Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 1, 2024

Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $6.9, expectations were $4.27. Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2023 HII Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Christie Thomas, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Thomas, you may begin.

Christie Thomas: Thank you, operator, and good morning. I’d like to welcome everyone to the HII fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today on the call are our President and CEO, Chris Kastner; and Executive Vice President and CFO, Tom Stiehle. As a reminder, statements made today that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to be materially different from future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Please see our SEC filings for important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from expected results.

Also in their remarks today, Chris and Tom will refer to certain non-GAAP measures. For reconciliation of these metrics to the comparable GAAP measures, please see the slides that accompany this webcast, which are available on the Investor Relations website at ir.hii.com. With that, I would like to turn the call over to President and CEO, Chris Kastner. Chris?

Christopher Kastner: Thanks, Christie, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. 2023 was a strong year for HII. We continue to invest both in our shipyards and in [IRAD] to both expand capacity and develop new products and solutions for our customers. Our growth rate for the year of more than 7% and our free cash flow generation of almost $700 million demonstrate that we’re entering a period of accelerated growth and increased free cash flow generation. In addition to record sales growth with 2023 revenues of $11.5 billion, fourth quarter revenue was especially strong across all three divisions, with 13% year-over-year growth and a record $3.2 billion of revenue. In 2023, net earnings were $681 million, 18% higher than the prior year and strong free cash flow of $692 million was 40% higher than 2022.

We also had $12.5 billion of contract awards in 2023, resulting in backlog of $48 billion at year-end. At Ingalls, we delivered DDG 125 Jack H. Lucas, the first Flight III ship and NSC 10 Calhoun. Our DDG 51 team was also awarded the contracts for seven destroyers in the FY ’23 multiyear procurement competition. In our amphibious ship programs, we were awarded a $1.3 billion detailed design and construction contract for LPD 32 and launched LHA 8 Bougainville, the third big deck amphibious warship in the America class. Ingalls expects to complete sea trials and deliver LPD 29, Richard M. McCool, Jr. in the first half of 2024. At Newport News, we redelivered CVN 73 USS George Washington after completing her refueling and complex overhaul and continue to progress on the test program for CVN 79 John F.

Kennedy. In the Virginia-class program last year, we were awarded the long lead time material for two additional Block V boats and the first two boats of Block VI. We completed work on SSN 796 New Jersey and expect to deliver in the first half of 2024. And SSN 798 Massachusetts is nearing float-off which we anticipate in the first quarter of 2024. In addition to the 2024 milestones, we’ve included our 2025 milestone outlook, which reflects our continued focus on execution. Regarding our workforce, I’m pleased with the positive progress in hiring. We hired over 6,900 craft personnel in 2023 and continue to see progress early this year. For 2024, we have a hiring target of approximately 6,000 craft personnel. The competition for skilled labor and shipbuilding and the larger manufacturing sector continues to impact our shipyards and our supply base.

With our Navy partner, we will continue to invest in our team to improve worker retention and proficiency, both within our shipyard and in the supply chain to ensure we fulfill our contractual commitments and meet our financial objectives. At Mission Technologies, we delivered another outstanding quarter, performing ahead of plan across all business units, leading to strong revenue growth in 2023. In addition to the record revenue growth, Mission Technologies booked new and recompete contract awards with nearly $6 billion in total contract value. Also, Mission Technologies ended the year with a robust business pipeline of $75 billion, which makes us optimistic about potential growth opportunities in 2024. Key growth drivers include support for mission readiness in artificial intelligence, cyber and electronic warfare, advanced modeling and simulation, LVC and C5 ISR.

Turning to activities in Washington, D.C. for a moment. We are pleased with the passage and enactment of the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2024. The FY ’24 NDAA strongly supports our shipbuilding programs including multiyear procurement authority for Virginia Class Block 6 submarines and incremental funding authority for LPD 33. The Defense Authorization Act also includes necessary authorities to support the implementation of the AUKUS agreement. Looking ahead over the next five years, we expect revenue growth of more than 4% and cash generation of $3.6 billion. Our expectations are grounded on the assumption that we must deliver on our commitments to our customers. Also, while the trajectory may not be linear due to the timing of ship milestones and material timing, we expect that HII will be generating approximately $15 billion annually in revenue by the end of the decade.

As always, fundamental to our expectations for the business is executing on our contracts and developing and providing solutions to our all domain customers. We take this responsibility very seriously and remain focused on executing our program commitments. So with that, I will turn the call over to Tom for some remarks on our financial results and guidance. Tom?

Thomas Stiehle: Thanks, Chris, and good morning. Today, I’ll review our fourth quarter and full year results and also provide our outlook for 2024. For more detail on the segment results, please refer to the earnings release issued this morning and posted to our website. Beginning with our consolidated fourth quarter results on Slide 4. Our Q4 revenues of $3.2 billion increased approximately 13% compared to the same period last year. This growth was driven primarily by higher year-over-year revenue at all three segments, leading to record quarterly revenue for HII. Operating income for the quarter of $312 million increased by $207 million or 197% from the fourth quarter of 2022, and operating margin of 9.8% compared to margin of 3.7% in the prior year period, up 609 basis points.

The increase in operating margin was primarily due to higher segment operating income. Net earnings in the quarter were $274 million compared to $123 million in the fourth quarter of last year, up 123%. Diluted earnings per share in the quarter was $6.90 compared to $3.07 in the fourth quarter of the previous year. Moving to our consolidated results for the full year. Revenues were a record $11.5 billion for the year, a significant increase of 7.3% from 2022. The improvement was driven by strong year-over-year growth at all three segments. Operating income for the year was $781 million and operating margin was 6.8%. This compares to operating income of $565 million and operating margin of 5.3% in 2022. The operating income growth was primarily driven by year-over-year improvement in segment operating income at all three segments.

Net earnings for the year were $681 million, compared to $579 million in 2022, up 17.6% and diluted earnings per share was $17.07 compared to $14.44 in 2022, up 18.2%. For segment results on Slide 5, Ingall’s revenues of $2.8 billion in 2023 increased $182 million or 7.1% from 2022, driven primarily by higher volumes in surface combatants and amphibious assault ships partially offset by lower NSE program revenues. Ingalls’ operating income of $362 million and margin of 13.2% in 2023, both improved from 2022 results driven primarily by a $70.5 million sale of a court judgment to recover unpaid receivables for the prior repair, refurbishment and modernization of foreign built frigates. The higher volumes that I just mentioned and the contract incentive on DDG 129, partially offset by lower risk retirement on LPD 28 and LPD 30 than the prior year.

At Newport News, 2023 revenues of $6.1 billion increased by $281 million or 4.8% from 2022, primarily due to higher volumes in aircraft carrier construction and engineering and submarines and partially offset by lower revenues in the RCOH program and naval nuclear support services. Newport News 2023 operating income of $379 million increased $22 million from 2022 and margin of 6.2% was relatively consistent with 2022 performance. The increase was driven by higher volumes I just discussed, and a revenue adjustment on CVN 73, partially offset by contract incentives on the Columbia Class Submarine Program in 2022. Shipbuilding margin for 2023 was 8.3%. Admission technology, 2023 revenues of $2.7 billion increased $312 million or 13.1% from 2022, primarily driven by higher volumes in C5 ISR and cyber, electronic, warfare and space contracts.

Mission Technologies 2023 operating income of $101 million and segment operating margin of 3.7%, both improved operating income of $63 million and segment operating margin of 2.6% in 2022, driven primarily by a $49.5 million settlement of representations and warranties insurance claim relating to the acquisition of hydroids. And the higher volumes I described, partially offset by a contract loss and lower equity income due to the sale of a joint venture. Mission Technologies 2023 results included approximately $109 million of amortization of purchased intangible assets compared to approximately $120 million in 2022. Mission Technologies EBITDA margin for 2023 was 8.6%. Turning to cash. 2023 free cash flow was $692 million, handily beating the guidance due to strong year-end collections as well as benefiting from the sale of the Frigate court judgment and settlement of the reps and warranty insurance claims I’ve highlighted.

During the year, the company reduced debt by $480 million, invested $278 million in capital expenditures, paid $200 million in dividends and used $75 million to repurchase shares, while ending 2023 with $430 million in cash on hand and the liquidity of approximately $1.9 billion. Net capital expenditures finished the year at 2.4% of revenues, just under 2022’s value of 2.5%. Cash contributions to our pension and other postretirement benefit plans totaled $44 million in 2023. Our pension outlook for 2024 has improved from the update we provided in November, given the better-than-expected returns to assets, partially offset by a decrease in discount rates since that time. Asset returns for 2023 were 12.3%. Pension expectations for 2025 through 2027 have been updated.

And similar to the update we provided for 2024 last quarter, the fast benefit has increased from our last update, given the more immediate recognition of the positive asset returns experienced in 2023. This is partially offset by the impact of the lower discount rate. We’ve also provided an initial view of our 2028 expectations. Turning to Slide 7 of our financial outlook for 2024. Given backlog growth performance in 2023 and the strong demand for our products and services, we are now forecasting mid- to long-term HII revenue growth of 4-plus percent. For shipbuilding mid- to long-term forecast revenue growth has increased from 3% to approximately 4%, although growth in 2024 will be tempered due to the outperformance in 2023. Accordingly, we are forecasting 2024 shipbuilding revenue between $8.8 billion and $9.1 billion.

For 2024, we expect shipbuilding operating margin to be between 7.6% and 7.8% as we continue to target incremental margin improvement. For Mission Technologies, we continue to expect approximately 5% mid- to long-term top line growth. And again, due to the 2023 outperformance driven by approximately $80 million of material timing. We expect tempered growth for FY ’24, forecasting revenue between $2.7 billion and $2.75 billion. And we expect Mission Technologies operating margins to be between 3% and 3.5% and EBITDA margins to be between 8% and 8.5%. In 2024, amortization and purchased intangible assets is expected to total approximately $109 million, of which $99 million is attributable to Mission Technologies. We expect first quarter revenues of approximately $2.2 billion for shipbuilding and $650 million for Mission Technologies, with shipbuilding operating margin near 7% and Mission Technologies operating margin near 2.5%.

Moving on to capital expenditures. As we’ve discussed in prior quarters, we continue to see the long-term capital expenditure rate of 1.5% to 2% of general sustainment. In the near term, given the significant demand in submarine construction, we are partnering with our Navy customer to invest in expanding our shipbuilding capacity and throughput. The investment is expected to drive CapEx to approximately 5% on average for the next three years, with 2024 targeted to be approximately 5.3% of sales. I will note that the sustainable free cash flow levels we’ve previously discussed are not expected to be impacted by this due to customer investment, evidenced by the projected free cash flow growth over the next five years, I’ll provide shortly. Additionally, on Slide 7, we have provided our updated outlook for a number of other discrete items to assist with your modeling.

Moving on to Slide 8. We have provided an updated view of our free cash flow outlook for 2024 of $600 million to $700 million, ending our prior five year free cash flow projection period with an estimate of $3 billion up from our prior estimate of $2.9 billion. I’m also pleased to provide a free cash flow outlook for the next five years or for FY ’24 to ’28 of approximately $3.6 billion. I would note that these forecasts do not include Section 174 deferral, which if it occurs, would beat a tailwind to approximately $150 million to $200 million in 2024. On Slide 9, we provided our capital allocation prioritization model unchanged from previous discussions, but updated for current events. We continue to remain committed to an investment-grade rating and have reduced our leverage ratio to under two turns at the end of 2023, a year earlier than planned.

In addition, we finished paying off our $650 million term loan in January of 2024, which concludes our debt repayment prioritization while securing our investment-grade ratings and credit metrics. In 2024, we expect to return approximately $500 million of free cash flow to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Lastly, on this slide, the Board has approved a revision to our share repurchase program in both term and amount resulting in available share repurchase authorization of $1.5 billion through 2028. To close on my remarks, company’s mainstay programs are well supported in demand, and MT’s growth success continues to expand and diversify our portfolio. Our future is bright and within our control by executing on our current production contracts and capitalizing on the growth demand for HII products and services.

We’ve exceeded our 2023 financial guidance metrics in terms of revenue, profitability and free cash flow while investing in our programs to facilitate growth and throughput. Additionally, we’ve strengthened our balance sheet, paying down debt and lowering our leverage ratio. Lastly, fine-tuned the HII investment thesis on the last page of the earnings presentation, focusing on the portfolio strength and visibility execution and growth and free cash flow expansion driving our current and future capital allocation commitments. With that, I’ll turn the call back over to Christie for Q&A.

Christie Thomas: Thanks Tom. [Operator Instructions] Operator, I will turn it over to you to manage the Q&A.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today is from Myles Walton from Wolf Research. Myles, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Myles Walton: Great. Thanks. Good morning. Maybe to start with the CapEx change, obviously, pretty material, $300 million annualized step up in run rate. A couple questions on it. One, why isn’t it dropping through a higher revenue run rate in the near term, like ’24? And second, why is it only a couple three-year investment? What specifically is it going towards? Thanks.

Thomas Stiehle: Hi, good morning, Miles. Tom here, I appreciate the question. Yes, so we mentioned here that traditionally we look at maintaining the yards to be about – 1% to 1.5% with about another point-to-point to have specific projects. As we’ve talked about in the recent past, we have a lot of activity that’s going on in the yards, acquisitions specifically at Newport News, and driving down into the submarine program there. So, we’re putting more boats on contract in on VCS in the Columbia program. And as we’re working ourselves through those negotiations and schedules, we see – it necessitates additional capacity and throughput. So in conversations with our Navy partner, we’ve partnered on what that means. There’ll be – a couple more buildings, more capacity in the yard, and its requiring investments.

Just over three years, we have defined projects that, we’ve worked through and we’ve gotten approved through the Board and with the Navy. And the investment there from the Navy will pay for the majority of that. So as much as it rolls through, I’m capitalizing the projects themselves. I’ll get the investments on the contracts, to help offset that. So it’s a three-year run, it peaks out. The first year at 5.3%. And as I said, we’ve kind of given you, what the free cash flow projection is from ’24 to ’28 to kind of evidence that, we’re still good to our thesis of the cash flow inflection to $700 million plus as we go forward. There’s a shake to it, obviously, of that $3.6 billion I gave you. And obviously, it grows over time as the revenue and the incremental margin expansion comes online.

And then as the CapEx falls off on years four and five. But we think it’s a good business arrangement. It facilitates the growth that we’re talking about. You heard in the comments, both from Chris and myself, we’re raising shipbuilding from 3% to 4%. And this capital investment by both the Navy and us facilitates that growth long-term.

Christopher Kastner: Miles, I’d also add that I obviously want to fact ’24. These projects take a while to get implemented. But it does support the mid to long-term growth.

Miles Walton: Okay. And Chris, just to follow-up on the longer-term projection and the capital allocation prioritization. You’ll probably get into this Investor Day. But the last several years have been a lot of cash going to paydown debt. It doesn’t sound like we need to do that. So are we at a point, where we can more commit to a significant majority, or not all of the free cash flow to return to shareholders over the timeframe looking forward?

Christopher Kastner: Yes. I’ll start. So, we fundamentally believe the greatest source of value that we can achieve as a corporation, is to focus on our operational priorities right now and delivering our ships. So, you see that in the capital investments. And then we’re fairly clear on our capital allocation priorities relative to investing in our investing in our shipyards, being investment grade, progressively improving our dividends, and then providing any remainder back to shareholders. Now that being said, we’re going to have optionality around M&A. We have the responsibility, to evaluate M&A projects from time-to-time. I don’t see any significant holes in the portfolio right now. And operationally, I think our greatest focus needs to be on delivering our ships to our customer, because they need them.

So while we’re not going to commit, to providing everything, back to shareholders on this call. We need to, we’re forced to have a strong balance sheet and we can do everything. So that’s how we’re thinking about capital allocation moving forward.

Thomas Stiehle: Yes, if I could piggyback on top of that. And Miles, I think you’re looking at it the right way. If you look back on where we’ve been right in ’22, we gave back to the shareholders $249 million in dividends and repos. This year, it’s up to $275 million, which is 40% of free cash flow. We have to keep in mind for 2023, it was $480 million of debt paydown. So, we actually between the debt paydown and what we gave back to shareholders. It was better than 100% of the free cash flow of $692 million for 2023. And now for this year, as we’re saying $500 million of dividends and repos is still another $229 million. I just paid $145 million in January. There’s $84 million of on payment in May. So $229 million of debt and that concludes it, kind of going forward plus the $500 million I’m committing to again is over 100% of free cash flow going back to the shareholders this year.

If you take the midpoint of the guide of $650 million, right? So it’s ramping. We’re giving you the commitment through 2024. We haven’t told you, we’re committing to pass that, but we would envision as we work off each year and the cash is there, that we’ll update you accordingly.

Miles Walton: All right, thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question today is from Gautam Khanna from TD Cowen. Gautam, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Gautam Khanna: Yes, hi, I joined a little late. So I apologize if you covered this, but could you update us on the timing of when the three milestones that’s looked at Q4, will get caught up? And if there’s any downstream impacts from those delays, but maybe crowding out labor, or anything else? And then if you could just talk about the milestones in 2024, are there any that are kind of late in the year Q4, weighted that could pose a similar note? Thank you.

Christopher Kastner: Sure. Thanks, Gautam. The two VCS milestones, we’re essentially complete with both of the operational commitments for those milestones. There were some late breaking changes on both of those boats that, needed to be implemented before we could claim victory, and finally achieve them, but we’re essentially complete. The staffing has been significantly reduced, on each of the boats and it’s been reallocated, to the other boats. And no material financial issue related to those at all. On LPD 29, we ran into an issue going through the test program that we need to stop and do a root cause corrective action on. We’ve done that. The ship went to sea this week, performed well, we think we’ll deliver that here late Q1, early Q2.

Now from ’24 milestone impact, we’re all aligned within the corporation relative to those milestones. It does put some pressure on the VCS milestones at the end of the year on 798 and 800, but we have detailed plans to achieve those and we’re committed to getting those done.

Gautam Khanna: Thank you. And if I could follow-up, I just wanted to make sure I understood the accounting on those three that moved out of Q4. Were there positive team catch-ups related to that in Q4 and if not, do you anticipate that in Q1 and Q2 as you recover?

Christopher Kastner: No, there were no material financial issues related to those. Obviously on LPD 29, there is a bit of an opportunity lost there that, will recover when it ultimately gets delivered, but it’s all included in our guidance.