Deanna Hom Lund
Analyst · B. Riley
Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon. The fourth quarter financial performance was favorably impacted by strong demand and performance in our electronic warfare and satellite communications businesses. Our revenues of $263.6 million were down $4.6 million sequentially from the third quarter, as expected, due to the impact of Hurricane Sandy on our PSS business, as well as due to coming off of a very strong third quarter, in which we saw an acceleration of orders and shipments in certain of our DoD business as certain customers were spending funds before the government fiscal year end of September 30 in anticipation of the 6-month Continuing Resolution. The fourth quarter's revenues were up 24% from Q4 '11 revenues of $213.4 million. On a pro forma basis, Kratos' 2012 revenues grew organically 1.3% over 2011, including the revenues from the acquired companies of CEI and the acquired critical infrastructure business as if included in both years on an apples-to-apples basis. This organic growth was generated despite a 21.6% reduction in our traditional government services revenues, which are now at about $100 million in annual revenues. Excluding the impact of the reduction in our legacy services revenues, Kratos' organic growth was approximately 3.8% on a pro forma basis. During the fourth quarter, we performed our annual test for impairment of goodwill and intangible assets. The impairment test was primarily impacted by the recent softness in the equity markets, resulting from the uncertainties surrounding DoD budget and the assumed potential impact of sequestration. The impairment charge of $96.6 million that we recorded in the fourth quarter is a noncash, nonoperational charge, and does not impact any of our debt covenants under our senior notes or revolving line of credit. The charge was primarily related to acquisitions we had made several years ago, prior to 2009, in the legacy defense services space, which has continued to commoditize. As we have been discussing with you over the past several quarters, our legacy services business has declined over 60% over the past 3 years from revenues of approximately $250 million in 2009 to approximately $100 million in 2012. The $96.6 million charge was comprised of an $82 million charge for goodwill and a $14.6 million charge related to intangible assets related to the use of acquired trade names. Our adjusted EBITDA of $31.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2012 is from continuing operations and excludes the impairment of goodwill, excludes the acquisition-related items aggregating to a total of $2.2 million in net credits and stock compensation of $2 million. The $2.2 million in net acquisition-related credits are comprised of the following items: There is a reduction of $3.3 million litigation accrual related to the Integral acquisition; a $1 million reduction of the estimated earn out related to a previous acquisition; a $1.1 million favorable settlement of an acquisition-related item; all net of a $3.2 million closeout settlement of a contract acquired in a previous acquisition. From an operational segment perspective, our Government Solutions segment generated $215 million in revenues and $27.6 million in adjusted EBITDA or 12.8% EBITDA -- adjusted EBITDA margin. Our Public Safety & Security segment generated $48.6 million in revenues and $4 million in adjusted EBITDA or 8.2% adjusted EBITDA margin. While we are substantially back up and running in the first quarter of 2013 in the northeast region, there are still areas in the region that are not back up completely to the pre-Sandy operating levels. We anticipate that the overall growth trajectory and margin expansion will slowly pick up in the first and second quarters in 2013, with more traction than the second half of 2013. Our mix of revenues has continued to expand on the product side, with 58% products and 42% services, up sequentially from 55% products and 45% services in the third quarter. However, a significant portion of our services business encompasses services wrapped around Kratos' products or customer products and therefore could be considered product-centric. On a GAAP basis, net loss for the fourth quarter was $90 million, which included; the impairment of goodwill and intangible assets of $96.6 million; income from discontinued operations of $1.1 million; a net credit of $2.2 million of acquisition-related items; $11.5 million of expense related to amortization of intangible assets; as well as a $5.4 million income tax benefit. We continue to believe it is also meaningful to provide our earnings per share excluding the amortization expenses, acquisition-related items and the impairment of intangibles and reflecting a cash pay income tax. On a pro forma basis, EPS from continuing operations, excluding the impairment amortization merger-related items, which includes the closeout contract settlement and utilizing the actual average quarterly cash pay income tax provision of approximately $1 million, was $0.15 per share for the quarter. Moving to the balance sheet and liquidity, our cash balance was $49 million at December 30, plus $5.5 million in restricted cash. For the fourth quarter, we generated $19.5 million in cash from operating activities, excluding the payment of $2.3 million of acquisition-related expenses. For fiscal 2012, we generated $57.7 million of cash from operations, excluding the payment of acquisition-related expenses of $5.4 million and have generated $41.1 million of adjusted free cash flow for the year, excluding the acquisition-related payment of $5.4 million and less CapEx of $16.6 million. Our DSOs for the fourth quarter are at 94 days, down sequentially from 100 days at the end of the third quarter and down from 111 days in the first quarter of 2012. We continue to target DSOs of less than 90 days, which we believe is achievable as we expect that as milestone-related contractual payment billing terms are met and as we continue our recently implemented more rigorous billing processes and procedures for the recently acquired critical infrastructure business, that we will be able to continue to reduce the overall DSOs and generate additional operating cash flow. Using the recent quarterly revenues, a 4-day reduction in DSOs is equivalent to approximately $10 million in cash flow generation. Debt under our outstanding notes at December 30 was $625 million plus the issuance premium of $18.7 million. Our contract mix for the fourth quarter was 71%, generated from fixed price contracts, 16% on cost plus fixed fee contracts and 13% on time and material. Revenues generated from contracts with the federal government were approximately 70%, including revenues generated from contracts with the DoD of 65% and revenues generated from contracts with non-DoD federal government agencies of 5%. We also generated 4% of our revenues from state and local governments, 11% from commercial customers and 15% from foreign customers. Backlog at quarter end was $1.3 billion, with $674 million funded. Moving on to the guidance for fiscal 2013; as Eric stated earlier, we have not assumed the impact of sequestration in our guidance. We are forecasting revenues of $950 million to $1 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of $115 million to $125 million. Included in our guidance are select investments in internal research and development, or IR&D, of $23 million to $27 million or approximately 2.3% to 2.8% of revenues. This is a fairly sizable increase from our IR&D of $17.8 million or 1.8% of revenues that we invested in for fiscal 2012. Our estimated pro forma EPS for 2013, using an estimated weighted average shares outstanding for the year of approximately $57 million and excluding amortization of $36 million and using an estimated cash pay income tax provision of approximately $3 million to $4 million, are estimated at $0.35 to $0.50. Using a full statutory 40% tax rate, excluding the amortization expense and acquisition expenses, we estimate pro forma EPS to be in the range of $0.25 to $0.35. In addition, we affirm our free cash flow guidance from continuing operations, excluding acquisition-related items after interest payments and capital expenditures, of $50 million a year. This is derived by the $115 million to $125 million adjusted EBITDA less the annual interest on our notes of $62.5 million, less capital expenditures of $14 million to $17 million, less payment of taxes of approximately $3 million to $4 million and assuming the generation of working capital resulting from the expected reduction of DSOs of approximately $12 million, which reflects an approximate additional reduction of 4 days to the top end of our DSO target of 90 days. We are targeting DSOs of 86 to 87 days by the end of 2013, which could be equivalent to a potential additional working capital generation of $10 million to $12 million. Certain of the capital expenditures are discretionary, as well as the IR&D that we are planning on investing in for 2013. If we feel the need to reduce certain of these discretionary items to enhance or maintain free cash flow, we have the ability to do so. From a capital structure standpoint, liquidity and de-levering standpoint, our current plan is as follows: Assuming we generate the $50 million of free cash flow forecasted for 2013, our cash on hand at the end of 2013 would be approximately $100 million; and assuming the same rate of free cash flow generation for 2014, cash would be approximately $125 million by June 2014, when the no-call ends on our senior notes. If the credit markets remain as they are today, a refinance of, say, $550 million, which includes the 5% premium, and includes a pay-down of approximately $105 million at the current average rate of, say, approximately 8%, our annual cash interest payments could be reduced by as much as $18 million to $19 million. If the rates are at, say, 9%, the potential savings to annual cash interest payments could be $12 million to $13 million. Clearly, this is an opportunity to reduce our overall weighted cost of capital and is something that we are very focused on. We will continue to monitor the credit markets, along with other factors impacting the economics of a refinance. I will now turn the call back over to Eric.