Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Christopher D. Kastner: Yes, we absolutely expect it eventually to flow through. We – office is very important to us. We actually see that as an opening of markets, right? It’s an opening of markets in the U.K. and Australia. We think in the short term here, it’s really not material financially, but funds could flow next year in important areas like workforce development, supply chain assessment, infrastructure support. We’re following the Navy’s lead on this. They absolutely are being very methodical, in how they think through this, but we’re, we’re standing ready to support them and look forward to. But it’s really from top line standpoint, it’s more of a medium to long-term opportunity, but we need to make sure that we’re taking the steps now to ensure that we’re prepared for.

Jordan Lyonnais: Great. Thank you guys so much.

Christopher D. Kastner: Sure.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from George Shapiro from Shapiro Research. George, your line is open. Please go ahead.

George Shapiro: Hi. Yes. Good morning.

Christopher D. Kastner: Morning.

George Shapiro: Chris, I guess you increased your free cash flow for this year, but reduced it for next year. So, what was the timing that really caused that to occur? Because, obviously, you left a two year number the same.

Christopher D. Kastner: Yes. It’s just timing, George. As you know, from time-to-time, we’re you get receipts flowing sooner than you expect. The team’s working very hard on working capital. It’s a focus for us. I’ll let, Tom go into specifics.

Thomas E. Stiehle: Yes. So specifically here on 2023, what we’ve seen is some good performance on Mission Technologies, both topline and the cash collections. And how they’re performing in the MBSS. So, that is positive. Also, just kind of hitting on milestones right now, is adds, to the free cash flow at the end of the year, as well as we’ve come through the COVID repay with our customer set. We’ve worked ourselves through strategy and algorithm, how that applies to the contract. And that was a couple of dollars there too. So, that’s the confidence in the lift that we went from the midpoint of 425 to 500 for this year. As I’ve been pretty consistent on our five year target, the guiding light from mid-year this year through the end of next year is $1.2 billion.

So, we brought this year up to 75. A piece of that, as I said, is the retentions with the COVID. So, that was just timing anyway between ’23 and ‘24. If you notice between $5 and now $700 next year now from $780, it’s still the $1.2 billion. I think there’s tailwinds against that as we finish out this year. And opportunity sets kind of going forward, but we didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves. So we maintained a $1.2 billion target here. Okay.

George Shapiro: Okay. And just to follow-up, on the margins in the fourth quarter that, Doug, had asked about I mean, specifically, it looks like the fourth quarter’s got to be about 9.2% just to get to the low-end of your guide. Now, given the milestones in the fourth quarter, I would assume the biggest jump in the fourth quarter from normal is going to be at Newport News.

Thomas E. Stiehle: I think, the three remaining milestones are all important for us to kind of get into the range. And, we’re watching them as Chris, has a pathway on each of the three here. 796 is ready to go. I think we’re just waiting for transfer that ship. 798 should float off before the end of the year. And LPD 29, we’ve been saying since the beginning of the year that it’s just a race to, align up the final tasks, the ship to see in serve approving the ship, and then we see that whether that happens in December, the end of December or at the beginning of next year, those three are pretty significant milestones as they play out as we go forward here. I think opportunity sets on there may be a little EPA adjustment as we’ve seen rates high, and then just the consistent performance seen, we’ve seen some settling of performance over the last couple of quarters.