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spk07: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Bombardier second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the discussion over to Mr. Francis Richer de la Fleche, Vice President, FP&A, and Investor Relations for Bombardier. Please go ahead, Mr. Richer de la Fleche.
spk09: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Bombardier's earnings call for the second quarter ended June 30th. I wish to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the financial performance of the corporation. There are risks that actual events and results may differ materially from these statements. For additional information on forward-looking statements and underlying assumptions, please refer to the MD&A. I am making this cautionary statement on behalf of each speaker on this call. With me today is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Martel, and our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Bart Demoski to review our operations and financial results for the second quarter of 2024. I would now like to turn over the discussion to Eric.
spk13: Alors, merci beaucoup Francis. Bonjour et bienvenue à toutes et à tous. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. I am speaking to you from London where Bombardier is wrapping up a successful and productive week at the Farnborough Airshow. For those who crossed us on the side, you probably saw that our presence was led by Bombardier Defence. It's shaping up to be a banner year for that team as we deepen relationships with governments and prime contractors in more geographies. Over the past few months, our ultra-dependable Challenger 650 aircraft was used for a winning campaign to deliver new border surveillance
spk00: surveillance capabilities in Finland.
spk13: We also won a Medevac deal in Germany that further demonstrates the plane's versatility. We also announced a new line station directly at Farnborough Airport. While we have a large-scale, brand-new facility in Biggen Hill, it's important that we balance capacity and convenience for customers. Line stations are important enablers that perform quick tasks. Essentially, This allows our full-scale service center to have more availability for larger maintenance packages. Our new FrontBureau line station joins a growing network of similar facilities. For example, last year, we ramped up the line station in Paris. Today, it has more than doubled its capacity versus our original plan. Clearly, there is significant momentum in the areas where we are diversifying and growing. In just a moment, I will also talk about the solid market we see on the business jet sales side. Before we turn to the excellent second quarter results, I wanted to reflect on the recent labor negotiation we concluded in Toronto. In the current economic context, we have seen a growing trend of workforce disruptions. Negotiations are getting more complex and, frankly, harder. It's becoming a reality across many industries. We came to a fair solution that supports our people as well as the company's long-term goals. We did lose 11 working days of production. So, as we move through the third and fourth quarter, we are working to address a bit of scheduled pressure that was created on a couple of tails. That being said, in order to land within our guidance range, all the aircraft we need are transitioning to the completion phase and are on track. Overall, we are on plan to meet our guidance. Revenue and deliveries for the second quarter saw impressive growth. We're up for more than 30% year over year in both of those columns. I have to say I am proud of the team's hard work to keep us on track to our plan as we continue to grow. We are very clearly outperforming peers when it comes to consistency and predictability on aircraft deliveries. This has created an environment where we can remain agile and approach any speed bumps in a methodical way. You'll not be surprised to hear me say that supply chain is still headwind. Ultimately, our biggest area for intervention remains on the engines. The most important thing to take home on that front is that our plan reflects what we learned from being very present upstream. We are working very closely with the engine makers. I can qualify their performance to be as we expected and planned for. More concretely, this means there is still work to be done to return to a level that I would qualify as good. They are getting traction on their recovery plans, but some remain more challenging than others. That said, I'll repeat it again, it's consistent with what we expected and we have adjusted accordingly. To keep our factories running steadily, book-to-bill and backlog is always an important focus for me and for my team. We've talked about the cruising altitude around one on a full year basis, and this is exactly where we are. We have benefited from how well our sales team has spread geographically over the first half of the year. In any given quarter, it's normal for activity to vary from market to market. So it's important we're there to seize the moment. The second quarter was a great example of this. We saw some softness in some traditional regions, but we were ready to close deals and seize opportunities in emerging regions. This allowed us to keep our steady pace. If I take a step back, we see market trends supporting our activities. We expect a stronger Q4 than Q3 due to the usual summer holiday period. So overall, taking into account typical seasonality curves, we remain very confident in sustained demand on an annualized basis. Predictability is a central pillar of our services growth. Capacity has been a huge focus for the last two to three years, and we have delivered. We are at a stage where we can fully optimize the network to hit the run rates we need to reach our long-term targets. The year-over-year trends are solid. We generated $507 million in Q2, another significant double-digit jump versus 2023. With that in mind, I can say with confidence that I see the finish line to where we want it to be in 2025, and we're ahead of our plan on it. The services team has incredible momentum. Beyond staffing and ramping the facilities, we're also continuing to be very agile in how we evolve the customer experience. This revolves around leveraging the power by the hour model through smart services. This helps us capture long-term revenue streams versus booking revenues from maintenance events one at a time. It's a win-win for us and for the customer. That's also the kind of predictability that will help level our revenue and profitability profile across quarters in not so distant future. On profitability, I am also pleased with our actuals. Bart will cover the remarkable 44% adjusted EPS jump and further metrics. Here, I'd like to underscore the 22% growth in the adjusted EBITDA total versus last year. We reached $335 million in the second quarter. This is a testament to how well we have managed our business, and no matter the product mix or other external factors, we have the ability to execute and deliver on our bottom line. I'll now turn the call over to Bart to walk through the detailed financials with you all. I'd like also to take the opportunity to once again congratulate our finance team on two more credit rating upgrades we secured in the past months. Bart, well done, and over to you.
spk12: Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everyone. Again, this quarter, Bombardier demonstrated both its strong execution and consistency at raising the bar. We've delivered impressive double digit growth in deliveries, revenues, services and profitability. We're on track to meeting our full year guidance and we have strong momentum as we enter the second half of the year. Our business is continuing to grow rapidly with Q2 revenues increasing by almost a third versus 2023. Our services revenues crossed above the $500 million mark for the first time, and that's a milestone that we've been talking about for the past three years, putting us in the right place to reach our 2025 services revenue objective of $2 billion, but doing it one year early. Our adjusted EBITDA and EBIT both grew double digits, as did our adjusted net income. Last but not least, our free cash flow usage was substantially reduced compared to the same quarter of last year, as well as the first quarter of 2024. As Eric noted, we have observed robust order activity in the first half of the year, as is reflected in our $14.9 billion multi-year backlog. We finished the quarter with a book-to-bill ratio of 1, supported by a diversified pipeline of orders across all customer types and geographies. During Q2, we continued strengthening our balance sheet by refinancing $750 million of our 2026 and 2027 notes, extending the maturity to 2032 at a 7% coupon rate. This follows a 7.25% refinancing we executed in the first quarter and brings our average coupon cost down to 7.41% versus 7.5 at the start of the year. We ended the quarter with $1.3 billion in available liquidity, just above the midpoint of our targeted range of $1 to $1.5 billion. Our net leverage, which is supported by a 12-month rolling EBITDA of $1.283 billion, was 3.5 times. Building on our recent achievements, and following our successful investor day on May 1st, we were pleased to receive two credit rating upgrades in the quarter. Moody's upgraded our rating from B2 to B1 on May 2nd, and on June 4th, S&P upgraded it from B to B+. These upgrades underscore the benefits of our deleveraging efforts and reflect our improved operating and financial performance, and as well, the de-risking of our balance sheet. Now, speaking of de-risking our business, we announced on July 1st that we reached an agreement to settle the New York bondholder lawsuit, the terms of which are confidential. I will say the settlement is not material to our financial results or consolidated cash position. And let me be clear, while we strongly believe the allegations in this case were completely without merit, We also believe that it is in the best interest of Bombardier to take risks off the table for small amounts whenever we can. Shifting to our financial performance for the quarter, we delivered sales of $2.2 billion, representing a 32% year-over-year growth. This growth is the result of 10 incremental aircraft deliveries for a total of 39 and an impressive 18%. or $79 million increase in aftermarket revenues over the same period last year. Our operations team performed exceptionally well and managed to bring in a few aircraft which were originally planned to be delivered in Q3. Our aftermarket business continued to deliver excellent results in the second quarter. Our facilities operated at near full capacity, generating $507 million in revenue representing 23% of our total sales in the quarter. This is an impressive performance. And as we look to the future, we anticipate more record-breaking performances given the significant long-term growth potential ahead for this business. Turning to profitability, adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter totaled $335 million, representing a 22% or $60 million increase versus Q2 of last year. Notably, the bulk of this growth came from margin on incremental aircraft deliveries. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was consistent with our expectations at 15.2%, albeit lower than the same quarter last year as a result of revenue mix. Adjusted EBIT was $216 million in the second quarter, a 14% increase from the previous year, with an EBIT margin of 9.8%. Adjusted net income remains solidly positive at $111 million, representing $1.04 of earnings per share. Looking at free cash flow, our $68 million cash usage in Q2 was a result of negative cash flow from ops of $31 million due to some working capital bills, along with CapEx investments of $37 million. We continued to invest heavily in our inventory in the second quarter, but our net position only slightly increased as this investment was offset by the high number of aircraft deliveries we achieved. Advances were down approximately $105 million as a result of the order and delivery mix. Our CapEx expense decreased to $37 million for the quarter, marking a reduction of more than 50% compared to the second quarter last year. and this was largely driven by the completion of our Pearson facility. We expect CapEx spend to ramp up somewhat in the second half of the year, with the overall expectation to be below the $300 million mark for the full year. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we are on track with our full year guidance. The first half results have been consistent with our expectations, and as we shared at the start of the year, we expect to have a significant number of deliveries and by association, revenues, profitability and free cash flow coming in the fourth quarter. A quick reminder on the third quarter, we do typically see reduced order activity and delivery activity in the summer months. This is driven by planned shutdowns of our manufacturing facilities as well as reduced customer activity during the months of July and August when vacations are taken. As such, we expect deliveries to be down by a few units versus Q3 of last year, in line with our production plan and factoring in the aircraft deliveries we managed to bring into the second quarter. Combined with continued inventory investments, we expect a modest cash usage again in Q3. Overall, we maintain confidence in our full-year guidance and remain focused on our executions. To conclude, I am very pleased with our results at the halfway mark of the year. We've achieved some remarkable accomplishments as a business, the team is performing at a high level, and I'm confident that we will continue to raise the bar in the second half. So with that, let me turn it back over to Francis to begin the Q&A. Francis?
spk09: Thanks, Mark. Operator, we'll begin the Q&A. Keep one question and one follow-up as you make your questions. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. If you'd like to withdraw a question, please press the star followed by the two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Konark Gupta from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
spk10: Thanks and good morning, everyone. My first question, I think you guys noted the strike had some sort of impact on production for deliveries that are coming up in the second half. It's only a few tails, I think, Eric. But can you just help us understand how the strike impacted the production and what kind of aircraft and was there also any impact on orders as customers were concerned that the strike may continue for longer?
spk13: Good morning Konark, great question. First, I'll answer your second question right away. Absolutely no impact on a customer taking order. You know, these things happen. As I said, it lasts a few more days, but in terms of working days, we lost about 11 days. But what we have to realize is most of the airplanes that are delivering this year were already in Montreal for completion. So there's only a few airplanes that are, you know, that were still in Toronto that will be flying to Montreal for completion, you know, this year. They already did for the majority of them. There's just a few left. So we had a bit of a delay on the few tails only. And we have a plan to catch up right now in Toronto. We are working heavily during shutdown in Toronto with about 500 people, even more. And we're going to be also catching up the remaining in Montreal during the completion cycle. So that's why we're saying no impact on our guidance for this year.
spk10: Thank you. And if I can follow up, perhaps for Bart, your leverage ratio is kind of tracking toward your target, clearly, for 2025. Is there a possibility that you can prioritize M&A over new products or shareholder returns, you know, as Spirit is looking to divest their non-commercial business, which I think includes the assets that Bombardier sold to them in 2020?
spk12: I can maybe take the first part, and Eric can jump in as well. Thank you, Conor. Good morning. We, at our investor day, I think, really tried to make things very, very clear that with our upcoming expected large amounts of free cash flow that we'll be delivering as a business, we have lots of flexibility when it comes to how we want to deploy that capital. Today, we have not come out and provided clear guidance yet. We will, after we meet with our board later this year, probably in the early part of next year, we'll come out with clearer guidance on how we plan to deploy that. But in the interim, all of the things that you mentioned are open to us. Certainly, debt repayment remains the number one priority for excess free cash flow that we have at the moment. We are not going to take our eyes off of that. We intend to continue our mission to pay down about another $800 million or so of gross debt over the next roughly 18, 17 months. So that remains number one priority. And then as you say, we'll have the ability to look at things like return of cash to shareholders, like investing in our existing fleet, and like M&A. But those are things that we'll come up with more information on later.
spk13: I think what was said, Bart, Clearly, you know, our priority, as Bart said, remain to repay debt. I think we've shown also, though, I don't think you should expect any substantial, you know, acquisition until this is done. But we've been, especially if there is issue in the supply chain, you remember that, you know, Latika back in the D'Arnais shop about a year ago. So we will continue if there is any supply chain pressure to consider, you know, maybe doing that once more. But our focus is debt repayment and clearly M&A will come after this is done. But again, possible, you know, to a lower magnitude to make some M&A. The thing I would say regarding Spirit, as you know, Spirit used to be part of OMRG for more than three decades. I'm talking not about the whole Spirit, but the Belfast portion. I think we've stated very clearly that, you know, our priority right now is clearly to make sure that the existing contract will be upheld at the highest standard, you know, for quality, for delivery, respecting the contract. That's our priority, and that's why we have on a regular basis, people in Belfast working on this priority to make sure that the material keeps flowing because they made basically most of the fuselage on our airplane. We are clearly monitoring the next step and as a customer we're willing to provide the appropriate whatever operational or structural or legal input to that. But, you know, we'll see. There'll be potential buyer at some point. We could consider also, you know, to be one of them. We'll see what the market says. But I think what is important to us will be that whoever the buyer is, you know, we need to be comfortable with these guys to be there for the long run. And if there's nobody, we could, again, be considering that as an option.
spk10: That's great, Collin. Thanks. I much appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much.
spk07: Your next question comes from Benoit Poirier from Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yeah. Good morning, everyone, and congrats for the strong execution in Q2. Just in terms of booking, could you maybe provide more granularity about any particular strength among the customer type or geographies that surprised you in Q2 in terms of booking?
spk13: Yeah, great question. Good morning, Benoit. Clearly, you know, where I mentioned, you know, during my speech here that we are benefiting from a very significant geographical presence, you know, so we can always adapt and we always seize the opportunity. But if I look at the last quarter on gross order, it was actually very well distributed. You know, North America was still very strong, slightly, maybe a couple of points lower than, you know, usual, but not by a lot, you know, a couple of points. But clearly the one place that was strong was Middle East and Africa was strong, but also APAC was strong. So, and the other thing that I should say is our defense business also is getting its fair share of those orders in line with what we are expecting in terms of growth for that business. So, again, a well distributed, you know, our backlog, as you saw, remains very stable. We have 18 to 24 months. We see, and more detail on the platform, you know, you saw in defense, you know, us doing something with Sweden, the Finnish border, Pegasus, Medevac. So we're super pleased. But clearly, North America remains strong. Middle East, APAC were the driver for the last quarter.
spk05: That's great. And just in terms of follow-up, backlog is now closer to $15 billion. with over 200 options, which obviously provide great visibility. So, any desire to deliver more than 150 aircraft in the long term, or are you sticking to the original plan disclosed at the investor day?
spk13: It's still the plan. Right now, I think we want it to be disciplined. uh about you know increasing rates so i think the 150 range and you know this is a plus or minus minus a few airplane but 150 is what we foresee uh you know we will always reassess you're right we have a couple of hundred options in our backlog which are not counting by the way in our in our backlog i'm sure you know that but that's uh also uh interesting because those those uh options actually continue to come in on a regular basis that's it okay thank you very much for the time
spk07: Your next question comes from Fadi Shamoum from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk02: Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is on the mix and the margins. So the EBIT margin was off a little bit and I'm wondering if you can provide some kind of background on mix and what's driving that. And I noticed also you mentioned that there was a mix of orders as well that affected the advances. If you could give us a little bit of background color on that. And the second question is on, I mean, the Belfast plant and the potential for reintegrating some of these assets like I don't recall exactly prior, you know, did some commercial stuff, did some business aviation stuff. How should we think about the scope of that potential acquisition to you if you end up going into that direction?
spk12: Yeah, I'll maybe take the first part. Fadi and good morning, it's Bart here. And then I'll turn it back over to Eric to talk about Spirit. On the EBIT and the margins, looking at adjusted EBIT, on a year-over-year basis, just to simplify it, we did have a couple of one-timers last year in the same quarter that would not be repeated. They were related to the divestment of our commercial aircraft business to Airbus a couple of years ago at this time. And so those were finally closed out on settlements. So those gave a bit of a difference in year over year comparison. So that explains most of the difference if you're looking for that there. From a mixed point of view, what we had spoken about at Investor Day and earlier this year was that we did intend, because we had such a strong order activity on the challenger front last year that we were going to have more challenger deliveries than globals this year. But this year we were also expecting much stronger new sales activity on the global front, and that also occurred in Q2. So you're seeing the two things which are contrasting, higher challenger deliveries, which impacts our mix and margin this year, but stronger global sales overall, which will help us grow our margins. in 2025.
spk13: Maybe, Fadi, on the spirit aspect, so just to refresh everybody's memory, we sold the asset Belfast in 2020. And at the time, basically Belfast was producing, they have mainly three businesses. As I said earlier, we know the facility very well as we were owning the facility for more than three decades. So the main business was the fuselage, fuselage to our airplane. So they provide the fuselage on the boat Challenger and two out of the three Global. At the time they were also building the wing for what has become the A220 and they were also having a nice aftermarket business and nacelle business. So today you've seen the announcement that were made early July by Boeing and Airbus basically buying Spirit, but with a carve out of some Airbus activities. So if you look at Belfast specifically, they will be carving out the wing business for the A220. but the RemainCo will be basically what they still have and sold is basically the fuselage business, which is basically fuselage being delivered to Bombardier in totality, plus the nacelle business and the aftermarket business. So that's what will be left. And that's what I said that RemainCo will see and we'll make sure we exercise our contractual right about who's buying. But at the end, depending on how this is playing out, we could be interested also, as we would like to make sure that if another buyer can guarantee, as I said earlier, the long-term visibility on pricing, on execution, delivering on time and quality of the product, we're open to that, but we could also be the solution.
spk02: Okay, that's helpful. But on the EBIT margin comment, Bart, I was referring to the adjusted EBIT margin. I'm not sure if these items you mentioned were in that EBIT margin, like the adjusted EBIT margin dollar, which was, I think, off like 150 basis points year on year. I didn't see kind of like the mix in large and medium is kind of the same versus last year. We have a little bit higher aftermarket, but it feels like maybe within the large, there's a mix or You know, the MDNA talks about lower contribution from large aircraft. I just wanted to understand the background behind that comment.
spk00: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
spk12: Sorry, Fadi. Thanks. So, again, there is MIX, as you pointed out. And MIX does include and something that, you know, over time, will become a larger part of the overall mixed story as our defense business grows. So when you're considering mix, because the EBITDA margins on green aircraft sold in the defense business are quite material relative to a fully finished aircraft, there is a nice delta there. That's something else that you need to take into account. So year over year in that quarter. we did have some differences of deliveries in the mix relative to defense aircraft. That would make up, in large part, the extra difference that you're talking about on adjusted EBIT.
spk02: Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.
spk14: Okay, thank you.
spk07: Your next question comes from James McGarigal from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hey, thanks for having me on, and congrats on the really strong quarter. But I just wanted to ask a question on the services growth, you know, that came in really strong in the quarter. You know, you met your 2025 targets, but if we look at Bombardier versus peers, you know, there's still, you know, in my view, some substantial runway looking ahead. So just given that you met your 2025 targets, you know, is it reasonable to think this level of growth that we saw in the quarter could persist into a 2025? And just how are you thinking about that a little longer term?
spk13: I think, James, the way we're thinking about this is, you know, first of all, we're very happy with the growth we had this year, something like around 18% year over year. It now represents about 23%. And I think, as we mentioned during Investor Day, there is clearly quite a bit of capability there to grow even further, either by market share or Could be acquisition also, but, you know, the five, more than 5,000 airplanes flying out there, you know, will require more maintenance. So I think it's in line. You remember we said that we foresee that by 2030 we're going to have half of our revenue coming from your aircraft delivery. The remaining 50% will come from defense and services. So to your point, absolutely. You know, there's growth, and I think that growth will continue to be strong.
spk03: Thank you. And then just going back on margin, you did a good job of kind of highlighting some of the impacts to Q2. But a few competitors earlier this week, they kind of referenced some higher costs related to the supply chain, you know, that they're expecting to impact margins a little longer term. So, you know, when we look out to 25, you know, the street's expecting even a margins around 17 and a half percent. You have your own targets out there. You know, are you still comfortable in that number given, you know, some of the higher costs we're seeing associated with continuing supply chain issues?
spk13: Yeah, absolutely. I think what we've seen so far, and we said it earlier, even for this year, we knew that the supplier will not turn the corner right, you know, in a few weeks. So it's going to take time. I think that's why we've planned earlier. I think properly this year based on their performance right now, we've planned a certain number of airplanes. We are still feeling good about the recovery we're seeing to enable next year's deliveries. The supplier are, as I said earlier, most of them have traction in their recovery plan and we see an improvement. Still a lot of work to do. We're not in a position where I can say we're in good shape. but eventually we will, but it's actually at least tracking in the right direction to support this year and next year's ambitions.
spk03: Thank you, and I'll turn the line over.
spk14: Thanks, James. Thank you.
spk07: Your next question comes from Cameron Darkson from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
spk11: Yeah, thanks. Good morning. I just had a question about labor. You made a I guess a point in the prepared remarks just with regards to labour negotiations becoming more challenging, and obviously you saw that with the situation in Toronto earlier. I'm just wondering if you can talk about your sort of expectation for labour cost inflation over the next few years. Has something, I guess, changed materially that potentially impacts your financial targets, or is there an offset to higher labour costs versus what was expectations maybe a couple of years ago? Just any thoughts on that.
spk13: Yes. I think we said earlier, our overall costs, of course, have increased over the last couple of years, you know. And I think, you know, we all know the situation we're in with COVID and what happened after. But I think, you know, it was always offset by better price increase also on our airplanes. So I think we've been seeing this coming together, sticking together over the last couple of years and that's we also foresee moving forward. that we will be able, especially with the two years of backlog, we're in a good place to keep pricing and keep increasing it. And yes, labor has increased probably a bit faster in the last couple of years, but we will also see this normalizing. And I think the collective agreement we're renewing reflect that. Very often there's a bigger increase in the first year, and then it's a, I would call it a more normalized increase in further years. So we have visibility because remember we just negotiated Toronto but as an example in Montreal we had a five-year contract the last time so when we negotiated two more collective agreements earlier this year, one being in Texas in the Red Oak and one in Mexico so you know we had three to do this year they're done now and we're getting ready there's only one next year so we're thinking about that in that sense.
spk11: Okay, that is very helpful. And just maybe just for the follow-up, just a question for Bart, just on your sort of working capital expectations and I guess the free cash flow guide for the full year. I mean, there was somewhat of a wide variance to begin the year. You've got a little more visibility on what you've needed to invest in inventory. Any further thoughts on that range on the free cash flow? Is it trending towards the lower end or higher end?
spk12: Good morning, Cam. Yeah. What I would say about free cash flow is it's trending towards the range of guidance we've provided. But just to add a little bit of clarity to that and so that you've got a bit of granularity for Q3 and Q4, I mentioned earlier in my comments that because we brought a few planned deliveries from Q3 into Q2, That is going to impact our delivery profile in the second quarter. So while we're building aircraft, that does mean very likely we'll have a little bit of working capital usage build in the quarter. Q4 is shaping up for a very strong delivery quarter in terms of percentages of aircraft to be delivered in the year, much like last year, so a little bit more than 40%. But as Eric highlighted earlier, all those aircraft, except for a couple, are in Montreal at our finishing centers as we speak, and the team is doing just an excellent job getting all those aircraft to deliver. What that does mean is, like last year, where we had a very, very strong free cash flow quarter in Q4, we're expecting the same type of dynamics this year.
spk11: Okay. No, that's great. Thanks very much.
spk14: Okay, super.
spk11: Thank you.
spk14: Thanks.
spk07: Your next question comes from Jang Singh from Citi. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hey, thanks for taking my question. It's Jay Singh dialing on for Stephen Trent. Yes, the first thing I want to ask is, you know, you spoke already on defense at Farm Bureau. I mean, this is a follow-up I want to ask. What was the mood like there and any other key takeaways that you could provide us with? Thank you.
spk13: Yeah. No, I think – thanks for the question, Jay. I guess, you know, I spent quite a bit of time with the team yesterday and the day before in Farm Bureau. Our boot and chalet were both actually well occupied, mainly for defense business, as you know, over us here. And that's why we have a different presence than before. Since we're not in the commercial aircraft anymore, you know, we're focused on defense. And it's never been a show for private aviation. Private aviation have their own show with eBase and NBAA, where we're attending, of course. the focus was on defense and the momentum is great. I can tell you, and I said that earlier, the number of countries, geographies, politicians we're meeting that have ambitions in defense with better equipment, more civilians, et cetera, is actually very significant. So we are pleased with that because I think we do offer platforms that are game changers in the industry. Our platforms, either Challenger or Global, are very capable. They are cost-effective. We have the knowledge also to modify these airplanes in-house, working also with Mission House on those projects. So clearly, a very strong show for us here in Farnborough with a lot of discussion with different potential buyers.
spk14: Thanks, Nicolas. Thank you so much.
spk07: Your next question comes from Miles Walton from Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, good morning. You have Lewer Fetto on for Miles.
spk14: Yeah, good morning, Lee.
spk08: So maybe just to go back to the margin question, you know, this quarter sort of sets you up very, you know, similar, I think, what 2025 will look like, but the margins are still, you know, 300 base points below where you kind of expect them to be next year. So Bart, I'm not sure, can you give us some sense of a a walk to how we're going to get from the 15 to the 18?
spk12: Sure. So a few things. One, as we look out into 2025 relative to 2024, just one thing to keep in mind is that because we are expecting very strong continued revenue growth strong EBITDA growth. And in our case, EBITDA typically is 100% conversion into free cash flow because we're paying little in the way of any sort of cash taxes. But in terms of what will make up the incremental EBITDA growth for the company, year over year, we're probably looking at some additional, not only deliveries, but revenues from modification work and others from our defense business. So that's going to be a strong contributor. As well, aftermarket growth, as Eric highlighted in his comments earlier, we expect that to remain strong. The level of activity in our aftermarket business for us is unprecedented to have basically all of our facilities full at all times allows us for opportunities to not only be growing revenues there, but to take account of efficiencies within the business through our workforce and through continuous improvements. So we're expecting more growth there. We know through the aircraft that we have sold and are built into our backlog today that we will deliver next year that we have a nice pricing tailwind. relative to this year and in prior years. And as well as I've highlighted earlier on in my comments, we are expecting to deliver more globals next year than this year. So if we came in at roughly the same number of aircraft deliveries this year relative to next year, that's a nice mix improvement as well. And that will add to both EBITDA and EBIT growth. So those are the key building blocks for next year, Lou.
spk08: Thank you. Maybe just to that point on globals, I know you reiterated the entry in the service of the 8,000 next year. Is there just not enough of those to be of, I guess, concern, in a sense, from the margin point of view?
spk13: No. You know, we're still planning to have the first 8,000 delivering next year in Q4. the change our planning or tracking well and no, so we feel that we're going to deliver, as Bart just said, more global going into next year.
spk08: Thank you very much.
spk14: Thank you, sir.
spk07: Your next question comes from Noah Poponac from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk14: Hey, good morning, everyone. Yeah, good morning, Noah.
spk01: Bart, What's your latest thinking on what this working capital change looks like next year versus this year? I know you have a decent amount of build this year related to the expectation to deliver more globals next year. Maybe just remind us what other moving pieces there are this year. And yeah, how's that shaping up to look next year just since it's been such a big swing factor in 24?
spk12: Yeah, it's a good question, Noah. It was a big swing factor in 23 as well. So we've been working our way through two years of growing production levels to meet the growth in demand and higher deliveries. Next year, once we line out what our delivery schedule looks like and plan, we'll be able to give a bit more clarity on that. But as it stands today, working capital neutral if we're delivering about the same number of aircraft next year relative to this year, albeit we might have a bit of change in there depending on what the 26 delivery profile looks like from a mixed point of view. And as you highlighted, the other thing we've been working through this year is because global order activity is higher, that does use a little bit more working capital than if we're building challengers. They're just larger aircraft with more dollars of bill of materials that goes into each plane. So aside from that, because we don't anticipate we'll be having to absorb considerably more growth in production, relatively neutral, and as we see it today from a free cash flow point of view, we're firmly on track to achieving our stated goal of $900 million or better.
spk01: Okay, great. And then I also wanted to ask about defense. You know, at the Investor Day, you sort of laid out the 2030 possibilities, and I've been thinking of that as a longer-dated opportunity, but maybe can you just level set us on how much defense revenue is there in the business now, like what's in 2024 or what was it in 23? And I guess... is it a lot of just campaigning for a few years and then it's really ramping closer to 2030? Or how big can this be, I guess, in 25, 6, to the extent it's in high demand and maybe moving faster than I had appreciated?
spk12: Yeah, I think, Noah, when we came out a little over a year ago and spoke for the first time about... you know, our ambitions for defense. We highlighted then that we felt that roughly a 300% growth by the end of the decade was possible. That would get us to somewhere close to a billion dollars in revenues. And keep in mind, this business, because of the nature of it for us, has a very, very compelling margin profile as well. So strong margin contributor. When we spoke on May 1st this year, we had an additional year under our belts of being in the market with a full sales team and all of the support staff we need to be meeting with all of the right constituents around the globe where there's opportunities for us either through primes or directly with defense departments to be selling. And so it gave us a lot more clarity around what the market potential was for the areas that we are participating in. So delivery of aircraft, modifications and engineering work. So not adding anything on next. And we highlighted that we felt, hey, the potential is greater, probably another 50% higher than what we had thought. So going from one to one and a half billion by the end of the decade. We see no change there. In fact, as we work through our strategic planning, we're looking at ways to perhaps even grow that further. But the billion and a half is where we're targeting now. The exciting thing is, as Eric highlighted with the number of campaigns we've participated in already, we're starting to fill in the slots on a quarterly basis going forward. And we'll go from a handful of aircraft per year to multiple aircraft deliveries per quarter is the ultimate goal. So this could become a very consistent business as well in terms of delivering both revenues and profitability, and that's our expectation. But aside from that, it's a little bit difficult until we get all the orders in, no matter how many campaigns we're participating in, to give you greater clarity than that.
spk01: Okay. Okay. I appreciate all of the detail. Thank you. Okay, super. Thank you. Thanks, Noah.
spk07: And our last question for today comes from David Strauss from Barclays. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, good morning. This is Josh Korn on for David. Just wondering if you would comment on the pricing of what's in the backlog and new orders coming in, anything on the pricing environment. Thanks.
spk13: Yeah, maybe I can start, Bart, and feel free to But the pricing is exactly to our expectation, if not better in some cases. But overall, you know, we're meeting the target that we had, which are involving some slight increase year over year. But, you know, we're selling, as you know, airplane already. We have clear visibility for the backlog this year and next year, as we have 18 to 24 months. So we have good line of sight for that. on the pricing because they're already sold for a majority. But also what we're selling as we had a, you know, we just had a pretty good quarter. Most of these airplanes are going to be selling in 26, if not in 27. So which gives us great level of comfort on pricing year over year.
spk00: Josh, you're still there?
spk06: Just one for me, thanks.
spk14: Okay, thank you, Josh. Thank you.
spk07: And this concludes the Q&A session for today. I will turn the call back over to Eric for closing remarks.
spk13: All right. So thank you, everyone, for joining us today. The company is clearly well into the fourth year of our journey centered on business aviation. Our being able to post double-digit growth year over year underscores, I think, our focus business model. The strength of our plan also stands out. And I need to highlight also the team's unwavering ability to execute. So at the same time, for those of you who will be taking some time to rest and recharge in the coming weeks, I wish you a pleasant and safe summer holiday. And thank you again for participating this morning.
spk07: Ladies and gentlemen this concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you.
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