Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And that’s on top of the much better investments, which we started to build three years back and will go live next year. That’s only in Israel, a broad new facility in the UK, in South Carolina, new facility in Bristol, UK, which we are going to know of it very soon. A new facility, which was another Elbit already in Germany to deliver more equipment to our European customers. So we took into account the growing demand. And we have mature products. We are local in our markets via the dozens of subsidiaries we have all over Europe and more around the globe. And we will be able to take more orders from the growing demand that we see, and to convert it in relatively short period of time to revenues and to profit. And because of that, we feel confident to mention the $6.5 billion to $7 billion revenues that we will be able to achieve.

This is a level of 10% okay.

Ella Fried : Well, it sounds like lots of work. And I have another follow-up question. Does it mean that we should be looking again at your pipeline? I mean, this also caused for some kind of, I don’t know, M&A or any kind of new acquisitions pipeline that will help all these workloads?

Butzi Machlis : Yes. But this is — yes, the answer — first, Ella, the answer is yes. But this is not just to handle the — the main reason — there are two main reasons for it, to do M&A. One is to expand our market position. And because of that, for example, we took the decision to acquire as part of the U.S. — in order to build a stronger position in the U.S. Navy. And because of that, we took a decision to acquire a nice vision in the U.S. as well, to improve our position in U.S. Army. These are just two examples. So one reason is to look for new markets, new market position. The other reason is — and we’re not talking about new markets, and new market position, this is mainly in the U.S. and Europe. And the other type of M&A we are looking is new technologies.

And another example for that is the acquisition of Rokar, which we acquired a few years back in Jerusalem, which brought us a new technology to the company. So we have proved already in the past that we know how to do M&A in a very good way. We know how to create synergies between them, and the new companies that we are acquiring to the portfolio of Elbit, the current portfolio of Elbit, and we know how to manage it. And so we certainly look for more opportunities to expand the company in these two aspects. On the same time, I would like to mention that we are — all the time, we are reviewing our portfolio. And we are making sure that what we have in our portfolio fits the strategy of the company today. Because of that, a year ago, we took a decision to divest Ashot Ashkelon, which was a great company.

But we took a decision to divest it not because it was not a good company. The reason for that because it was not synergistic to the portfolio. So it took a design to divest it, and we were happy that FIMI took a decision to acquire from us. It was a good deal for us and for them. So we continue this process as well. The parallel of looking for new M&A we are checking our portfolio at the time making sure that the current portfolio which we have fits the current strategy of the company.

Ella Fried : So can you shed a bit more light in both directions or we have to wait?

Butzi Machlis : I have nothing special to report right now. But I can tell you that we are both — we are working both directions and points.