Castor Maritime Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 7, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With me today is our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bill Ballhaus. If you've not received a copy of the earnings press release we issued earlier this afternoon, you can find it on our website at mrcy dotcom. The slide presentation that Bill and I will be referring to is posted on the Investor Relations section of the website under Events and Presentations. Turning to Slide 2 in the presentation, I'd like to remind you that today's presentation includes forward looking statements, including information regarding Mercury's financial outlook, future plans, objectives, business prospects and anticipated financial performance.

Operator

These forward looking statements are subject to future risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results or performance to differ materially. All forward looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements on Slide 2, in the earnings press release and the risk factors included in Mercury's SEC filings. I'd also like to mention that in addition to reporting financial results in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP, during our call, we will also discuss several non GAAP financial measures, specifically adjusted income, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow, organic revenue and acquired revenue. A reconciliation of these non GAAP metrics is included as an appendix to today's slide presentation and in the earnings press release. I'll now turn the call over to Mercury's Chairman and CEO, Bill Ballhaus.

Operator

Please turn to Slide 3.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining our Q3 FY 'twenty four earnings call. Today, I'd like to talk through 3 topics. First, some introductory comments on our business and results.

Speaker 1

2nd, an update on the progress we are making in each of our 4 priority areas: delivering predictable performance, building a thriving growth engine, expanding margins and driving improved free cash flow and third, expectations for our performance both for the balance of FY 2024 and longer term. Then I'll turn it over to Dave, who will walk through our financial results and guidance. Before jumping in, I'd like to thank our customers for their collaborative partnership and the trust they put in Mercury to support their most critical programs and our Mercury team for their dedication and commitment to delivering mission critical processing at the edge. Please turn to Slide 4. As I've said in the past, while we believe FY24 is a transitional year, I'm optimistic about our strategic positioning as a leader in mission critical processing at the edge and our ability to deliver predictable organic growth with expanding margins and robust free cash flow.

Speaker 1

Our Q3 results similar to Q1 and Q2 reflect progress we are making in addressing what we believe to be transitory challenges associated with a multiyear increase of working capital and a high mix of firm fixed price development programs. We are executing on and transitioning these programs toward low and then full rate production and expect them to be a driver of our near and medium term organic growth. Additionally, in Q2, we paused the transition of our common processing architecture toward full rate production in order to retire risk and validate a highly producible scalable design. This pause in production activity, combined with the investments we are making in this technology area, have led to expected impacts on Q3 bookings, revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. That said, we believe we have driven to root cause and implemented corrective actions in our common processing area.

Speaker 1

In addition, we have initiated limited pilot production in Q4, which has returned positive results in terms of yield and is an important initial step toward full scale production. We remain confident that the significant investments we are making in this area will lead to profitable organic growth where we see robust demand for our unique ability to support our customers' stringent mission critical needs. In Q3, we made solid progress in each of our 4 priority focus areas with highlights that include completing or retiring risk on 2 additional challenge programs in Q3 and an additional one so far in Q4 expanding our record backlog to nearly $1,300,000,000 up 17% year over year leaning our cost structure as we further streamline our operations, enabling increased positive operating leverage as we expect to return to organic growth Reversing the multi year trend of growth in working capital with net working capital down 8% year over year and sequential reductions in inventory and unbilled receivables. As we continue to make progress in what we believe is a transition year, we look forward to closing out FY 2024 and expect to enter FY 2025 with a clear path to delivering predictable organic growth, expanding margins and strong cash flow.

Speaker 1

Please turn to Slide 5. Following those introductory comments, I'd like to spend time on each of our 4 focus areas, starting with our first focus area, delivering predictable performance. Our Q3 results reflect a number of impacts that we believe obscured the underlying performance of the business. Specifically, we recognized approximately $39,000,000 of items that we believe are transitory, including $60,000,000 of program cost growth impact across our portfolio, dollars 12,000,000 of inventory reserves and scrap, dollars 5,000,000 of warranty reserves and $6,000,000 associated with contract settlement reserves. These items reduced Q3 revenue by approximately $16,000,000 gross margin by approximately $32,000,000 and the remainder impacting operating expenses.

Speaker 1

As in prior quarters, we experienced the majority of these impacts in a subset of our portfolio, representing approximately 20% of the business in the majority of our challenge programs. As such, this part of the business contributed negative gross profit in Q3 and obscured performance in the balance of the portfolio, which is performing well and consistent with our expectations. The approximately $16,000,000 of development and production program cost growth is a near 50% reduction from what we experienced last quarter and consisted of approximately $6,000,000 from our challenge programs with more than half of the impact tied to 1 program and approximately $10,000,000 spread across the remaining programs. We continue to see the majority of our EAC cost growth isolated to the 20% of the business. While this level of EAC impact is above what we would like to see on a go forward basis, we are encouraged that as we continue to refine our EAC process across our portfolio, this is the lowest level of EAC impact in 4 quarters.

Speaker 1

As shown on Slide 6, with respect to the challenge programs, during the Q3, we progressed we have completed one additional program and we believe we have now retired risk on 11 of the original 2019 challenge programs that have driven earnings volatility in recent quarters. For the remaining programs, we expect to close out half this quarter and largely retire the challenged programs risk as we exit FY 2024. Please turn to Slide 7. Turning now to the 2nd focus area, driving organic growth. Bookings for the quarter were $220,000,000 resulting in a 1.06 book to bill with a few opportunities moving out of the quarter awaiting the completion of our efforts to begin the transition to full rate production in our common processing technology area.

Speaker 1

Our backlog, now at a record $1,300,000,000 is up 17% year over year. And notably, when we look at the bookings so far this year, approximately 80% of our firm fixed price bookings are production in nature, which we believe is a good leading indicator that the mix shift in our business is occurring. Several marquee wins in the quarter are worth noting. In January, Mercury finalized a production agreement with Bluehalo to provide digital signal processing hardware to support the U. S.

Speaker 1

Space Force's Satellite Communications Augmentation Resource or SCAR program. In February, we announced a 5 year $243,800,000 indefinite deliveryindefinite quantity contract to deliver rapidly reprogrammable electronic attack training subsystems to the U. S. Navy, and we have received and are executing on the first production order. These subsystems build on more than 25 years of test and training technology from the Mercury Processing platform to bring the most advanced near peer jamming and electronic warfare capabilities to U.

Speaker 1

S. Pilot training organizations. As mentioned on our Q2 earnings call, we were chosen by L3Harris Technologies to provide solid state data recorders for the U. S. Space Development Agency's TRONCH-two tracking layer satellite constellation.

Speaker 1

The $31,000,000 contract award supports 18 satellites following the delivery of hardware for 20 earlier spacecraft. I also want to mention a development milestone on a new strategic weapon system program that we announced last quarter with a booking value of $91,000,000 The team held a successful integrated baseline review with the customer confirming that our approach will meet cost, schedule and performance targets. As a result, we received the maximum possible award fee for this phase of the Cost Plus contract. We will spend the next several years developing and delivering prototype hardware for this critical national security program. These awards are important not only because of their value and impact on our growth trajectory, but also because they reflect our customers' continued trust in Mercury to support their most critical franchise programs.

Speaker 1

Please turn to Slide 8. Now turning to our 3rd priority focus area, expanding margins. So far in FY 'twenty four, we've delivered margins beneath our targets. These shortfalls are primarily driven by the previously discussed impacts that we believe are transitory and negative operating leverage from relatively low production volume, largely driven by development program delays and exacerbated in Q3 as expected with the production hold in our common processing technology area. As we've mentioned in prior quarters, to achieve our adjusted EBITDA margin targets, we are focused on the following levers: executing on our development programs and minimizing cost growth impacts getting back toward a more historical 20eighty mix of development to production programs, driving organic growth to generate positive operating leverage and achieving cost efficiencies.

Speaker 1

I've discussed on this call our program execution and cost growth containment efforts along with our organic growth efforts. Regarding cost efficiencies, as previously mentioned, in Q1, we've implemented a series of cost reduction actions. In January, we announced a corporate reorganization in which we streamlined and simplified our operations, consolidating our 2 different structure into a single integrated structure incorporating all of our lines of business and matrixed business functions reporting into our COO, Roger Wells. Earlier in Q4, we announced the 2nd phase of this realignment, organizing our U. S.-based business units into 2 product business units and an integrated processing solutions business unit and centralizing our engineering, operations and mission assurance functions.

Speaker 1

Additionally, we stood up an advanced concepts group that is focused on advanced technologies, innovation and strategic growth pursuits. This second phase of our realignment will contribute additional efficiencies to our previously mentioned run rate savings of $44,000,000 that we've already actioned. Approximately $24,000,000 to $26,000,000 of those previously actioned savings are expected to be recognized inside the fiscal year. Overall, although we've seen the adverse margin impacts of what we believe are transitory issues and negative operating leverage in FY 2024. We believe the structural efficiencies of our realignment and other cost savings measures will be evident in our margin profile going forward as we expect to return to growth in FY 'twenty five and beyond.

Speaker 1

Please turn to Slide 9. Finally, turning to our 4th priority focus area, improved free cash flow. We continue to make progress in reducing net working capital, which is down 8% year over year after years of expansion. Inventory is down sequentially by $11,000,000 from $354,000,000 in Q2 to $343,000,000 in Q3, driven primarily by manufacturing adjustments associated with specifically identified inventory reserves. Notably, while inventory is flat year over year, WIP is up approximately 45% from our prior fiscal year end from $83,000,000 to $120,000,000 reflecting an increased mix of inventory progressed toward delivery.

Speaker 1

Even with the pause initiated in Q2 in common processing architecture production and deliveries, unbilled receivables is down sequentially from $351,000,000 in Q2 to $325,000,000 in Q3 and down $63,000,000 from Q1. The improvement in unbilled since Q1 is in part driven by Q2 and Q3 billings, which were the 2 highest billings quarters on overtime revenue contracts in the company's history. This included an increase in unbilled of approximately 15,000,000 dollars tied to 4 recent new bookings that generated revenue in Q3, all of which has now been invoiced in Q4. Please turn to Slide 10. As discussed, we continue to make progress in our 4 priority focus areas.

Speaker 1

That said, for the 1st 3 quarters of FY '24, our revenue and earnings are below expectations, primarily due to higher than expected cost growth and other charges as we proactively retire risk across the portfolio, especially related to our challenge programs and lower second half volume tied to the pause in activities associated with the common processing architecture. Aside from these headwinds, which we believe are temporary, we continue to set our sights on delivering above average industry growth with lowtomid20 percent adjusted EBITDA margins over the longer term. For the balance of FY 2024, we plan to continue to work on the transitions I discussed earlier, shifting our large portfolio of development programs to production, especially the remaining challenge programs, ramping up our common processing production line and focusing our operational capacity on burning down net working capital, particularly in unbilled receivables and inventory. As I have said in prior calls, we believe that demand remains strong. Our outlook for bookings is unchanged, and we continue to expect full year bookings above 1,000,000,000 dollars In addition, we continue to expect revenue in the range of $800,000,000 to $850,000,000 as well as positive free cash flow for the full fiscal year.

Speaker 1

With that, I'll turn it over to Dave to walk through the financial results for the Q3, and I look forward to your questions. Dave?

Operator

Thank you, Bill. I'll start with our Q3 fiscal 2024 results and then move to our Q4 and fiscal 2024 outlook. As expected, our financial performance in the Q3 was below that of the prior year across all P and L metrics. As discussed in our prior earnings calls, we believe that fiscal 2024 is a transition year where the organization is seeking the Through that transition, we expect to recognize the small proportion of remaining revenues on the challenge program contracts. But more importantly, we expect to move toward releasing significant working capital balances, especially related to unbilled receivables.

Operator

We then anticipate shifting our resources to execute on the follow on production awards, which we believe will begin to rebalance our program portfolio more heavily toward higher margin, predictable production programs as well as consume existing inventories. We continue to expect this transition to occur in Q4 and into fiscal 2025. In Q3, as Bill discussed, we made progress towards this rebalance with a continued focus on our four priorities. We made progress completing, exiting our otherwise retiring risk on our challenge programs. We expanded our record backlog to nearly $1,300,000,000 We further reduced our cost structure to drive margin expansion and we continued to work toward reversing the multiyear trend in working capital growth.

Operator

With that, please turn to slide 11, which details the Q3 results. Our bookings for the quarter were $220,000,000 with a book to bill of 1.06 yielding backlog of $1,300,000,000 up over $190,000,000 or 17% year over year and $12,000,000 or 1% sequentially. As Bill discussed, we feel good about the mix in our backlog with approximately 80% of our firm fixed price bookings this year being production contracts. We believe these recent bookings are a leading indicator of the shift in the mix of our backlog from development to production. We continue to maintain our focus on not only backlog growth, but the quality of our backlog in terms of margin and our ability to predictably perform.

Operator

Revenues for the Q3 were 208,000,000 dollars down $55,000,000 or 21% compared to the prior year of $264,000,000 As expected, revenues decreased year over year as we continue to prioritize resources to execute our challenged programs, transition from higher mix of development programs and aim to better align our operating cadence with prudent working capital management. As Bill noted, we experienced approximately $16,000,000 of cost growth impact in the quarter as compared to approximately $7,000,000 in the prior year, which affected revenue. The $16,000,000 which was the lowest EAC growth in the last four quarters was comprised of $6,000,000 related to our challenge programs and approximately $10,000,000 related to multiple development and production programs. In accordance with GAAP, this resulted in cumulative revenue adjustments to properly reflect progress on the programs due to the revised cost baselines driving an overweight impact in the 3rd quarter. The $6,000,000 cost growth impact related to our challenge programs was largely tied to 1 program representing nearly 60% of the impact.

Operator

This program and several others in our portfolio were impacted by an industry wide supplier issue, which has since been resolved, as well as technical execution issues resulting from facts and circumstances in the quarter. While we executed largely in line with expectations across the remaining challenge programs, we did experience cost growth on certain other development and production programs in the quarter, which impacted revenues in a similar manner. Of the nearly $10,000,000 of cost growth impact related to development and production programs, we continue to see roughly 20% of the business driving the majority of this cost growth. The cost growth within our development and production programs was attributable to several factors, including the industry wide supplier issue previously mentioned, technical issues resulting in incremental rework costs and risk mitigation costs. Finally, as we build and mature integrated processes and management systems, we seek to continuously assess our judgments and estimates, including potential future risks and opportunities based on the latest and best information available.

Operator

Gross margin for the 2nd quarter decreased to 19.5% from 34.3% in the prior year. Gross margin contracted year over year primarily as a result of cost growth impacts as well as higher manufacturing adjustments, especially as related to inventory reserves, warranty expense and scrap. As just discussed, we recorded approximately $16,000,000 of program cost growth impact in the quarter. This represents approximately $9,000,000 of incremental cost growth impact year over year. The remaining decrease in gross margin year over year was primarily due to higher manufacturing adjustments of approximately $16,000,000 related to inventory reserves, warranty expense and scrap.

Operator

With regard to inventory reserves, we recorded over $7,000,000 more reserves in the quarter as compared to the prior year. The primary drivers of this specifically identified excess and obsolete inventory in the quarter were related to end of life components where design changes have occurred as well as configuration changes necessary to drive efficient production in the common processing architecture. Our process going forward is to procure end of life components with funding from our customers where possible. As you know, we are working on our common processing architecture and the changes necessary to drive efficient production. We experienced higher levels of scrap, especially related to the common processing architecture involved in several over challenged programs.

Operator

Due to the nature of the technology, the scrap material is high value and cannot be reused or reworked. We have several initiatives underway designed to address more efficient and cost effective producibility of these systems. With regard to warranty expense, we recorded approximately $5,000,000 of additional expense in the quarter as compared to the prior year, primarily associated with estimated costs related to repair and rework of some previously delivered common processing architecture products. As was the case in Q3, we expect gross margins to improve sequentially in the Q4. That said, we believe the full year fiscal 2024 gross margins will be below those of fiscal 2023 given the higher than expected cost growth impacts through the 1st three quarters of fiscal 2024.

Operator

We expect gross margins to continue to be impacted by unknown risks that may materialize as we progress these challenged programs and other development programs through final stages of development and into production. Operating expenses decreased approximately $2,000,000 year over year, primarily due to lower R and D and SG and A expenses as compared to the prior year. These decreases were driven by the previously announced organizational consolidation of our divisions into 1 unified incorporating multiple lines of business and matrix business functions in January 2024. The workforce reduction eliminated approximately 100 positions, driving $9,800,000 of restructuring expense in the period. In total, our previously mentioned cost savings actions in fiscal 2024 are expected to yield over $44,000,000 in annual run rate savings, of which $24,000,000 to $26,000,000 are expected to be recognized in the fiscal year.

Operator

We are implementing additional efficiencies in Q4 as we complete this second phase of our realignment. That said, the Q3 of fiscal 2024 included $6,000,000 of contract settlement reserves related to anticipated settlements resulting from negotiations to reduce performance obligation on customer contracts that do not align with our strategy or otherwise do not have acceptable returns in exchange for lower cash consideration. We believe these costs are not comparable to the prior year and thus our run rate operating expenses would have decreased nearly $8,300,000 year over year reflecting the cost savings actions executed in the 1st and third quarters of fiscal 2024. GAAP net loss and loss per share in the 3rd quarter was $44,600,000 and $0.77 respectively, as compared to GAAP net income and earnings per share of 5,200,000 dollars and $0.09 respectively in the prior year. The decrease in year over year earnings is primarily a result of nearly $9,000,000 of incremental program impacts, dollars 11,000,000 of incremental inventory reserves and scrap, approximately $5,000,000 in incremental warranty expense as well as $6,000,000 of contract settlement reserves.

Operator

GAAP net loss was also impacted by the temporary volume shift in revenues as we align our operating cadence with prudent working capital management. These factors were partially offset by over $2,000,000 of incremental tax benefit year over year. Adjusted EBITDA for the 3rd quarter was negative $2,400,000 compared to $43,500,000 in the prior year. Adjusted loss per share was $0.26 as compared to adjusted earnings per share of $0.40 in the prior year. The year over year decrease was primarily related to the same costs that impacted GAAP net loss and loss per share.

Operator

Slide 12 presents Mercury's balance sheet for the last 5 quarters. We ended the 2nd quarter with cash and cash equivalents of 143,000,000 dollars We have $616,500,000 of funded debt under our revolver. Billed receivables increased approximately $9,000,000 due to the timing of invoicing collections in the quarter as well as reduced receivables factoring in the period. Unbilled receivables decreased approximately $26,000,000 due in part to successful execution in billings across the program portfolio as well as the cumulative adjustments associated with the cost growth impacts in the quarter and our contract settlement reserves as previously discussed. Inventory decreased approximately $11,000,000 primarily as a result of the incremental reserve and scrap activity in the quarter.

Operator

Accounts payable decreased over $8,000,000 evidencing the shift in our operating cadence aimed at better aligning the timing of material purchases with both contract awards and resource availability. Deferred revenues decreased approximately $11,000,000 in the quarter, reflecting revenue recognized on the higher volume of customer advances we successfully negotiated with favorable billing terms as we previously discussed on our Q2 earnings call. Working capital increased approximately $12,000,000 in the 3rd quarter. However, we have made progress in reducing this balance 8% year over year after multiple years of expansion. The 3rd quarter increase was driven by the self imposed production pause initiated in Q2 combined with investments we are making in our common processing architecture, which have delayed our cash flow conversion.

Operator

As Bill previously mentioned, we believe we are making progress towards resolving the challenges in our common processing architecture as well as in transitioning challenged and other development programs toward production. As such, we expect to see reductions in certain working capital metrics as we continue to execute and convert unbilled to build receivables and then cash. In addition, we expect the mix of development programs to shift to better align with historical norms. And as we receive expected follow on production awards, we believe we will consume inventory purchase in anticipation of these awards. Turning to cash flow on Slide 13.

Operator

Free cash flow for the 3rd quarter was an outflow of $25,700,000 as compared to an out flow of $12,700,000 in the prior year. The outflow was driven by the impact of our program cost growth and the associated impacts to achieve billings on those programs. The industry wide supplier issue impacting a subset of our programs, which has since been resolved and the self imposed pause on the common processing architecture as we complete design modifications to allow for transition toward full scale production. I'll now turn to our financial guidance for full year fiscal 2024. First, we continue to expect bookings above $1,000,000,000 for FY 2024 as our demand remains strong.

Operator

2nd, while we believe we have made progress in our 4 priority areas and will continue to do so in the 4th quarter, The cost growth impacts incurred during the 1st three quarters, coupled with the potential for continued volatility, especially related to the single technology, may continue to negatively impact revenues and gross margin for the remainder of the year, we still expect both revenues to trend lower than the prior year with continued expectation for $800,000,000 to $850,000,000 in revenues for fiscal 2024. We believe operating leverage will improve in Q4 due to expected sequential revenue and margin increases, coupled with the cost actions completed in the 1st and third quarters, along with additional efficiencies we are implementing as part of the 2nd phase of our organizational realignment in Q4. We expect GAAP net loss and loss per share as well as adjusted EBITDA and adjusted loss per share for fiscal 2024 will be meaningfully below the prior year. While cash flow in the Q3 was disappointing, we expect improvement in the 4th quarter as we plan to complete or retire risk on a majority of our challenge programs, ship and bill final product and convert unbilled receivables to billed receivables and then to cash.

Operator

We continue to expect positive free cash flow for the year. In closing, we believe continuing to execute on our 4 priority focus areas will not only enable a return to historical revenue growth and profitability, but will also drive further margin expansion and cash conversion, demonstrating the long term value creation potential of the business. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Bill.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dave. With that, operator, please proceed with the Q and A.

Speaker 2

We'll take the first question from Pete Skibitski, Alembic Global.

Speaker 3

Hey, good evening, guys. Hey guys, so I guess if all goes well, you're going to be at 4 challenge programs remaining as you head into fiscal 2025. I'm wondering how deep do you think you have to go in fiscal 2025 to retire the remaining risk on those programs? I guess I'm trying to get a sense of assuming they're all common processing architecture related, I'm trying to get a feel for how much technical risk remains on those programs.

Speaker 1

Yes, Pete. Thanks for the question. It's Bill. I'll take that. You're right that our expectation is as we get to the end of this year, we'll have 4 challenge programs left.

Speaker 1

They're all related to this common processing architecture that you've heard us talk about. Where we are with respect to the common processing architecture is we believe that we've gotten to root cause in understanding what was keeping us from getting to a very specific physical integrity that we need to get to in order for our technology to work as intended. And it's based on our understanding of the material science And based on that understanding of the material science, we've been able to implement a change in the manufacturing process that allows us to get to the physical integrity that we need. Now we're ramping up production. We've moved to initial production after we've done a ton of testing, a lot of analysis, seen our analysis and the empirical data all match up.

Speaker 1

So in the Q4, we've done initial builds. We are currently in what we're calling pilot production, which will go through the end of the 4th quarter. And as we exit the Q4, we expect to have pretty solid validation of our corrective action, which will then give us the ability and the indications that we need in order to ramp up to full scale production. So I would expect that as we're exiting the Q4 moving into the Q1 of FY 'twenty five, we should have the validation that we need to make that assessment.

Speaker 3

Okay. Okay. So at some point in the Q1, you'll have a sense whether you can ramp into full production on those programs. Is that a good way to think about it?

Speaker 1

Correct. And really this is all about getting to a sample size that we think is statistically significant. I mean the units that we've built, all the testing that we've done during the quarter, all indicate that the corrective action we put in place gets us to where we need to be from a physical integrity standpoint. We want to see that over a much larger sample size to increase our confidence in the corrective action.

Speaker 3

Okay. I think I got it. Just one follow-up for me. As you guys thinking about kind of going forward into 2025 and 2026, how are you thinking about on ramping new development programs, right? Just given we've heard about the challenge programs, but I also feel like maybe there's some other development programs that have had some issues, but aren't part of the challenge programs.

Speaker 3

So how are you thinking about taking on new development programs? And how should we think about the technical risk associated with that going forward?

Speaker 1

Yes. It's a great question. And you've heard us talk in the past about our historical mix being around 20%, 80% development to production. We've recently been in this dense phase of 40% development, 60% in production. Our goal over time, at least in order to hit our targeted EBITDA margins that we've talked about in prior calls is to see that mix move back towards 20.80.

Speaker 1

But the mix isn't the only driver. The makeup of the development programs is a big driver. So for instance, the challenge programs that you've heard us talk about, they're all firm fixed price development. Well, we've won some large development awards this year that we feel great about that are cost plus. And so the risk profile on those is very different than firm fixed price development.

Speaker 1

If you look at our bookings so far this year, we feel like the makeup of those bookings are taking us toward that target of eightytwenty. And specifically of our firm fixed price bookings this year, 80% are production and 20% are development. And then one other thing I'd point you to is the level of rigor that we are putting into our bid and proposal activities And then our program baseline activities once we win a contract and implement it is much more mature than it has been historically. And I think one piece of evidence of that is one of our largest development contracts, the integrated baseline review that we went through this quarter and received very good grades from our customer and the highest incentive fee that we could earn on our program is a good indication of the maturing of not only our bidding, but also our program baselining activities.

Speaker 3

Okay. Very helpful. Thanks guys.

Speaker 1

Yes. Thanks Pete.

Speaker 2

And we'll take the next question from Sheila Kahyaoglu, Jefferies. Thank you, guys, and good afternoon. Hi, Sheila. Hi.

Speaker 4

Just want to maybe ask on the top line, with 1 quarter left to go, you guys do have a wide range in the 4th quarter backlog and book to bill is starting to turn. But how do we think about that wide range and your visibility into fiscal 2025? Any indications you could provide on that front, especially given a fairly easy comp this year and production mix being 80% of bookings?

Operator

Yes, Sheila, this is Dave. I would say the first part of the question, yes, it is a wide range as we approach Q4. And there's when you look at the midpoint of the range, we feel that's the right midpoint of the range. As we think towards additional could there be additional cost actions that happen between now and the end of the year? And that's what gives us confidence in the lower end of the range.

Operator

And on the upper end of the range, it really is about timing. And are there largely for us at this stage, it would be material that stage for the very end of the year. And if it comes in the very end of the year versus the beginning of fiscal 2025 would be the difference. So those are really the drivers. We are not at a point where we're thinking about guidance today for FY 2025.

Operator

So we're not putting anything ahead of us right now.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then maybe on free cash flow usage, if you could just talk about that a little bit. It would be the $26,000,000 in the quarter compared to your comments last time about being close to breakeven. So maybe you talked about working capital improvements. If you could just give us a little bit more detail there as we think about the improvement into fiscal Q4 and getting positive to breakeven free cash flow for the year?

Operator

Yes. And so we feel good about the positive cash flow for the year. We see and Bill talked about the highest billings we've had the last two quarters. And so that has set us up well heading into the Q4. The variance on the cash flow when we were looking towards breakeven, I talked about the industry wide supplier issue we had had in Q3, which pushed some of our billings that we expected to get out and collect in Q3, it pushed them out towards the end.

Operator

So that was more than half of that variance was driven by that. And this was non conforming material that we had gotten. We had to go and change our products. We're not the only ones that got it across the industry. Other people got it had the same thing.

Operator

We had to change that out, take it out of product, put conforming material in and deliver those products before we could bill and collect. So that was the single biggest driver on the cash variance for the quarter. So we don't view that as anything that would recur. So that will be part of our Q4, obviously our Q4 collection.

Speaker 2

Got it. Thank you. The next question comes from Sam Streutaker, Truist Securities.

Speaker 5

Hi, good evening guys. On for Mike Truisty. I was curious if you guys could maybe give a little bit more color on how you're thinking about the pipeline of future opportunities, just kind of looking at backlog is obviously really good, but it seems like there might be a bit of a decline in bookings from a year over year perspective, something like new orders and things like that. How are you kind of looking into the long term about how you feel about the pipeline long term in that regard?

Speaker 1

Yes. This is Bill. I'll take that one. First, your comment on the backlog. Like we said, we feel really good about not only the size of the backlog, but the makeup of the backlog.

Speaker 1

And in particular, this year's bookings and the mix associated with that. We did see some orders slip out of the quarter tied to the work that we're doing on the common processing architecture, which is understandable that customers would want to see us making progress, getting the production back up and running and then eventually getting back to full rate of production. So that did impact booking somewhat in the quarter. But as we look forward at our pipeline, we feel good not only about the size, but also the mix of that pipeline as well. And as we said before, just longer term, we feel like we're in a very strong part of the market and attractive segment of the market with good growth rates.

Speaker 1

And I think our pipeline reflects that.

Speaker 2

We'll take the next question from Jan Engelbrecht, Baird. Dan, your line is open. Please check your mute button.

Speaker 6

Good evening, Bill and Dave. I'm on for Peter Arment today. The first question, just if we take a step back on the sort of 2019 challenge programs that were identified, can you just give us a sense of of the 11 that's been resolved, sort of how many of those have transitioned to production contracts? Have you exited any? And how many do you expect to sort of transition to production in the coming quarters?

Speaker 1

Yes. This is Bill. I'll take the question. Let's see, as far as exiting, there have been a couple that we have exited. The balance we have completed and generally are on a path toward production is how I would characterize those.

Speaker 1

And for the ones that are out outstanding, we are on a path to close out half of them this quarter, which we expect to transition over time to production and the 4 that are remaining are associated with the common processing architecture, all of which we expect to transition to production.

Speaker 6

Perfect. Thanks, Bill. Just a quick follow-up. Just if you just look at your recent wins in space with Blue Halo and then also on the Tranche 2, and all the tailwinds that we're seeing in space with missile tracking and missile defense situational awareness. Should we expect Mercury to sort of more aggressively target space programs in the next couple of years.

Speaker 6

I mean, if we just look at the STA tracking layer and transport layer, If you get with L3, if you can get sort of consistent awards on future tranches, we think that that would be a very attractive program as it will sort of almost roll over every 2 or 3 years as the satellites need to get replaced. And just any comments on space and Mercury in the longer term?

Speaker 1

Well, we think it is a growth market for us. We're very pleased with the orders that we've received. And I also we're also pleased that it's a good mix, I think, of production contracts like Blue Halo, as well as new development contracts that we won that will be drivers of longer term organic growth. So it's a market that we think is attractive. We're well positioned and we're focused on and back to my earlier comments is why we're so focused on executing on the development contracts that we want.

Speaker 6

Perfect. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Dave. I'll jump back in the queue. Yes.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Speaker 2

And everyone, at this time, there are no further questions. I'll hand the call back to Mr. Bill Dauhaus for any additional or closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Well, at this point, thank you. I appreciate the interest and the attendance of the call, and we look forward to updating everyone next quarter. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Once

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Earnings Conference Call
Castor Maritime Q3 2024
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