Intercontinental Exchange Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Participants

Corporate Executives

• Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director
• Richard Wowryk, Chief Financial Officer
• Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies
• Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer

Analysts

• Steve Hansen, Raymond James
• James McGarragle, RBC Capital Market
• Matthew Lee, Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.
• Cameron Doerksen, National Bank Financial
• Krista Friesen, CIBC World Markets
• Konark Gupta, ScotiaCapital
• Tim James, TD Securities
• Chris Murray, ATB Capital Markets

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Exchange Income Corporation's conference call to discuss the financial results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2024. The Corporation's results, including the MD&A and financial statements, were issued on August 8, 2024 and are currently available by the Company's website or SEDAR plus. Before turning the call over to management, listeners are cautioned that today's presentation and the responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of Canadian Provincial Securities Laws.

Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. For additional information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and about material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements, please consult the quarterly and annual MD&A, the Risk Factors sections of the Annual Information Form and EIC's other filings and Canadian securities regulators. Except as required by Canadian securities law, EIC does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements such as statements speaks only as of the date made. Listeners are also reminded that today's call is being recorded and broadcast live via Internet for the benefit of individual shareholders, analysts, and other interested parties.

I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of Exchange Income Corporation, Mike Pyle. Please go ahead, Mr. Pyle.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Yesterday, we released our second quarter results for 2024. Our results show the diversified nature of our business. The strong results were driven by our Aerospace and Aviation segment, while we started to see some very positive signs from a customer order perspective in the latter portion of the quarter and subsequent to quarter end in our manufacturing segment. These events, coupled with our resilient business model, allows me to confirm that we believe our 2024 EBITDA will be at the mid to upper end of our previously provided range of CAD600 million to CAD635 million.

With me today is Richard Wowryk, our CFO, who will speak to our financial results, and two new voices, Jake Trainor and Travis Muhr, both who are part of Head Office Executive Team, and they will expand on our outlook for the third quarter and beyond. Prior to passing the call over to Rich, who will delve into the numbers more deeply, I wanted to highlight some of the key performance metrics achieved during the quarter. We set records for revenue adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. We executed on the strategic acquisition of Duhamel in June, which will accelerate the environmental access solutions strategic growth in Quebec and Eastern Canada.

One of the more important highlights was what happened after the quarter end. In our Multi-Storey Window Solutions business, we booked in excess of CAD100 million of future projects across several geographies in Canada and the US amongst a diverse set of customers, whether they be condo, apartment, or commercial projects. These positive signs by our Multi-Storey Window Solutions business line provide positive momentum as we head into the second half of the year, and hopefully that extends into our other business lines. This strong order capture continued this week with the addition of another CAD20 million contract in our window business, subsequent to the publishing of our results.

Our second quarter results revenue increased by CAD33 million to CAD661 million. Adjusted EBITDA increased by CAD10 million to CAD157 million. Net earnings were CAD33 million for the quarter compared to CAD37 million and net earnings per share were 69% compared to CAD0.85 in the prior period. Free cash flow grew by CAD3 million to CAD101 million. Free cash flow less maintenance capital expenditures was CAD52 million compared to CAD59 million in the prior period. Adjusted net earnings were CAD38 million compared to CAD43 million in the prior period and adjusted net earnings per share were CAD0.80 compared to CAD1 in the prior period. The payout on a free cash flow less maintenance expenditure basis remained very strong from a historical perspective at 61% even with three dividend increases over the last two years.

We are pleased with these results and they show the resiliency and diversification of our business model. The main contributor to results was the continued investment to the businesses that we are starting to see the fruits of those investments. 2023 was a year characterized by several announcements of acquisitions and contractual wins, whether it was the BC and Manitoba Medevac wins, our UK Home Office contract or our Air Canada commercial agreement. Speaking first of the Air Canada contract, the fifth and sixth aircraft started flying in the second quarter. We continue to execute under the BC contract with our existing aircraft along with one new King Air, which has been received and modifying is flying under the contract. We anticipate the second new aircraft being modified and flying by the end of the year.

We continue to look after a larger portion of this contract with older aircraft while we wait for the manufacturer to deliver the new aircraft. Our jets under our Manitoba medevac contract have arrived in Winnipeg and will be operating under the contract in September as previously announced. We have not formally announced any new significant contract wins, but are hopeful on the resolution on several fronts. I wanted to give you an update on the contracts that I spoke about on our Q1 call. The first contract relates to the future aircrew training contract for the government of Canada. SkyAlyne was named as the preferred bidder last year and we are part of the SkyAlyne bid team. The contract was formally awarded to the Prime and we are in negotiations now to finalize our subcontract with the Prime.

We submitted our proposal to the UK Home Office for the continuation and expansion of services that we are currently providing. The existing contract will continue through November of 2024. We were recently informed that the RFP is expected to be reissued based on internal issues within the RFP itself. Given the high utilization of the aircraft currently, we anticipate being able to support the UK office with no gaps in coverage. The third opportunity that I previously commented on was the Newfoundland and Labrador fixed wing medivac contract. We believe that we are one of two proponents to bid on the contract and hope to hear the results of our bid during this quarter. We are optimistic at the outcome, but are still waiting for the results of the formal bid process.

Lastly, we are continuing to see significant interest around the world for our aerospace services. We see large opportunities in Australia, in Europe and expanded opportunities in Canada. We are very bullish about the future opportunities and these contracts are right in line with our EAC core capabilities and the business model as they generate consistent cash flows throughout the term of agreements. Jacob Travis will focus on our outlook for our segments for the third quarter and the remainder of 2024, but I will now hand off the call to Richard, who will detail the second quarter results.

[Richard Wowryk, Chief Financial Officer at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow were all second quarter high watermarks. I will delve into the segmented results and the remainder of the financial statements. Revenue in our Aerospace and Aviation segment increased by CAD54 million or 15% to CAD427 million. Adjusted EBITDA increased by CAD27 million or 25% to CAD134 million. The results and margin expansion were across all business lines. Looking at the essential air service business line, the improvements were driven by four key factors. First, previous organic growth, capital expenditures in the Aviation businesses over the past number of years. Second, our average load factors improved, which has a direct improvement on adjusted EBITDA. Third, the impact of the routes flown on behalf of Air Canada and finally, the impact of the BC and Manitoba medevac contracts.

These improvements were offset by softness in our rotary wing business. However, it is anticipated to reverse in the third quarter due to wildfire activity in Canada. Our Aerospace business line revenues were relatively flat compared to the prior period. However, adjusted EBITDA expanded in an accelerated fashion. This is due to two reasons. First, the revenues and adjusted EBITDA increased due to the expansion of the ISR business, including the impact of the UK Home-Office contract. This increase in revenue was offset by a decline in revenues within our training business. However, the product mix shifted which resulted in profitability expansion within the training business, even with the revenue decline. This margin expansion in our training business is anticipated to be temporary and is expected to normalize in the third quarter and beyond.

Last, our Aircraft Sales and Leasing business continued to grow as the leasing component of that business continued to improve. We are still anticipating that the leasing side will continue its step improvement until it reaches and ultimately passes pre-pandemic run rates by the end of the year. The growth within this business line and specifically the leasing business resulted in an improvement in the profitability as leasing margins are much higher than other revenue streams. Revenue in our manufacturing segment decreased by CAD21 million or 8% to CAD234 million. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by CAD14 million or 29% to CAD35 million. As expected revenue and adjusted EBITDA within the environmental access solutions business line decreased by 28% and 35%, respectively. As previously communicated in our year-end and first quarter calls, the first half of the year of the comparative period had a number of seasonal anomalies.

The first quarter and second quarter of 2023 experienced an unusual number of rental mats deployed on long, linear projects. This was outside the norm. Milder weather in 2023 also required greater mat utilization of projects. However, this winter experienced very low snowfall and drought conditions, which generally lessens demand. Further, as the prior year comparative contained an unusual number of mats on rent, the impact on adjusted EBITDA was outsized relative to revenue. Our Multi-Storey Window Solution business revenues were consistent with the prior period and adjusted EBITDA decreased by 35%. Changes in product mix as the business line completed more third party installations than in the prior period which generates lower margins. This coupled with operational inefficiencies as certain projects pushed out of the second quarter into later in the year reduced adjusted EBITDA. As we previously communicated, we also continued on the strategic decision to retain experienced staff to meet future increased demand as we are starting to see projects being awarded in the later part of the quarter and post quarter end.

Lastly, revenue in our Precision Manufacturing and Engineering business line decreased by 8% compared to the prior period. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 17%. The decreases were primarily due to customers delaying projects into subsequent quarters coupled with changes in product mix. Other items of note during the quarter were that interest costs were higher by approximately CAD4 million due to increased benchmark borrowing rates compared to the prior period with increased -- coupled with the increased debt outstanding due to various growth capital expenditures. Our free cash flows maintenance capital expenditures payout ratio was 61% compared to our year end and comparative ratio of 57%, while dividends increased by 12% when compared to the prior period. Depreciation on capital expenditures was also up due to growth capital expenditures and acquisition activity in 2023. Our effective tax rate was consistent with the prior period and our year-to-date effective tax rate is moderating within our expected range of 27% to 29% on an annualized basis.

Free cash flow increased by 3%, while free cash flow less maintenance capital expenditures decreased by 11%. Maintenance capital expenditures increased by approximately CAD9 million primarily due to the timing of certain overall events and the second quarter of 2023 being unseasonably low. From a working capital perspective, our working capital declined compared to the prior year end. This was due to the reclassification of convertible debentures of CAD79 million being classified as current as a contractual maturity as June 2025. From a cash flow perspective, the non-cash investment in working capital was CAD68 million. The investment was to support the growth initiatives and increased revenues discussed above. Coupled with the impact of slower collections and certain government receivables, we're actively managing our working capital and anticipate a majority of these investments will be converted to cash prior to the year end. Our total leverage ratio or our senior leverage ratio increased to 2.88 times from 2.47 times at year end. The increase is primarily due to investments in growth capital expenditures, as previously noted.

Our organic growth results in a lag between the time investments are made and when returns become evident through our financial results. We anticipate this ratio would decline as our growth capital investments impact the bottom line with an along with an improvement in our manufacturing segment adjusted EBITDA relative to our comparative results. During the second quarter, EIC made growth capital expenditures of CAD45 million. These growth capital expenditures primarily relate to the Aerospace and Aviation segment and were primarily driven by investment in additional aircraft and infrastructure, including the King Air simulator. Our Environmental Access Solutions business also invested CAD5 million in growth capital expenditures as it invested in its mass fleet to meet forecasted demand in the future.

Maintenance capital expenditures for the quarter were CAD48 million compared to CAD39 million in the prior period. In our year end conference call, we indicated that we anticipate maintenance capital expenditures to increase in line with our adjusted EBITDA. However, there are some maintenance events that fell outside of the quarter and will be funded in later periods. Maintenance capital expenditures for the manufacturing segment were slightly higher than the comparative period by CAD1 million.

With that being said, I will now turn the call over to Jake and Travis.

[Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thank you, Rich. Travis and I will split up the outlook section. I'll provide focus on the Aerospace and Aviation segment and Travis will provide some context on the Manufacturing segment. Overall, we're expecting another strong quarter from our Aerospace and Aviation business as the trends highlighted in Mike and Rich's section are expected to continue into the third and fourth quarters. Our Essential Air Service businesses will see growth driven by a multitude of factors when compared to prior period. These include the deployment of the fifth and sixth Q400 aircraft to provide services under our agreement with Air Canada. We also expect to continue to see strong load factors and growth when compared to our 2023 due to our investments in aircraft throughout our operations.

Lastly, we expect continued growth in our medevac business with both the 10-year BC and Manitoba medivac contracts continuing to contribute to financial results in the quarter. As a reminder, the BC medivac contract returns are expected to be muted until we redeploy the existing aircraft being used to service the contract in the interim. Offsetting some of these gains is the impact of continued labor shortages and supply chain challenges. Although we're not seeing a worsening of these dynamics, the challenges still remain. The Aerospace business line is also expected to have growth in Q3, primarily driven by the increased tempo of flying for our surveillance aircraft. The revenue increases are expected to be offset by declines in our training business revenue with the EBITDA margins normalizing to historical periods as rich had commented on.

Our aircraft sales and leasing business are also expected to experience growth. This anticipated growth is driven primarily by increases in leasing revenue. Although, we are still slightly off pre pandemic run rates, we expect Q3 to continue to build upon the positive momentum we highlighted in the first and second quarters. With respect to maintenance capital expenditures for Q3, we anticipate higher levels or, excuse me, we anticipate levels being higher than last Q3, as certain maintenance events moved from the second quarter into the third quarter. Overall, we expect maintenance capital expenditures to increase roughly consistent with increases in adjusted EBITDA in our aerospace and aviation segment, which is the biggest driver of our consolidated maintenance capex.

Higher flight hours to support increased volumes, together with inflation, labor shortage, supply chain issues and a growing fleet size are some of the factors that contribute to the expected relative percentage increase. Growth investments in Q3 are primarily for the Aerospace and Aviation segment and include the upgrade of the surveillance aircraft for the second -- for the second aircraft on the renewed Curacao contract, the first is already completed and in service, the continued construction of the Gary Filmon Indigenous Terminal, delivery of a new aircraft for the BC medevac contract and continued construction for the King Air simulator. Also, Regional One is always working on opportunistic aircraft and engine acquisitions, which may result in growth investments being made in the Aircraft Sales and Leasing business.

I'll now pass it off to Travis to provide some commentary on the manufacturing segment.

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks Jake. We're anticipating an increase in our revenues in our manufacturing segment during the third quarter. All of the businesses within the manufacturing segment are experiencing a strong level of customer inquiry. However, due to macroeconomic uncertainty, the closing ratio of inquiries has been below historical trends. We're starting to see that trend reverse itself through our business lines. As Mike had mentioned, in the past 45 days we saw over 100 million of bookings in our Multi-Storey Windows Solutions business line. Those bookings were across several geographies and customer segments.

We're also seeing a recent uptick in our orders in our other business lines. This positive development provides excitement for our teams as we believe when the dam breaks and the customers get more confident in the economy, those orders that were delayed will be converted into bookings in the near term. That being said, the Multi-Storey Window Solutions business line is expected to be consistent with the prior year. Quoting in Canada and the US continues to be extremely active. We remain bullish on this business line as the longer term fundamentals being immigration and a lack of affordable housing remain incredibly strong throughout various regions across Canada and the US. Further, we're agnostic to whether a product is a condo development and apartment for the government or commercial business. We've demonstrated our expertise in each of those customer segments.

We're seeing further efficiencies from our integration efforts led by Darwin Sparrow, but we do anticipate some costs from integration, which may offset some of those profitability gains in the shorter term. As we talked about last year in our first quarter call, the environmental access solutions business line comparative results started to normalize in the third quarter of 2023 and therefore we anticipate results materially consistent with the prior year for the third quarter, assuming no adverse impacts from wildfires or other weather events and excluding the acquisition of Duhamel. The acquisition of Duhamel is going to be a growth catalyst for further expansion of the business into Quebec and Eastern Canada.

The Precision Metal and Engineering business line is expected to improve over the prior period due to the acquisition of DryAir in October 2023, for which there's no comparative in the third quarter. Similar to our Multi Storey Window Solutions business line, we're experiencing a significant number of inquiries and we anticipate the two interest rate reductions in Canada and increased optimism of an interest rate cut in the US will lead to further bookings in the third quarter. The anticipated maintenance capital expenditures are expected to be slightly higher for the manufacturing statement than the prior year due to the timing of the replacement cycle. We're also anticipating growth capital expenditures to be incurred in each of the business lines.

We anticipate that growth capital expenditures will be slightly higher in our Multi Storey Window Solutions business as we continue to integrate the businesses and acquire new machinery. We also anticipate some growth capital expenditures in our environmental access solutions business line as they continue to adjust the rental fleet for demand in Eastern and Western Canada, although the amounts are expected to be lower than the Q3 comparative from 2023 of CAD13 million. I'll now pass the call back to Mike, who will talk about our acquisition pipeline and wrap up our prepared remarks.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks, Travis. On the acquisition front, Adam and his team are working on a number of pursuits. We are continuing to see more high quality opportunities and that has continued throughout the quarter. We are seeing these opportunities in both Manufacturing and Aviation Aerospace segments, but consistent with our 20 year history, we only execute on transactions that are accretive and meet our acquisition criteria. Overall, we remain confident that we are on track to meet the mid-to-upper end of our 2024 adjusted EBITDA guidance. This confidence is underpinned by the essential nature of our businesses recent strength in inquiries being converted into bookings in our manufacturing segment and the fact that a significant portion of our revenues are backed by long term contractual arrangements, the growing need for Aerospace Solutions, the continued recovery of our Aircraft Leasing business and investments we have made in prior periods for our future growth.

Thank you for your time this morning and we'd now like to turn the call over for questions. Operator?

Questions and Answers

[Operator]

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Steve Hanson from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Good morning, Steve.

[Steve Hansen, Analyst at Raymond James]

Yeah, good morning, guys. Thanks for the time. Appreciate it. Look, Mike, the order flow that you described is pretty encouraging. I think you said CAD100 million past 45 days another CAD20 million this week. How should we think about the timing of that ramp up of the order flow as it should hit the P&L over time? What kind of backlog are you sitting on now and how will that ultimately sort of start to flow? And just as a related point is, do you think it's just interest rates that's driving this? Or what do you think is ultimately triggering this opening up of order flow? Thanks.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Yeah, we've talked about the order book, like our bid outstanding for the last few quarters being remarkably high. We, in fact, added people to be able to manage those bidding opportunities. The developers with -- particularly in Canada with the change from a condo environment to an apartment environment, largely driven by the fact that it's hard to get mortgages at the interest rates -- combined with the requirements to qualify. And so it slowed pre sales, which has slowed the initiation of projects. But at the same time is that the need for that housing has greatly accelerated and Canadian developers are getting their heads around, well, maybe I need to build apartments, not condos.

With the decline in interest rates, I think you're seeing a new confidence amongst those developers. The guys who are closest to going are starting to step off the curb. And what I'm most excited about is that the new orders we got were not Toronto centric. While we did well in Toronto, that's our biggest market, we added things in Western Canada, in Calgary, in Vancouver, Seattle, and in the States, Dallas and Washington. And so I really want to caution people, we're excited, but don't extrapolate. This is early in the process and maybe this may be the first little surge and it could fall back. But with the interest rate news coming about the US, where they're looking to follow Canada at these rates, and that will give Canada more courage to cut further faster. And the big demand, we expect to see continued growth, perhaps not at the rate we've seen in the last six weeks, but continued growth into the future.

In terms of our order book, it had declined slightly during the quarter as we built more than we replaced. But now that's gone the other way. We're now booking orders faster. You'll recall that typically this business is kind of 18 month order to delivery cycle. One of the very interesting things we've seen early in the cycle here is some of that has shortened up and we actually have stuff that will be delivered by next -- mid next year. So you'll see the beginnings of this little surge in 2025, but where you'll really see it is in 2026.

[Steve Hansen, Analyst at Raymond James]

Okay, that's great. That's really good context. Just switching over to the matting business. There's another period of year-over-year declines. I know the comps are still tough, but how should we think about the trajectory from here? You've got the new acquisition under your belt that gives you the foothold of East. It sounds like you might be building some incremental mat inventory, based upon the capex commentary. Just trying to get a sense for where we're at in sort of the cycle or the biorhythm here and what we should expect to balance of this year and into next?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks. I think the best predicator of what we actually think is what we're doing with building mats. There's mats that have come back off of the trends pipeline. There'll still be something coming back from that for us and for other people. So that increases supply. But there's other major projects getting going at go, gas and there's a lot of T&D work, which really where the future is in the medium term in Eastern Canada. It's why we bought Duhamel. And so to see that operation, we're continuing to build mats. I think Q2 would kind of be the end of the last cycle. Q3 is the beginning of the next cycle. I just need to really remind everybody, we bought Northern Mat, we told everyone that this is a super cycle. We did abnormally well for a three or four quarter period. And right now we're heading into the next up cycle pretty confident in the business or we wouldn't be building more mats. But it's not dramatic yet. There isn't a shortage of mats in the business the way there was in the last cycle. So slow and steady growth and particularly Eastern Canada. And we're within eastern Canada, we're very bullish on Quebec, the acquisition of Duhamel, we're already building the big heavy crane mats there, and they give us a Quebec facing sales arm to deal with the Quebec government, which is good for us. And so I would say we're pretty optimistic about that. It builds slowly and we're finally -- we've rolled off of the really high comparatives.

[Steve Hansen, Analyst at Raymond James]

That's great. I'll come back to the queue. Thanks.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of James McGarragal from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Market]

Hey, good morning and thanks for having me on.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Good morning, James.

[James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Market]

Yeah, just on the Duhamel acquisition again. I know you flagged being able to serve the Quebec market and more generally Eastern Canada. But you know, a lot of that infrastructure money is getting spent in the US. Are you able to serve the US at all within your current footprint? And you know that a market that you might be interested in looking at, kind of in the medium term?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Absolutely. We believe the fundamental investment thesis in Northern Mat when we bought it was T&D. We did a lot of work on what's coming. Around the world economies are trying to electrify, reduce their reliance on petrochemical fuels. And so we believe there's a big part of that coming. And that's not just a Canadian story. Adam and his team are very busy on looking for opportunities in the US. We need to find the right partner. We believe we've got the industry leader in Northern Mat with our management team there, and we want someone of a similar capability in the US. We may go organically, James, if we don't find something to buy that we think is worth the price we're paying for it. The market is so big. There's a great opportunity there, but my first choice is to give ourselves a beachhead by getting an industry leader, even if it's a smaller company in a given area. And in the medium term, you're definitely going to see Northern Mat in the US one way or another.

And in terms of what Duhamel is bringing to the table? A big part of the mat business, this is going to sound silly, is storage. When the mats go from project to project, you need places to put the mats. You need places to clean the mats and then redeploy them. Duhamel gives us that. Duhamel gives us surge production capacity. They're building the big heavy crane mats there. We are currently doing a lot of math on whether we should be building them in Creston and in St. George. St. George has been shipping them to Quebec or building them there. Lumber supply, it makes that. It's not an obvious answer. Ultimately, I believe we will build stuff there, but we aren't doing it yet. And with the opportunity to do that, they're very strong operators. Duhamel and the management team is exceptional. That's going to give us a great interface with Hydro-Quebec and the Quebec government.

[James McGarragle, Analyst at RBC Capital Market]

Thanks for the caller. And then just under the windows segment, it seems like things are starting to potentially turn around there from the order side. But can you just talk a little bit about where you are from a capacity perspective on the windows side? I know you flagged some additional costs on the integration between Quest and BV. Was that kind of expected or is that something that was unexpected? Just trying to get your comfort level from an operational perspective to be able to execute on what seems like it's going to be a pretty near term ramp up in production, and I can turn the line over after that? Thanks.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Sure. The window -- I've talked for a while that if I were to fast forward a six quarters and we're having this call, I think we're going to be talking a lot about the window business. And the reason simply is we're at the beginning of a brilliant cycle for that construction business. We don't have enough housing. The continued urbanization trend. I know we all thought after COVID that we were going to go live on the outskirts and not cities. It just -- that's just not what's happened. Particularly in Canada. The vast majority of immigrants end up in two or three cities, both, all of which have shortages of land and single family housing. That's too expensive. So the demand profile is exceptional. We're starting to see it come. During the slow period, there was a temptation and one or two of our competitors decided to be ultra-aggressive on pricing.

We always treat our customers fairly and we were competitive, but we didn't want to take things that we'd regret later. I like where that puts us now as the market begins to open up. And while I'm super excited about it, you just have to remember it's 12 months to 18 months if we take an order today. It's very rare that you would produce it in the same year. It does happen occasionally. It's usually when a competitor drops the ball and you got to step in and help out. But we're very bullish on that and we're in the process of amalgamating our business in Ontario. We have too many buildings, way too much real estate footprint. Darwin and the team at Quest and the team at BV are doing a great job of bringing those two companies together. We're going to be abandoning one facility later this year, which will greatly reduce our overhead costs.

In terms of production capacity, we've got lots. We could be double the size. We are now for a very modest investment in certain pieces of equipment. So capacity is not an issue. And we talked a little bit. I think Richie mentioned in his comments that we kept people, that if we were a pure window business and that's all we did, we might have had to reduce our staff. During this we made a choice to keep those people the learning curve in putting together custom windows because remember, every job is a new job. We don't build anything into inventory. So you need people that have the skills and have seen things before and we've kept that. So it's almost like a capital investment in people. And so we're ready to go.

We still got some more work to do to get the best efficiencies and the best combination of those two teams in terms of production of our windows. But the Dallas plant, as an example, is now running two full shifts, and we're starting to really see how efficient a purpose-built window building can be. And I'm excited about it. I wish I could fast forward three or four quarters so some of the new stuff would be in the plant already. But having said that, I was really excited when we put the CAD100 million number into our releases and then we got another one afterwards. There's always a risk that it's an anomaly when you get a surge like that.

Landing another one makes me that much more confident that we're seeing the beginning of a longer term trend. I'm not suggesting that CAD100 million every six weeks is the new cadence. I'd like it if it was, but I think that's a bit of a surge. But we're definitely seeing a change in the developers. And one of the things that makes me most confident about it is, it's not just discussions about price. It's how fast can you build these, and can you guarantee me I'm getting factory space? And that tells you the mindset of some of our customers that, hey, okay, if a whole bunch of us go at once, are we going to be able to get steel? Are we going to be able to get concrete? And so I remain very bullish about the medium term on our window business. Operator?

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Matthew Lee from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Good morning, Matt.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity Group]

Hey, morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe a follow on to Steve's question. I know there's a lot of moving parts in manufacturing, but can you just maybe walk through how we should think about the build of Q3 and Q4 EBITDA from the CAD35 million this quarter? It sounds like you'll get flat year-over-year EBITDA from environmental, a bit of return in quest from revenue that was pushed back, and then we'll probably see a couple million quarter from dry air. If I stack it all together, does that mean we should be thinking about positive year-over-year EBITDA growth in the back half for manufacturing?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

My guys are just pulling up numbers. They don't let me have the specifics, so I'll let them actually speak to facts. But we are seeing outside of the ones you mentioned, Matt, we really struggled in West Tower for a bit with the telephone companies just not spending any money. That dam broke in the last couple of weeks, where the awards of new tower construction have really taken off. So we expect to see strength in that business in the back half. Our LV control business in Winnipeg in the AG space has also seen an increase. That probably we realize more at the beginning of next year than in Q3 and Q4. So in aggregate, I think it's reasonably positive across the board. I'm not sure that we really want to put out a segment forecast, but I think you'll see it strengthening, clearly, because the two things that hurt us here, the window business with the weaker margins in Q2 and the mat business up against a tough comp, both go away.

And as I say, we're starting to invest in growth capex and mats, which I think we wouldn't do if we didn't have something to do with the mat. I'm not comfortable putting out a number. It's not something we typically do, but you'll see strengthening in the manufacturing segment. And the other thing I'd like to point out while we're here on this topic is we've seen this twice before. In 2016 and in 2020, the six months before the US election, uncertainty slowed down, the awarding of things. And then when the election actually came to a close, the big burst in company confidence, and it really was independent of who won. In 2016, the Republicans pulled off a surprise win and took the presidency. And then at '22, the Democrats took it back. I really don't think this is a matter of the market saying one has to win or the other has to win. I think it's more just about getting the noise of an election out of the way. So we're getting close to that. So by the time we talk again, we'll know who the president is, and that's probably good for us.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity Group]

Right. That's fair. And then maybe just on the regional one side, you know, great to see leasing coming back, sales above our expectations. Maybe just talk about what's driving the uptick in demand for regional aircraft and the sustainability of the leasing kind of business as you see it right now?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Yeah. The change is that for -- when we came out of COVID, the shortage of pilots and the uncertainty in the business meant that some of the smaller aircraft weren't being used, not just ours, ones owned by the airlines. And so a lot of our stuff's out on the ground. The first improvement came when the aircraft engine leasing business started to improve, because as those planes went back into service, they had to overhaul engines that were deferred and they were putting rental engines on. So that continues. And now Europe in particular, although Africa is also very strong, the demand for the regional jet is strengthening, particularly on the CRJ900 side. We've made a lot of money in the past of the 200s, of the 700s. The number of those available is infinitesimal. We can't get any.

The ones that were out there have been soaked up by the big airlines in the US who are converting them into 50 seats jets and turning it into three classes. So a CRJ has about 700, is about 70 seats. They're taking out rows of seats and putting in a business class, a premium economy and a regular economy to maximize the revenue on those, while staying within the flight attendant contract. So they have less, less staff on the plane. Now that there's less of those available, they've moved to turning the 900s into what they're called 650s, which is exactly the same process. And so we've been active on buying up 900s, wherever we can find them. We like those. We are probably the leader of remarketing CRJs in the world, together with probably slightly larger gauge ERJs. And we're earlier in the cycle with those.

So when we buy ERJs, they tend to come with leases or are going on longer term leases. So that was a really long answer to get to the point that we see continued strength in this business. We're really looking for more opportunities to deploy money in this area. And the actual EBITDA in the quarter would have been the best quarter we've ever had in Regional One. And we continue to see that. Now, that's good, but it's not as good as it sounds because we've invested in Regional One. So we got dry powder that we still got to deploy some of this stuff. So we expect continued growth. And by the end of the year, I think it's a number that I'll be really happy with, not that I was really happy with this one.

[Matthew Lee, Analyst at Canaccord Genuity Group]

Well, all right, I'll pass the line.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Cameron Doerksen from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Good morning, Cam.

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank Financial]

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, good morning. Question on, I guess where we are on the ramp up of the two Medevac contracts that you won, DC and Manitoba. I guess maybe if you could sort of describe how long the process we are as far as getting up to full ramping up. And also if you could just maybe discuss what capex is left on those two programs from here?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Okay. Manitoba one is easier. We're finished with that one. I don't know if there might be some odd expenses that straggle into Q3, but we have all the planes now. We start flying them, will have the full impact. Dave White sitting across the table from me, and I'm staring at him as I say, this will have the full impact of the Manitoba contract starting in September. In BC, you'll recall that the government required brand new aircraft and our aircraft supplier has had some challenges. And so planes are late getting to us. So there's still a significant piece of that CAD200 million yet to be spent. But on the revenue side, we have helped the government out. We found some other older aircraft that we've deployed and we're now doing a significant piece. Almost all of that contract with other aircraft and so a lot of -- we're starting to, and you will see in Q3 get most of the contract in.

But I bring you back to a comment we've been making for a while. We own part of that business before we won the contract. And so I've got a great fleet of aircraft that we're going to redeploy. And when I talk about redeploy, it's other contracts. So we just this week will submit our bid for the Northwest Territories medevac contract. If we win that, BC is going to lose some of those planes. They'll go there. If we are successful at Newfoundland negotiating there, some of the planes are likely to end up there. So the full impact in our financial statements is two things. It's flying all the BC work, which we're starting to get close to doing now, but then it's taking the assets we used to have in BC and doing something else with them. So you'll see a gradual, continued growth in that business.

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank Financial]

Okay, so that's great color. So it's fair to say that. Yeah, no, that's really helpful. So fair to say that if you -- if you are successful in Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, because you already have the planes, the capex commitment would be fairly minimal?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

It depends. I wouldn't suggest that any of those would just be those planes. They may have certain ones that have a large door requirement or they may want a jet or a Pilatus as part of it. So it's never as simple as just one. But a bulk of those planes can go into those contracts.

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank Financial]

Okay, that's very helpful. Maybe just secondly for me, I just wanted to ask about, I guess, question on the balance sheet. The converts that are due in June next year went current in the quarter, obviously, maybe somewhat depends on what the share price is over the next 12 months. But any thoughts on what your plan is for those?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

This is going to be the least satisfying answer of the day. We're looking at all the options on that. Like with what we've got in the book, some of the things that are coming, I think the most likely alternative is that the stock gets into the mid 50s and they convert and they go away. That's the most likely. If that were not to happen for someone, general market conditions or whatever, I think you would see us probably pay them off out of our line, although we could do a replacement issue as well. Not particularly big on that alternative, but depending on the opportunity, I may not want to use capital out of my debt on my secured debt side, if we've got enough stuff cooking that I might just replace them.

But the first plan is to just see them convert. We'll be patient with that because it's not a huge amount of money. If we got to write a check out of our line, it's not a big deal. And with the decline in interest rates and the fact that we got hit pretty hard last fall, when interest rates went higher for longer, I'm pretty bullish with that and our strong guidance and some of these contracts that Jake promised me he's going to win, I'm pretty confident that we can just make these go away the way we usually have, which is converting.

[Cameron Doerksen, Analyst at National Bank Financial]

Okay, perfect. No, that's a great -- great answer. That's all for me. Thanks very much.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Krista Friesen from CIBC. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Hey, Krista.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC World Markets]

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering, on the Air Canada contract, I believe last quarter you mentioned that they had started discussing exchange, possibly flying cross border routes for them. Has that started yet? And are there any additional opportunities with Air Canada given the great relationship you're building with them?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

I'm going to give that one to Jake.

[Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies at Intercontinental Exchange]

Sure. Thanks for the question, Krista. And first of all, I'd say that our relationship with Air Canada continues to strengthen and we're very happy with that partnership as we build. We're planning to start flying cross border to two destinations starting October 1, Boston and New York. So that's always been in our operational plan and we continue to ramp up resources to undertake that.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC World Markets]

We got a scheduled date for that?

[Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies at Intercontinental Exchange]

October 1.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

October 1.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC World Markets]

Okay, sorry.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Go ahead, Krista.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC World Markets]

All right. And I was just going to ask if there were -- I mean, I know you're adding the two additional aircrafts, but is there any more room on that contract or just with Air Canada to maybe do additional flying for them?

[Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies at Intercontinental Exchange]

Under the terms of the existing arrangement, we kind of hit the limit there, but I characterize it by saying, again, we're interested in the growth. We first and foremost have undertaken a lot of activity here. We need to make sure we continue to deliver effectively on our commitments. So again, I think there's interest and there will be growth, but for now we're making sure that we effectively execute on this.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

There's preliminary discussions with Air Canada, but there's nothing imminent.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC World Markets]

Okay, great. And then just on the window business, can you speak to what the competitive environment is like right now and how the pricing is on some of the projects that you're bidding on?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

The competitive environment, i.e., is strong. It's kind of an oligopoly in that, there are a ton of players, but all the players have capacity. And the difference -- there's differences between the companies. Some do only window wall, some do predominantly curtain wall. We now do everything and we're probably the leader at that. We're clearly the leader in Canada and a significant player in the US. So pricing has been tighten and I would suggest it will remain competitive for a bit. But as orders book, I think developers are going to want to pay for certainty and they're going to deal with people who can provide a complete solution to their project and most importantly, deliver them on time. When you're in an apartment environment, they've got 100% of the capital in, unlike when you're doing a condo, when you've got owners capital if it's delayed. And so timing in an apartment world is even more important. It's important in everything, but it's even more important. So I think as the market strengthens, pricing will strengthen, but the stuff in the past has been the last six, nine months has been very competitive.

[Krista Friesen, Analyst at CIBC World Markets]

Okay, great. Thanks. I appreciate the input.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Yep. Operator?

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of -- yes, and your next question comes from the line of Konark Gupta from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Hey, good morning, Konark.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at ScotiaCapital]

Good morning, Mike and team. Thanks for taking my question. You know, I wanted to ask you about the wildfires a bit here. You know, you guys obviously saw some benefits. I guess last year in Q2, there were some early fire activity. This year, I think we had a huge fire breaking out in Jasper. So area right in Q3. I think you alluded to that in terms of your road raving, flying could see some benefits here in Q3. Is there -- like how should we think about sort of the net-net impact on your fundamentals from wildfires like Northern Mat might see some decline because of fires usually, or should there be no offset?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

I'll take some on northern Matt and then I'll let Jake grab on the flying part. There's no doubt that the ultra-dry conditions don't help us any in Northern Alberta, whether it's burning or not. When it's burning, they can't do anything. But even when it's not burning, it's so dry they might often don't use matting. So that's not good for our business. It's no worse than it was last year. It's probably less bad than it was last year in terms of the matting business. I think it's something we need to come to grips with certain parts of Northern Alberta, Northern Saskatchewan, and even to an extent Northern Manitoba, where that's going to be an ongoing issue. But the geographic diversity and the growth in the East, you just simply don't have that problem, will help buttress that for us, maybe add.

[Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies at Intercontinental Exchange]

Sure. And then on the flying Konark, you're going to see enhanced helicopter activities in the various wildfires. And we have some of our heavy helicopters engaged right now in Alberta, so you'll see an uptick through Q3 with that.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at ScotiaCapital]

Okay, that's great. Thanks. And on the BC medevac contract, I think it seems like you guys are using some temporary aircraft there as OEM deliveries are delayed. Is there any implication from these temporary aircraft on capex or profitability in Q2 or Q3?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Short answer is no. The BC government made the choice to have new aircraft and when we bid, we bought slots, like we went out and put deposits down. So we were kind of pot committed. We better win or we had planes for something else. But the problem is just a demand for King Air and some of the supply challenges our manufacturer is having has delayed those. The government is fully aware that's beyond our control and it's not causing us any problems on the contract. And in fact, I would say we've probably won some kudos with the government with how we've been able to belt and suspenders the service up and make sure we're looking after everybody. What it really does Konark, the single biggest impact is it pushes out the capex on the new planes. The problem that creates for me is knowing exactly when I'm going to have those other planes back to redeploy them.

Like I can't pull them from BC until I don't need them in BC, but I've got other opportunities coming. So we're probably the second or third biggest King Air operator in the world and will soon be the biggest King Air operator in the world. So we have some ability to shuffle between operations to help a bit. But I would really like to get a hardwired exact dates for when we're going to have them available because we've got opportunities to put them out. And that's where you really see the jump in our profitability. Because I own them already, they're depreciated, or maybe not fully depreciated, but largely depreciated on our book. So the returns, both from a cash flow and a profitability are stronger. So we're pushing Textron to get the aircraft, but our understanding of the challenges they face.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at ScotiaCapital]

Right. Makes sense. Thanks. Last one for me, working cap was a bit of a drain in Q2. I think you kind of called out as beyond normal this time. Seems like you guys are investing in some regional jets at Regional One, etc. In terms of magnitude of how much could potentially reverse from working capital to cash in Q4, can you give us some sense and like what's going to be the bigger driver there is those regional jet sales or parts?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

It's a really good question. Inventory is part of it. Quite frankly a bigger part of it is when you deal with governments, their payment record, they always pay. They don't always pay when you expect them or they tell you they're going to pay. And so we've got a material receivables build in aviation that I think largely will reverse itself by the end of the year. I've never, they've told us. Hey, Rich, do you want to jump in?

Richard

Yeah, I think just for context, both in the prepared remarks and in the MD&A, we just put in there that we expect the majority of the CAD68 million, so more than half of it to reverse before the end of the year, you know, Q3 being our busiest quarter, while we may get the benefit of some of those things rectifying themselves in the quarter, you may not see it when you look at the cash flow from working capital number because the offset will be there from significantly busier quarter and you'll see then the drawdown that you're expecting in Q4. So, you know, we're actively managing and working through it. But yeah, a couple of large government receivables that are causing that number during the quarter.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at ScotiaCapital]

Okay. And to clarify, Regional One is not part of this reversal equation or Regional One will also contribute in the reversal in Q4?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

We have receivables there too. It's not just in one, it's across the board in aviation. But there's nothing out of the normal course of businesses. They go up and down and Regional One has got continued opportunities where you will see strong performance in that company for the balance of the year.

[Konark Gupta, Analyst at ScotiaCapital]

Okay, perfect. Thanks. I'll turn it over. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Tim James from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Hey, good morning, Tim.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD Securities]

Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for the time. My first question is just turning to Duhamel for a minute, and I realize it's not a large transaction, but can you give us a bit of a sense for what portion of revenue will be to third parties versus what portion I assume is generated by Northern Mat? Just trying to get a sense of materiality, if at all, of the revenue contribution in terms of reported revenue from that transaction.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

I think if you -- I think the easiest way to look at that without spilling information that I haven't put in the public sphere is that Duhamel was a accretive acquisition on its own with returns in the 15% to 20% range on an IRR, unlevered basis, as we always talk about. So when you model that in you, you guys can do the math backwards and pick a number, and then where you'll see the difference from on a Northern basis is more sales in Northern. On our financial statements, it really does matter which company I flow it through. In fact, that's really more of Rich's area. But at the end of the day of the Quebec sales go up, it'll be managed through there. But in the Mat business, the core business that they're in already. You can calculate reasonably accurately because it's not a big number based on the size of it with that sort of 15% to 20% return.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD Securities]

Okay, thank you. Just a quick clarification. When you use the term returns in the outlook section of the MD&A, should I -- can we assume that that is a reference to EBITDA, like dollars of EBITDA, when you talk about sort of forward-looking returns?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

It's probably more of a free cash flow return we're talking about than just a pure EBITDA. I've got my guys flipping to see where the precise paragraph it's in. But generally speaking, when we talk about returns, because of the great difference in maintenance reimbursement investment requirements between aviation and manufacturing, we're generally talking about the number after the maintenance reinvestment requirement, Tim.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD Securities]

Okay. Okay, that's helpful. That's helpful. And then my last question, just turning to the Windows systems business. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the second quarter, the revenue did not come through quite as expected. It was weaker than you anticipated when you reported the first quarter results. And again, I'm just sort of interpreting this based on the language in the Q1 discussion versus the numbers that came through. Could you just help us understand, because this, as you pointed out, is a fairly long lead business, 18 months normally, it sounds like it's getting shorter. But what sort of transpires in this business in such a short timeframe that can make the outcome different than what you had anticipated?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

We had a project that backed up. They weren't ready for our windows, so we couldn't deliver them because for job site specific issues slowed it down. The revenues weren't to be honest, as far off as the EBITDA was. And the EBITDA was off because when we were delayed on some of our own projects, we substituted third party work, installing other people's things. That's part of the glaziers business we do, particularly in the US. And so while that margin, that's positive margin dollars, they're not at the same percentage as they are as our own. So while our revenue was a little bit off of our internal expectations, it wasn't as much as the product mix affected our EBITDA margins.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD Securities]

Just a follow up question on that. You mentioned it was the customer that wasn't ready to take deliveries. Is that something like, how common is that? Is that really unusual? Or do you see that a handful of times overdose the course of a year?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

That is -- Travis, do you want to grab that?

[Travis Muhr, Chief Administrative Officer at Intercontinental Exchange]

Yeah. No, that's, like, normal, right. So when you think about sort of a construction project, you know, it's dependent upon, you know, the concrete, you know, being formed, the curing of that, getting the various trades in and out and sort of the availability. So, they -- when we produce these, we have our projects plan, but generally there's always adjustments. And so the team is very cognizant in looking at their project planning for various jobs and moving this job here, that job there. But it is relatively normal in the business. We try and stick with our production plans, but sometimes those become out of our control.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

The -- and it's more evident in a period where it's not as busy because you don't have something to pull forward a lot of -- normally, when this stuff happens, Rich's project got delayed because the contract guy -- the concrete guy didn't get his work done in time, but Travis is on schedule or maybe ahead. So we pre-built Travis's job and do Rich's job later. When it's softer, it's harder to pull things forward. And it's not a business where you want to build into inventory. We don't do that generally. Sometimes we will if a specific customer asks for it. But.

So in a softer period, the delay of a contract has a bigger impact than it does when we're busy. I'd add, we did our Q2 meetings here in Toronto. Normally we would do this in Winnipeg and we took our Board out to see a site and it was incredibly informative to see the difference between the window products. So the job we went to happened to be at one young 100 storey, mixed use hotel condo project. But it's got every product we make in it, from stick window wall to balconies, curtain wall, and window wall.

And one of the things I'm thinking about doing is perhaps asking our analysts if they'd like to come see the project. I think it would be a great insight. We've had you guys in the factory, our developer there has allowed us on occasion to bring people to see what's going on and I think it might help understand exactly how these, these things go. That project with 100 floors, we could build a floor or two a week. So even if you're bang on, you're talking about something that's multi-year in nature to build that many floors.

[Tim James, Analyst at TD Securities]

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. That's helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Good morning, Chris.

[Chris Murray, Analyst at ATB Capital Markets]

Thanks. Good morning. Thanks. I guess my first question, thinking about the aerospace business and we're starting to see some riots in the US -- sorry, in the UK around immigration issues. You know, kind of looked at the numbers, kind of flat growth on the top line, but certainly some EBITDA expansion. Got to expect that with the new UK government. Some of the issues they're having, they're going to want to maybe an operational tempo upgrade into ISR work. So just kind of wondering a couple of questions here. First of all, what's your ability to flex with ISR work at this particular point now? I think force multiplier has been kind of eaten up already by a lot of stuff, but not sure how much more capacity is available to you. And then as we start seeing these issues kind of multiply, I know there's some other contracts that are out there. I was wondering if you could give us maybe some updates on where some of the other major ISR contracts around the world might be standing?

[Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies at Intercontinental Exchange]

Sure, this is Jake. I'll take that call. So I'll answer your question a couple parts here. In terms of capacity, availability, a couple quarters ago we indicated that we had proactively started to build another ISR asset, which these often have a long lead time in terms of getting them out and it's partway through construction. So again, with that new asset plus some of the older assets that we have that have come off contracts, we do have an ability to flex upwards in terms of the ability, and that's not withstanding having the capacity to take our existing assets under contract and just fly them more. And we're seeing that as a general trend across all of our contracts in that the utilization on these contracts or these aircraft are going upwards.

Specifically to talk about a few of the opportunities out there with regards to the UK, you know, kind of in late breaking news that, we indicated that the RFP that we submitted back in Q1 had been canceled and then reissued as of yesterday, with a new procurement process. The anticipated contract award in that new process is going to be Q3 '25 with an into service date at the end of '25. What we see in that is an increased op tempo. They're asking for between 4,000 and 5,000 hours annually. So again, that's a significant uptick from what we're doing now with one aircraft. And obviously we feel we're in a very good position to continue for that. And the other thing I'd say is we anticipate that the UK government's going to need some type of interim solution as well, that our asset there is very busy and will continue to be busy.

The other point I'd like to note, other RFP I'd like to note is the, we talked about it over several quarters is the activities in Australia and that RFP was released very recently, again following in a similar trend. It was actually larger in scale and scope than what we had anticipated being a 12-year contract plus three-year option. And, you know, again, our teams are still going through to analyze the requirements, but, likely a 10 to 15 aircraft operation. So again, very large. So -- and that's just a couple of the ones that we're looking at. Again with some of the state of the world and some instability in it, obviously that means a lot of activity for our ISR businesses.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Jake doesn't like giving numbers on cost things, but just to give you a broad brush on the potential size of that Australia deal. It's -- that's the biggest ISR contract in the world that we're aware of. And you're talking about something that'll be considerably north of half of billion dollars in investment. With ISR rates of return. It's clearly that is that that's the jewel of the crown, and we will be very actively pursuing that. Earlier this year, through a process of expressions of interest, we were part of a narrowed group who've been invited to bid on this. And so by the end of the year, we will have a bid out on that. And hopefully sometime next year we'll find out about it and starts flying in what '28, Jake?

[Jake Trainor, Chief Executive Officer, PAL Group of Companies at Intercontinental Exchange]

'28, yeah.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

So that's, if you're going to add that many ISR aircraft, that's a tight timeline. So we're excited about it, we're working hard on it. And at the same time, we're building aircraft now just without exactly knowing where they're going, but just because of the demand for ISR services.

[Chris Murray, Analyst at ATB Capital Markets]

Okay, that kind of brings me to my next question. And, you know, we started, I think Cam sort of started on this one. But, you know, you've got a couple series of debentures that are probably, let's -- let's assume, will turn into -- turn into equity over the next little while. But as you're getting larger, as the -- as the dollars themselves get bigger, you've always sort of operated, you know, call it senior debt at a couple of terms, debentures at a turn. But as you get larger, do you have to start thinking about how you construct the cap structure of the business? Is there a time to start thinking about getting a debt rating, maybe taking on, call it tradable debt or permanent debt, maybe even in different currencies given where you're going to trading in the world? So I guess I'm trying to think about how the balance sheet needs to, for lack of a better term, you know, grow up from where you've come from to probably where you're going.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Chris, that couldn't be a more topical question. You've clearly been reading Rich's goals and targets for the year from our Board. Convertible debentures have been very good to us, and as we've grown, they've provided us a great source of low cost capital. But as we get bigger, they're less and less appropriate for us. And I'll never say never that we won't ever use one again. But they're not going to be a big part of our capital stack going forward. And as a result, we're probably going to need some publicly traded debt. Right now we're working on the decision whether we do that through a rating or do we do a private place with a pension fund.

And we're working through those details as we speak. It's a little complicated because the rating agencies, if they rate us as an airline, we're not going to get potentially the rating we want. If they rate us as more of an infrastructure or more of a government services play, which we are, because most of our revenue is contracted from governments, we're going to get a great rating. So we're busy working on those. But your question is bang on. If we look out two years from now, the converts aren't going to be the percentage of our balance sheet. They are now, and they'll be replaced with a more long term fixed rate debt instrument.

[Richard Wowryk, Chief Financial Officer at Intercontinental Exchange]

And I think -- and just one additional piece, I think the instrument that we choose will be heavily dependent on some of the large contracts we're looking at, particularly on the aerospace side, and the flexibility that we may be looking for with respect to those instruments as you noted, thinking about different currencies, the investment currency, usually US dollar, on the aircraft side, but the currency we're getting paid in might be, Australian dollars or again, a different currency from a different jurisdiction around the world and making sure that the instrument we choose, we get the flexibility from a swap perspective to make it make sense for us. So all things that we're considering when we look at what the next move in our capital structure is.

[Chris Murray, Analyst at ATB Capital Markets]

Okay. And just maybe follow on to that, we think about a lot of this that's going to be large aircraft related. Would you guys look at things like double ETC [Phonetic] sale leaseback market?

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Never say never. Right now, I'm not sure that improves our cost of capital, largely because the aircraft are so manipulated and developed. When you take a CAD10 million or CAD15 million or CAD20 million aircraft and put CAD100 million of stuff on it, that's not the stuff that the leasing companies are good at. So if we find a partner that understands the value of what's on the aircraft, that may be a consideration. I think it's more likely that we will use a dead instrument because we understand that we want to own those aircraft. Quite frankly, as technology ages, it doesn't age out. It ages into lower level work for different areas. And so -- I think it's more likely that we would own our own assets. But if we found the right leasing partner, that could change.

[Richard Wowryk, Chief Financial Officer at Intercontinental Exchange]

Especially on the aerospace side where the technology that exists within those aircraft can have top secret components to them. And we're not going to want to have another party have control over the ultimate disposition of that at the end of the term.

[Chris Murray, Analyst at ATB Capital Markets]

No. Fair enough. All right, thanks folks.

[Richard Wowryk, Chief Financial Officer at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. And your last question comes from the line of Steve Hansen from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Hey Steve.

[Steve Hansen, Analyst at Raymond James]

Okay, guys. Sorry. I'm all good for now. I think we exhausted the questions here for sale. I'll leave it there. Thanks.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks.

[Richard Wowryk, Chief Financial Officer at Intercontinental Exchange]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. That concludes your question and answer session. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Pyle for any closing remarks.

[Michael Pyle, Chief Executive Officer and Director at Intercontinental Exchange]

I just want to say thank you to everyone for joining us today. It was lots of questions, lots of good stuff to talk about. I love when we're talking about our contracts and our opportunities going forward. It's what's made EIC [Phonetic] is investing in opportunities and can't wait to talk to you again in November. Have a great summer.

[Operator]

[Operator Closing Remarks].