Deanna Hom Lund
Analyst · B. Riley & Company
Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon. Our fourth quarter revenues of $235.7 million came in below our expected range, primarily as a result of continued delays in bookings and shipments due to the continued challenging federal budgetary environment, including a continuing resolution lasting throughout the fourth quarter, impacting over 65% of our business. Our revenues decreased year-over-year at 10.6% from $263.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2012, reflecting the impact of fiscal 2013s DoD budgetary situation, which caused certain delays in orders and awards, the related impact to timing and product shipments and the continued contraction of our legacy government services business, which continued to decline approximately 9.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. From an annual run rate perspective, our legacy services business is currently operating at approximately $85 million, down from approximately $100 million for 2012 or an annual 15% decline. Our bookings were particularly strong in the latter part of the fourth quarter, especially in our electronic warfare and satellite communications, training and cybersecurity businesses, with an overall book-to-bill ratio of 1:1 for our entire Kratos government security solutions segment. However, as many of these bookings occurred in the latter part of the fourth quarter and due to the long lead time to produce and ship a number of these products, these shipments and deliveries are not expected to generate revenues until the latter half of 2014. As we have stated on prior calls, we expected our book-to-bill ratio to be stronger in the second half of 2013, which did occur, however, not quite at the level of our original expectations due to the budgetary environment impacting our industry, which we experienced throughout all of 2013. Operationally, we continued to remain focused on cost reductions and efficiencies. And in the fourth quarter, we reduced our headcount by an additional 89 personnel or another 2.3% of our total workforce, down to a total headcount at year end of 3,815. This compares to a headcount of 4,317 at the end of 2012 or a total annual reduction for fiscal 2013 of 502 personnel or 11.6% of our total workforce. Similarly, we have continued to take actions on additional cost reductions in the first quarter of 2014, including in the personnel, excess capacity and facility areas. This cost rationalization will be a continuous process that we are focused on to enhance efficiencies and operating margins. As a result, in the fourth quarter, we have recorded non-recurring charges and credits related to legacy acquired businesses, excess capacity caused in part by the delays in procurements and awards, changes in accruals for unused excess facilities, severance, legal settlements, refinancing costs and the contract design retrofit costs previously discussed in the third quarter. For instance, certain of the more significant items include a charge of $1.5 million during the fourth quarter related to the cost of these personnel reductions, as well as due to the excess capacity and rate variances, a charge of $800,000 related to acquired businesses and $900,000 of costs primarily related to our refinancing efforts in November. These amounts were partially offset by a net $2.4 million credit, primarily related to a favorable legal settlement of a contract dispute with a former subcontractor on an acquired -- of an acquired business. In addition, an adjustment in total estimated additional future costs related to the contract design retrofit, resulting from the aircraft flight test failure that occurred in October, was recorded of $2.4 million, along with an increase of $2.1 million to our excess office space accrual. Similar to previous reports, we exclude such non-recurring or non-core business credits and charges from our adjusted EBITDA. Our adjusted EBITDA of $24.6 million for the fourth quarter is from continuing operations and excludes the charges and credits I highlighted. From an operational segment perspective, our government solutions segment generated $180.1 million in revenues and $20.9 million in adjusted EBITDA or an 11.6% adjusted EBITDA margin. Our public safety and security segment generated $55.6 million in revenues and $3.7 million in adjusted EBITDA or a 6.7% adjusted EBITDA margin. This is up sequentially from $51.8 million and $2.9 million or 5.6%, respectively, in the third quarter. On a GAAP basis, net loss for the fourth quarter was $7.4 million, which included a loss from discontinued operations of $500,000, $8.9 million of expense related to amortization of intangible assets, as well as a $2.9 million income tax benefit. We continue to believe it is also meaningful to provide our earnings per share excluding the amortization expenses and reflecting our cash pay income tax and excluding non-recurring items. On a pro forma basis, EPS from continuing operations, excluding the amortization, restructuring and acquisition-related items, excluding the change in excess unused office space and excluding the change in future estimated contract design retrofit cost, utilizing the estimated average quarterly cash pay income tax provision of approximately $700,000, was $0.06 per share for the quarter. Moving to the balance sheet and liquidity. Our cash balance was $55.7 million at December 29 plus $5 million in restricted cash. For the fourth quarter, we generated $11.6 million in cash from operating activities after payment of the semiannual interest payments on our senior notes of $31.2 million in December. The free cash flow generated for the fourth quarter was $7 million, after taking into consideration capital expenditures of $4.6 million. Our DSOs decreased 5 days from 108 days at the end of the third quarter to 103 days. For fiscal 2013, our DSOs have increased 9 days on a year-to-date basis when compared to the 94 days at the end of 2012. The increase in DSOs is a result of the current budgetary environment, as well as the shift of certain contractual billing milestones into 2014. The increase of 9 days is equivalent to approximately $23 million in impact to our cash flow, as each day's turn is equivalent to approximately $2.5 million in cash. We continue to target DSOs of approximately 90 days on a long-term basis, which we believe is achievable in a stable budgetary environment and as we expect that as the milestone-related contractual payment billing terms are met that we will be able to continue to reduce the overall DSOs and generate additional operating cash flow. As our revenue mix is more products focused now, our DSOs can tend to fluctuate due to the timing of shipment and satisfaction of billing and contractual milestones. Our contract mix for the fourth quarter was 80% of revenues generated from fixed price contracts, 14% from cost plus fixed fee contracts and 6% from time and material contracts. Revenues generated from contracts with the federal government were approximately 64%, including revenues generated from contracts with the DoD of 60% and revenues generated from non-DoD federal government agencies of 4%. We also generated 7% of our revenues from state and local governments, 18% from commercial customers and 11% from foreign customers. Backlog at quarter end was $1.1 billion with $540.7 million funded. Backlog at the end of Q3 was $1.1 billion as well. Now moving on to our financial guidance. In January 2014, President Obama signed a $1.1 trillion spending bill to finance the U.S. government and DoD through September 30, 2014, after previously approving a U.S. federal funding deal that provides some clarity to expected defense spending for the next 2 years. As a result of the President signing the spending bill into law and the increased clarity the -- to the 2014 DoD budget, we recently provided and today are affirming the company's fiscal 2014 fiscal guidance. The company currently expects full year fiscal 2014 revenues of $920 million to $980 million, adjusted EBITDA of $92 million to $106 million and adjusted free cash flow of $25 million to $40 million. Kratos' fiscal 2014 financial guidance assumes approximately $18 million to $28 million in IR&D and other discretionary internally funded investments by the company with the first half and, in particular, the first quarter of 2014's currently forecasted IR&D spend expected to be significantly higher than the second half of 2014, as the company pursues large new opportunities in the UAS, electronic warfare, radar and signal processing and satellite communications areas. We are also providing fiscal 2014 quarterly revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance consistent with our previous guidance. Revenue and adjusted EBITDA are expected to increase and ramp throughout 2014 due primarily to the following: the effect that they're having been little U.S. federal or DoD budget clarity and extended continuing resolution authorizations throughout fiscal 2013, which significantly impacted and delayed the expected contract awards and orders. We have just recently received previously delayed 2014 production orders on several of the company's largest programs, including Trident, EA-18G, a certain missile program, and a large confidential program with product deliveries and related revenue expected to ramp throughout 2014. In November 2013, we announced that Kratos is a key member of a team, which received a $450 million single-award missile defense agency contract, which was subsequently protested by a losing bidder. The protest was just recently denied and the Kratos team award sustained. Kratos' work under this new large MDA contract award is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2014. KPSS, which has forecast in 2014 revenue growth of 5% to 10% based on current backlog and bid and proposal opportunities, is expecting revenue to decrease somewhat sequentially from Q4 '13 to Q1 of '14 and then increase throughout fiscal 2014, as certain large security system deployments conclude and new programs, many of which have recently been awarded, begin. The discretionary IR&D and strategic internal investments we previously discussed with a significant spend in Q1 and Q2 of 2014. Our estimated adjusted free cash flow guidance is comprised of the $92 million to $106 million of adjusted -- estimated adjusted EBITDA, less cash interest of $62.5 million, less capital expenditures of $13 million to $16 million, less estimated cash taxes of $3 million to $4 million and assuming a reduction of DSOs of approximately 5 to 7 days or $12 million to $17 million. This is equivalent to estimated cash EPS used in an estimated annual cash tax pay of $3 million to $4 million, excluding annual amortization of $22 million of $0.01 to $0.15 for FY '14. From a capital structure standpoint, we remain prepared to update the documents necessary for refinancing our senior notes once the no-call period expires after the 1st of June, at which time, there will be the stated 5% takeout premium or $31.5 million. But there will no longer be any make whole premium, which was a significant outlay of cash and costs when we pursued a refinancing effort in November. As we have discussed on previous occasions, we continue to confer with our financial advisors to determine the appropriate timing of such a refinancing when the various upfront costs versus current market conditions and the benefits associated with the refinancing, with the expectation of reducing our interest expense and extending our debt maturity profile. If the refinancing is successful, this could significantly increase Kratos' free cash flow, and we plan to use the additional free cash flow to further delever our balance sheet with the goal of increasing Kratos' equity value. With that, I'll turn it back over to Eric.