Eric M. DeMarco
Analyst · B. Riley and Company
Great. Thank you, Laura, and good afternoon. Kratos is off to a strong start for 2013, and we are affirming our previous full year 2013 financial guidance, which Deanna will discuss in a few minutes. Kratos' Public Safety & Security business exceeded our revenue expectations in Q1, and PSS backlog and bidding proposal pipeline continued to remain at or near all-time high levels. We believe this is due in part to an overall heightened security awareness in our country. PSS margin rates were down in Q1 as we had to bid low to win certain very large municipality and mass transit authority opportunities, which are very strategic. Now that we have won these contracts through scope changes, scope expensing and efficiencies, we expect our PSS business' margins to increase as we go forward, especially in the second half of the year which is typical in large security system integration deployments. Accordingly, we believe that we will see growth and margin rate expansion in PSS throughout 2013 with continued strong demand for Kratos' security and video surveillance systems at critical infrastructure sites and at municipal locations. Since we reported Q4, a number of problematic events have occurred, which are very important to Kratos' overall business, our 2013 business plan and our future prospects. The U.S. Navy announced they have plans on increasing its EA-18G Growler by up to 21 aircraft in 2014 as compared to 12 in 2013. The Growler is one of Kratos' largest programs, and we believe that this planned increase is representative of the U.S. DoD's prioritization for electronic warfare and dominating the electronic spectrum. Additionally, Australia has announced that it will be ordering 12 EA-18G Growlers in 2013 and is also considering acquiring 24 additional F-18 Super Hornets. Also related to EW, Kratos' CWIP team recently received an important award that we are now performing on, and we are positioning for a new significant CWIP award later on this year. The U.S. Air Force awarded contract Lock 6 for the production of 202 MALD-J aerial vehicles. MALD is an EW decoy and jamming aerial drone. It's an important Kratos-supported program, where Kratos provides the aircraft. The Pentagon has requested $220 million in additional 2014 funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile-defense system, compared to $70 million in 2012. Kratos provides a number of electronic products in support of Iron Dome and other Israeli missile systems and radars. The Obama administration has announced the deployment of an additional 14 ground-based interceptors in Alaska. Kratos provides electronics and support of the GBI kill vehicle. The Wideband Global Satellite Constellation, which Kratos ground equipment supports, has 4 satellites in operating orbit. WGS-5 is scheduled to launch later this year. Five additional WGSs are in the various stages of production, and DISA has just recently indicated they would be open to potential additional WGSs in the future. At the end of March, the Air Force successfully launched its second Space Based Infrared System geosynchronous orbit satellite. The U.S. Air Force is in various stages of producing or operating 6 SBIR missile-defense related satellites, and Kratos provides ground equipment and software in support of this program. Q1 was the first time in the last 4 quarters that Kratos' book-to-bill ratio was less than 1.0:1, which was not unexpected with the federal agencies facing a potential March 27 funding abyss. Importantly, Kratos' backlog remains basically unchanged from Q4 at $1.2 billion. Kratos' last 12 months' book-to-bill ratio remains at 1.1:1, and there is now a federal and DoD spending bill in place. Over the balance of 2013, we expect to receive certain large production or lot purchases under existing Kratos-supported programs, which include ABSAT, ARAV and MALD. And we have a number of large DoD, federal agency and international security opportunities we are pursuing, including in the cyber software product area, EW, radar, Aegis, missile defense and the ISR areas, where awards are currently expected to be made in the second half of '13. Accordingly, we expect Kratos' full year 2013 book-to-bill ratio to exceed 1.0:1. In the aerial drone area, we have accelerated our planned investment for 2 new types of Kratos' CEI aircraft from our initial 2013 budget due to customer opportunities that have materialized faster than we have originally anticipated and where demonstration flights will now be required in the second half of this year. We believe that certain of these accelerated opportunities have been pull-forward as a result of security-related global and geopolitical events, some of which have recently been in the news. And if we are successful with these flights, this could help position us well for 2014 and beyond. The IR&D, NRE and capital spend for these aircraft of approximately $3 million, which was previously planned to be incurred throughout all of 2013, will now be substantially incurred by Kratos in our second quarter so that we can meet the accelerated customer required flight schedules. Accordingly, the acceleration of these aircraft builds will result in our being at the low end of our forecast Q2 revenue range, as these capital Kratos-owned aircraft we're going to manufacture in Q2 are going to be replacing customer-destined aircraft on the production line. The customer aircraft will now be manufactured in Q3 and delivered in Q4. There will also be resulting slight shift in EBITDA margin rates between Q2 and the second half of the year. Full year Kratos 2013 revenue and EBITDA are expected to remain as we previously forecast, as this is just the shift between quarters. And we have confirmed that Kratos' customers do not have an issue with the change in delivery schedule under the existing contract vehicles. Deanna will also cover this in more detail in her prepared remarks. As I mentioned a moment ago, we now have an FY '13 DoD Appropriations Bill, which includes sequestration cuts and which also provides the DoD with some spending prioritization or flexibility. As a result, we are seeing some order delays and pushouts on certain programs, with other programs like EAG-18 (sic) [EA-18G] and Trident being solidly funded. So net-net, the overall federal procurement and funding environment remains extremely choppy. Interestingly, the President's FY '14 DoD budget request of approximately $527 billion does not assume sequestration. And as you know, Kratos' guidance also does not include a sustained sequestration scenario. Accordingly, the DoD budgetary situation remains very unclear and ultimate resolution of an FY '14 federal budget, hopefully later on this year, will be an important data point for Kratos and the entire industry. Irrespective of these near-term budgetary challenges, we continue to believe that strategic and foundational national security capabilities, including MILSATCOM, RFI, ISR, EW, missile defense, radars, aerial drones, cyber and the ability to operate in an Anti-Access/Area Denial environment will remain priorities, and that the administration's FY '14 budget submission, recent requests and events confirm this. Deanna?