would reflect also an improvement in margin from this year to next year of another almost 50 to 60 basis points. So, yes, we're anticipating that. On the other hand, we're also adjusting our cost structure, and if necessary, we'll do more so that our earnings remain healthy.
Jim Ricciuti
Got it. Thank you for that, Robert. With respect to the margin improvement that you're anticipating, I'm wondering how should we think about margins by some of the major business units, just directionally?
Tom
Sure. Jim, we're expecting margin improvement in every segment. A little lower in instruments, maybe 25 basis points. We already have very healthy margins there. On the other hand, in digital imaging, about 80 basis points. In aerospace and defense, we think we'll have 80 to 90 basis points. And engineered systems, around 50 basis points. So overall, Jim, in the segments, we anticipate about 70 basis points margin improvement, and overall for the company, between 50 and 60 basis points. In a way, it's kind of similar to what we achieved this year, which was about 60 basis points over last year.
Jim Ricciuti
Okay, thank you. I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks a lot.
Tom
Thank you, Jim.
Operator
Next, we'll go to the line of Greg Conrad with Jefferies. Please go ahead, sir.
Greg Conrad
Good morning. Maybe just to follow up with the last question, but on the revenue side, you know, given the commentary around book to bail, you know, 4% growth for the year, can you maybe talk about the assumptions between long and short cycle or from a segment basis for growth in 2024? Yeah.
Tom
Craig, let me give you the segments first, and then I'll try and answer the first question. From a segment perspective, we think instrumentation will grow about 3.5% this year, over last year. We think digital imaging, going back to instrumentation, There's a difference between the different businesses that we have. The marine businesses with healthy backlog, as George mentioned, would grow about 6% to 6.5%, whereas environmental would be just under 3%. And we're expecting TNM to basically hold. Going to digital imaging. We believe that the overall sales increase would be above 4%. Aerospace and defense, about 5%. Engineer systems, about 4%. And when you add all of that up, we expect an average of about 4% at this time.
Greg Conrad
Maybe if we can just dig into digital imaging a little bit more. I mean, the commentary and the release around product lines on the call was helpful. But is there any way just, you know, for Q4 and 2023 to kind of level set or put some numbers behind, you know, growth and space in healthcare versus, you know, maybe the declines you've seen in other parts of the portfolio?
Tom
Sure. Let me start with Q4, please, and then I'll go to some of the others. In healthcare, we had really nice Q4. Revenue increased about 13.5% to 14%. In aerospace and defense, it increased about 5%. These offset basically weakness in our industrial and scientific vision systems. The flip side, if you go over to our FLIR businesses, we have really robust growth in our surveillance system, about 16.5%, and some of our detection products Overall in Q4 FLIR revenue defense increased about 4.8%. Now going forward to the future, I'll make a little distinction between DALSA E2V and FLIR. We think that DALSA E2V would have a modest growth of about 3%, offset by about 4.5% in FLIR. As mentioned earlier, FLIR defense especially is experiencing really good order intake, and we expect the growth there to exceed that of the rest of the imaging. So I can give you more detail, but that's basically a summary of it.
Greg Conrad
Appreciate it. I'll leave it at two. Thank you.
Tom
Thank you.
Operator
And we'll go to the line of Ron Epstein with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Ron Epstein
Hey, good morning. This is Jordan Lainez on for Ron. I wanted to ask, so for the backlog growth and the defense wins that you guys are seeing, How are you guys thinking about the risk of a CR?
Tom
Well, Jordan, obviously CR is always an unpleasant occurrence for us. The way we're looking at it is we're only right now considering the orders that we have in-house. We're not really looking at future orders. So Book2Bill has been healthy. This is our longer-term program. And frankly, we have some exciting new products coming out, which are being now tested, for example. If you look at our Black Hornet, Black Hornet 3, which is our nano drones, Black Hornet 3 has had a really good run. over the past five, six years. We've introduced a Black Hornet 4, which is already getting traction. We also have some really nice programs in Space Development Agency, Trunch True, Tracker, Tracking Layer, as well as our international sales in that domain. are healthy. So in some ways, while CR would be not a pleasant thing to experience, we've done it in the past. We've had CRs in many years. Right now, we're looking at what we have in our backlog, which is healthy.
Ron Epstein
Got it. Thank you. And then on the unmanned systems, air systems that you guys cited as being lower for DI, is that related to just sunsetting programs or what was driving that change?
Tom
I think basically it's tough comps rather than real declines. I think We think our drone businesses are healthy. We also have some businesses that are anti-drone or drone detection systems, which we're selling in Europe, which are very healthy. So I think it's just a matter of tough comps. Other than that, we feel very good about our drone businesses.
Ron Epstein
Great. Thank you so much.
Tom
Thank you.
Operator
I have a question from the line of Joe. Gerardo with TD Pollen. Please go ahead.
Joe
Hey, guys. Close enough there. How you doing?
Tom
Good, Joe.
Joe
Good. I'll start on free cash flow. I think that at the end of the day, that probably came in a little lighter than you thought for the full year. Can you talk about how you think 24 shapes up and how working capital looks for the year?
Tom
Yeah. You're right, it came in a little lighter. But we made some really good progress in the third quarter and especially in the fourth quarter from our managed working capital perspective. We had some significant improvements in our trying to reduce our inventory. The flip side is we also, did not, you know, we're always, like most companies, suffering from not being able to get cash for our R&D. So I'd say about that affected us maybe 75 or 60 to 75 million dollars. Our cash, nevertheless, if you looked at it, we paid down 680 million dollars of debt in 2023. Our debt to EBDA ratio, net debt to EBDA ratio is about 1.9. So let me fast forward to 2024. We believe we'll do a little better in 2024 than we did in 2023. We'd like to think that we'd have 100% conversion. recognizing that there is always gonna be this R&D headwind. Even though everybody in the Congress has agreed that the R&D program should be passed, I think nothing's passing in this Congress, so we're assuming we don't get that. Nevertheless, we think we'll be somewhere between 900, 925, and a billion dollars. If we hit those numbers, which we think we will. Then our debt-to-EPDA ratio should go down from 1.9 to closer to 1.1 to 1.2, which puts us in a really good position to be able to make both small and mid-size acquisitions.
Joe
That's a really helpful color. My last one, we kind of talked about DI a lot, but I just want to maybe if you can frame for the full year of 23, how much down was the industrial and scientific vision, and what did that do to margins, and then how did FLIR margins for the full year look year on year?
Tom
Okay. Let me just pick the first part. Industrial and scientific visions I'm going to say we're down about 2% year over year. Larger declines in Q4 than that. In terms of the margins, FLIR's margins actually improved significantly year over year. It went from 20.3% in 2022 to 22.1% in 2023, which was very healthy. As a consequence, we were able to hold the overall margins in digital imaging relatively flat.
Joe
And you'd expect FLIR to expand margins again in 2024, correct? Just inherent in that margin commentary?
Tom
Yes, we think FLIR would have some margin expansion, but if you look at it as a whole segment that is our digital imaging segment, we expect margins to increase somewhere between 50 and 100 basis points in 2024. Perfect.
Operator
Thanks, Robert.
Tom
Thank you.
Operator
Next, let's go to the line of Christine LeWag, representing Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Christine LeWag
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Tom
Good morning, Christine.
Christine LeWag
You know, Robert, you know, last year you talked about some facility consolidation at digital imaging, and, you know, you're also talking about 80 basis points and margin expansion this year for the segment. How much of that is – from this consolidation from before on the FLIR integration, and how much of that is on better price cost? And ultimately, could we expect to see higher margins there if you have additional cost takeout you could do here?
Tom
Yeah, Kristin, let me see if I can do this properly. We are in the process, for example, now in terms of space consolidation. What we're doing is we're getting out of leased spaces and moving to owned spaces. For example, in Massachusetts, we have an owned space in . We're getting out of a leased space there. That should be effective in March. That will help us save something of the order of $500,000, $600,000, $700,000. The issue that we have, while consolidation overall is helpful, it's the growth of our businesses and the lower costs that we have put in place this year that should be more helpful. So when Edwin thinks about or talks about margin improvement, he is looking at really a lower cost structure, which we've achieved, maintaining that, and getting some growth, especially from our longer cycle businesses. So it's a combination of those. I would say lower cost and growth trumping just space consolidation.
Christine LeWag
Thanks. Great caller. In terms of industrial automation and the laboratory instrumentation markets, you've talked about a rebound for the second half of the year. What metrics are you looking at? What indicators are you following that you're watching out for for this end market?
Tom
For industrial automation, really, it's a combination of things. We're seeing, for example, some improvement in the semi-market now, projections for improved semi-market recovery. We're also seeing some pickup in smartphones now, which is our consumer-related businesses, which affects our microelectromechanical MEMS programs. In the Other markets, especially laboratory instrumentation, we don't have as much visibility, frankly. We haven't seen these kinds of declines before, so we think those should come back, but we're not counting on them a lot. We think there's a flip side of our environmental businesses, which that's a part of, which is the air and air quality, water quality, monitoring, which have been very healthy. We have a nice backlog, and we think the combination of those two will help us, you know, in that part of our instrumentation business.
Christine LeWag
Thank you. And last question for me. I mean, your current leverage position gives you flexibility to pursue more sizable deals. I mean, you've recently closed the Xena acquisitions. But in terms of larger deals, are valuations starting to look more attractive? And how is the 2024 pipeline shaping up?
Tom
Yeah, I have to tell you, valuations on the larger deals have not come down yet as much as we would like. We've looked at some of the prices that our competitors have paid for large ones. Those are kind of out of our range of what we would consider. On the flip side, we see some opportunities in smaller bolt-on acquisitions, what we call String of Pearls, which are available and we will be pursuing those. If you looked at our 68, 69 acquisitions over our history, the string of pearls are about 60 out of 68, 69. And they are the easiest to integrate. We can fit them in and we can improve their margins as we go. The larger deals, we have to be a little more patient because right now prices are still pretty high.
Christine LeWag
Thank you very much for all the color.
Tom
For sure, Chris.
Operator
Next is a question from Andrew Biskelia with BNP. Please go ahead.
Tom
Good morning, Andrew.
Operator
Mr. Biskelia, is your phone muted?
Joe
Hey, good morning, guys.
Operator
Hi.
Joe
Sorry about that. Digital imaging, Uh, margin. So I wanted to ask on, um, you know, so you're gonna start Q1 sounds like in a whole first off is digital imaging margins. You know, do you expect those down year over year and that effectively marks sort of a bottom for that segment as, as sales start to improve from there?
Tom
No, the answer is no, I don't expect digital imaging margins to go down. I think they should go up a little bit in Q1 and then pick up the rest of the year. As I mentioned before, Andrew, we think digital imaging as a whole should have margin improvement in 24, somewhere between 50 basis points and 100 basis points, with probably more prejudice towards the higher number. But nevertheless, no, I don't think we're expecting to suffer there. You know, as we've done before, when some of our markets soften up, we take cost off. And then that helps maintain our margins. And the markets come back, we really enjoy the margin improvement. So, no, I don't think digital imaging is going to go down.
Joe
You mean up year over year or up sequentially?
Tom
Well, I think year over year first. Yeah, okay. Between 50 to 100 basis points. I think... Okay. I think what will happen is if there's sequentially... It will be sequential improvement. I don't expect things to go down.
Joe
Yeah, okay. Okay, and then... In past quarters, you sort of broke out Lear book-to-bill versus legacy Teledyne book-to-bill. Do you have that? And then I'm wondering your view on potential incremental defense awards as the year progresses.
Tom
Sure. If you look at instrumentation, which is all legacy Teledyne in some ways, which is marine environmental and test and measurement, the book to build in Q4 was 1.12, which is very healthy, driven primarily by marine, which was really good. Digital imaging, we Or excluding FLIR, I'm just answering your question precisely. It was just over one. Aerospace and defense, it was closer to 1.2. That's historical teledyne. And engineered systems was just over one. And then if you look at FLIR, which is our big acquisition, obviously, it was just over one. So all in all, whether it's Our historical Teledyne or Teledyne Plus FLIR, if you look at Q4, our book-to-bill was over 1, closer to 1.07. Okay.
Joe
And then the question on your feeling on incremental defense awards throughout the year, is there still a lot you're tracking?
Tom
Yes, the answer is yes. We have a pretty good read on what's coming. We have some new products. I mentioned the Black Hornet 4. I mentioned Space Taunt True. The Primes that have gotten their awards in last week, we're up to all of them. And we feel good about that.
Joe
Okay. Thanks, Robert.
Tom
For sure. Thank you.
Operator
And we'll just give a quick follow-up here, one followed by zero, if you do have a question. One followed by zero. And let's go to the line of Noah Popanak with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone.
Tom
Good morning, Noah. Good morning, Noah.
Noah
Robert, your full year 2024 framework is assuming 4% full year organic revenue growth. Is that correct?
Tom
Yeah, about 4%.
Noah
And can you just repeat what you said about the first quarter top line revenue dollars or organic revenue growth?
Tom
Yeah, I think it'd be about 1.4 or a little under. That's going to be our lowest quarter. And I'm saying that because of the short cycle businesses that we're seeing. We have orders on long cycle businesses, but our short cycle businesses, we're assuming that we'll not recover much in Q1. And so it should be flat year over year in terms of revenue. And then pick up as we go.
Noah
Got it. Okay. Just, yeah, I wasn't clear, but now I am. And I guess in those short cycle businesses, I mean, this has sort of been asked and discussed, but just have you actually seen concrete evidence of when that will pick up, or I know it's short cycle, but orders for it to pick up, or are you just kind of making an assumption based on everything you know about the business, and then I guess you'll also have easier compares?
Tom
That's very good. We look at our pipeline and necessarily say that we have better orders at this time. When we're talking to our customers, we're looking at that inventory level. They're sharing that with us. We see that inventories are going down. As a consequence, we expect that we will start getting the orders. The long cycle, of course, you understand that's much easier because we already have the orders and we feel good about that. The other thing that we do on the short cycle is we look at the general trends that people are talking about in terms of what happened in the semi-industry in the past number of quarters and what's happening expected, what people are projecting. We're thinking that environmental and test and measurement will eventually pick up, but we're also seeing some pick up in MEMS already, in flame infrared as well as our maritime businesses. So that's what's encouraging. We see some lowering of inventories for our customers, as well as some pickup in certain unique businesses of ours.
Noah
Okay, that makes sense and is helpful. If I go to the 4% organic for the year and then I do what you said with the segment margins, I think most of the things between that and the EPS are pretty straightforward. I get something above your EPS guidance, Is it safe to assume that you've just embedded some degree of conservatism relative to the lack of visibility in short cycle in the EPS range?
Tom
Yes, you said it better than I could. We're always a little conservative. There's one other thing that I should mention. When we look at our segment per se and we look at increases in segment margins, We have to be cognizant of the fact that the new management, which is Edwin and George, are now going to be their costs or their pay is going to reflect in the corporate portion. We're also seeing a little higher medical and insurance premiums. Corporate, we expect, would go up. That's why While the margins in the segment look much higher, the corporate margins we're assuming are going to be increasing above 50 to 60 basis points.
Noah
Okay. That's helpful. Last one. Some of your commentary makes it sound like the M&A pipeline is pretty full and pretty active and you're pretty optimistic about what you see. Other things you've said suggest there's a bid-ask spread and Maybe it's a little tougher, so I guess, can you put a finer point on it in terms of how likely we are to see deals this year?
Tom
Yeah, let me just say that the confusion may have risen because I was answering two questions at the same time. The first part was larger acquisitions because our leverage ratio is obviously going down, and it'll go down faster this year. The larger acquisitions right now that we look at are pretty expensive. People are paying prices that we are not going to. On the other hand, smaller acquisitions are available, and we expect to make some this year. I think we'll be patient for the larger ones, like we always have been. but we will make some smaller acquisitions this year. So we have a reasonable pipeline.
Noah
Got it. Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
Tom
And thank you, Noah, for sending those issues that you wanted some answers to. That was very helpful.
Noah
Okay, yeah, great to hear that. We're excited about that initiative, so glad to hear that it's helpful.
Tom
Very helpful. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Next is a question from Robert Jamieson with UBS. Please go ahead.
Joe
Robert Jamieson Good morning, John. Very helpful. Just one kind of smaller one on A&D electronics. You know, strong growth like expected for next year and another 80 to 90 basis points of margin expansion. Just curious how you're thinking about the growth split within commercial aerospace. between new builds and then MRO, and then how should we think about the puts and takes on margin there, maybe if MRO is a little bit pressured next year?
Tom
Let's stay with aerospace first. A significant amount of our revenue in aerospace is in the aftermarket because we have a very large embedded base in aircraft of various kinds. So we think that is going to be very helpful for us. We also are obviously in 737. We have a product line that's going into that. We think that's going to help us regardless of the current issues with bolts and so on. On the defense side, we are seeing some good programs in modernization, stockpile replacement, and we think those would be helpful to us. Obviously, we believe it'd be a balanced improvement, both in aerospace and in defense, perhaps 5% to 6% in each domain.
Joe
That's great. Thank you very much for that. And then this is kind of more of a random question, but just You know, we talked a little bit about capital allocation. You've got a full funnel, probably going to look to do some smaller acquisitions. You know, absent anything large, and I know this would be a deviation from what we've seen over the last, you know, several years, but would you have any interest in, you know, buying back stock? And then I guess, you know, one other kind of thought or question that's a bit random would be, just given, like, would you ever consider a stock split to maybe make it a little bit easier to trade, like tighten the bid-ask spread, and could that ever maybe make it easier for you to buy back stock? Thank you.
Tom
Split? No. Let me start there. The reason I say that, that's a pain for our investors, and 90-plus percent of our investors are institutional investors. We don't want to cause that kind of a problem for them. We have a very small fraction of our investors that are retail investors. Going back to buyback, right now we think our investment returns are much better reflected in acquisitions than stock buyback. You don't want to say never. Because stock goes down a lot, then it becomes attractive. I'm hoping that doesn't happen. We do have open authorization if we wanted to do that. Right now, I don't see that. As long as we have attractive acquisitions, even small ones, we'll do those. And there's nothing wrong also having some cash on the side in these days. with the interest rates that we're seeing. We have to pay down about $600 million of debt this year. In some ways, it's unfortunate because it's fixed debt at less than 1%, but then we don't have to pay down debt until 2026. We'll have a lot of cash available to do things. we think we'd be okay.
Joe
Great. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Tom
Of course.
Operator
As a final reminder, please press 1-0 for questions, and we have a follow-up from Joe Giordano. I'm so sorry if I pronounced your name wrong. He's representing TD Pollen. Please go ahead.
Greg Conrad
Hi, Joe.
Joe
Hey, thanks for the follow-up here. Just wanted to ask on the pricing environment. I know you said before that Maybe you took less price. I mean, price was so strong for kind of everyone for a long time here. But I think in some areas, maybe in some of the vision products, you took less price than you probably could have to kind of maintain share. And just curious how the pricing environment has evolved since you made those comments and what you're thinking and how price is a part of your guidance for next year.
Tom
First, going backwards, in 2013, We had some nice price increases. I'm going to say broadly 2% to 3%. Let's say 3%. We expect the same in 2024. In some areas, obviously, we were able to increase price more than 3%. But in some areas, like government contracts that are not fixed prices, they're cost plus, then you can't increase prices as such. So I think 2% to 3% is what we're looking at for 2024. Great.
Operator
Thank you.
Tom
For sure.
Operator
And we have no other participants queuing up at this time.
Tom
Thank you very much, Tom. I'll just have... I'll ask Jason to please conclude our call.
Jason Van Wees
Thanks, Robert. And again, thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. And if you have follow-up questions, please feel free to call me at the number on the earnings release. And, Tom, if you could give the replay information just at the conclusion, that would be ideal. Thanks, everyone.
Operator
Oh, yeah. One moment here. I have to pull that up. Sorry about that. Ladies and gentlemen, this will be available for replay if you give me one moment. It'll be available for replay in an hour, and it'll run through February 24th at midnight. You may access the AT&T replay service at any time by dialing 866-207-1041, 866-207-1041, and entering the access code of 459. And we thank you for your participation in using the AT&T event services. You may now disconnect.
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