Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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David Strauss: Just wanted to ask specifically on FLRAA. I think you guys have talked about getting kind of $800 million to $900 million annual revenue run rate on FLRAA. Where — are you fully ramped to that rate in Q3? And if not, did that have something to do with the Bell margin holding up, I think, certainly better than we had thought?

Scott Donnelly: No, I wouldn’t say there’s a margin impact to it. But certainly, we’re not ramped to that rate yet, David. I mean that will grow here as we go through ’23 to ’24. I would say the ramp is going well. I mean, a lot of our internal resources, ramping up the engineering activity is happening at a pretty good clip. But obviously, a lot of that is also getting all of our suppliers on board and getting a lot of key partners ramped up. It took some time from the original contract award to get those guys on to contract. So as you go through the rest of this year and particularly as you grow into 2024, there’s the inside kind of Bell heads, if you will, but there’s also a lot of ramp that’s the pass-through to our partners on the program as well.

David Strauss: And I apologize if you’ve already touched on this, and I may have missed it, but the supply chain issues that you called out on the commercial helicopter side. How do those compare to kind of what you’re seeing on the Aviation or jet side? I think you hadn’t really highlighted supply chain as a challenge on the Bell commercial side prior to today.

Scott Donnelly: Yes, it’s very similar issue, David. I mean they’re — it’s very similar issues.

Operator: And we have a follow-up from Cai von Rumohr with TD Cowen.

Cai von Rumohr: Yes. So your deliveries were down 50% at Bell and Commercial. Maybe give us some color on like, what’s the demand there? And what should we look like in the fourth quarter? Because your original guidance assumes a very big step-up that looks like it’s going to be tough to hit and you also had talked about margins kind of coming down as FLRAA effort ramped? And maybe some color in terms of where the margins could be.

Scott Donnelly: Yes, I’m not sure I have a whole lot of additional color on the margin side, Cai, that we certainly expect it to be, given the performance through the course of the year that it will be over the top end of what we originally guided. So I think we still feel that the Bell will finish out a very strong year. But the numbers are significant, and I appreciate that, and it certainly looks like a big ramp. We had a couple of issues very specific around our 505, which is a fairly high-volume product, but a relatively speaking, lower dollar per unit volume. So a lot of the numbers miss and a lot of the challenge, frankly, in Q4 in terms of the units is around those 505. So obviously, we would like to get them out. Customers want us to get them out. But the miss on a number of those very light helicopters won’t have a big material impact to the performance overall at Bell.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the Q&A portion of today’s conference. If you would like to access the digitized replay of this call, it will be available after 10 a.m. Eastern Time today through October 26, 2024 at midnight. You may access the replay by calling 866-207-1041 or 402-970-0847 and use the access code 5951112. Again, that’s 866-207-1041 or 402-970-0847 with the access code 5951112. And that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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