Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tom Gentile: Well, you’re right, the schedules have been more volatile over the past couple of years, but we’ve worked very closely with our customer Boeing in this case, to establish what the production rates are going to be for2023. And they’ve been very firm and committed to saying that that’s what they will take from us. And by now, their own production rates may vary, but we know fairly well at this point that will deliver in the 420 units and that Boeing is committed to take those. And that’s going to involve two rate breaks later in the year to achieve it. But we’re staffing for it now so that we can make it. So, I would say there has been more volatility, but we’re further along in the process and post-pandemic. And we do expect, with a fairly high degree of certainty at this point, that the projections that we have right now for the 420 units is what we’ll deliver this year.

Seth Seifman: Great. Thanks very much.

Operator: Thank you, Seth. Our next question comes from George Shapiro from Shapiro Research. George, your line is now open.

George Shapiro: Yes, good morning.

Tom Gentile: Morning.

George Shapiro: Inventory was up $80 million in the fourth quarter from the third. Is that all pretty much due to the 19 737 deliveries that we missed?

Tom Gentile: George, as always, you’re very — you’re intuitive as it relates to the numbers, you know our numbers very well. I would say, for the most part, we had expected to make those deliveries and burn that inventory down. We brought the parts in to support 300 shipsets on the 737. A lot of them are pretty well down the road by the end of the year, but we just — with the disruption and some shortages, we just couldn’t push those out the door. So, the biggest driver to that growth in inventory between the third and fourth quarter was due to the fact that we didn’t make those additional 20 deliveries by the end of the year.

George Shapiro: Okay. And a follow-up, Mark, given the negative catches on the 320 and the 737, how much — does that start to impact what you’ve said in the past that at 42 rate, you’d be able to get back to the 16% margins that you made in 2018?

Mark Suchinski: I would say this, George, and we’ve talked about it the last couple of calls and in some of the earnings or some of the conferences that we’ve gone to. The 16.5% was a good proxy back in 2016. But I would tell you today, in 2023, when you think about the macroeconomic environment, when you think about the inflationary pressures overall from a cost standpoint, we’re going to have to evaluate that at this point in time. I think that all of those things that I just talked about are going to put pressure on our ability to achieve the 16.5% margin. We’re not backing off our goals to improve our segment margins and get back to the types of cashflow that you saw in 2019 and 2018. But there are a lot of things that are outside of our control at this point in time that are putting pressure on overall margins.

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