General Dynamics Corporation (NYSE:GD) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Phebe Novakovic: So, growth in the quarter was driven by improved — increased volume on Columbia and on the oiler program as well as additional throughput throughout each one of those yards, which is often a precursor to better margin performance. And finally, just the — revenue came in faster than we had anticipated, really across the board. And that will drive our expectations. With respect to the margin performance, we have — Columbia is doing very well. We’ve got nice performance on the oiler. We see some deck plate improvements of Bath, but that has yet to translate into financial performance. Electric Boat needs to continue to get better to offset likely additional supply chain challenges as the Virginia supply chain begins to improve.

And with respect to that supply chain, we see improvements and some very nice improvement in some area. But that supply chain was hit hard by COVID. And I think a little bit of explanation there is helpful. COVID impacted that supply chain, Virginia supply chain, in particular, in a couple of ways. Obviously, the impact of COVID itself, the workforce disruption. Then we had the large demographic changeover. And finally, Virginia was impacted by the Columbia prioritization. All of that made it difficult for that supply chain to begin to get back on cadence. They’re getting better, but we’ve got a while to go before they hit their two-a-year or more cadence.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Peter Arment from Baird.

Peter Arment: Thank you. Good morning, Phebe and Jason. Congrats, Howard. Hey Phebe, within Combat, munitions kind of is viewed as a potential source of kind of upside volume, and thanks for all the color on the segment. But how should we be thinking about the munitions growth profile? I mean, it’s about — finished last year, about 27% of your mix. Do you expect that mix to continue to grow? And any comments on the supply chain there as my follow-up, just because I know there’s been talk about challenges there. Thanks.

Phebe Novakovic: The supply chain in the Combat group has been less of an issue. I suspect that the — at least for the foreseeable future, the munitions portion of the business will remain about that, same as we see uplift in all of our all three businesses. We’ll see OTS at about that same level. We’ve already increased munitions capacity and working with the federal government and the Army and OSD in particular, we have a very detailed plan to further increase capacity, which will allow us then to increase production very rapidly and move to the left, the munition availability to meet the United States’ needs and, frankly, external needs as well.

Howard Rubel: Operator, we’ll just take one more question, please.

Operator: And our final question for today comes from the line of George Shapiro from Shapiro Research.

George Shapiro: Good morning, and congratulations, Howard. I didn’t figure I’d outlast you, but we’ve known each other a lot of years and…

Howard Rubel: George, it’s over 40, just counting.

George Shapiro: That’s right. Phebe, on the defaults that you mentioned, can you just mention what kind of customers they might have been? And I assume you keep the down-payments that might have been made on the aircraft that they order?

Phebe Novakovic: So I think you know we have very strong terms and conditions that you forfeit some of your value in the airplane when you cancel. I don’t actually know the context of the default, that won’t — nothing that was of note or interest, otherwise, I’d know it.

George Shapiro: Okay. And Jason, the unbilled receivables was actually up like $100 million sequentially. So, does that mean you didn’t get any payments from the expected customers in the quarter? And how much would you expect the rest of the year to come in?