Eric DeMarco
Analyst · Benchmark. Your line is now open
Thank you, Marie, and hood afternoon. Kratos continues to follow what we believe to be industry best practices during the continuing COVID-19 crisis, including working at home where practical, social distancing, facility cleaning, temperature checks and only mission essential travel occurring. We also continue to monitor and work closely with our supply chain and vendors, identifying and formulating additional sources and backup plans where we can for critical or potentially vulnerable sources to Kratos’ programs, and we have had no significant supply chain impacts to date. Though our primary customers, United States’ government and the Department of Defense, work at home, social distancing and travel restriction requirements continue to impact the timing of certain expected contract awards and delay certain planned for system flights at government ranges and the achievement of certain contractual milestones, including customer product acceptance. The Kratos team continues to successfully adjust, adapt, manage and execute in a challenging environment. As you know, Kratos is a technology company and at Kratos, affordability is a technology. Our proven leading technology system integration approach designed to reduce financial and scheduled risks, accelerate development, testing and fielding and lower costs, continues to be strongly desired by our customers and we believe it is an important competitive differentiator for our company. We also expect that Kratos’ venture capital and commercial base rapid system development, fielding and overall affordability business model, will be even more valuable to our customer base in a future environment, which includes increased federal government deficits and potential reduced discretionary spending. We believe that Kratos, as the affordable alternative technology company and system provider, is in the right place at the right time with the right products and at the right price point, for today's environment to address U.S. mission critical national security priorities. The recapitalization of strategic weapon systems continues to provide a growing and overall strong market opportunity, environment for virtually all of our business areas, as represented by our 1.2:1 book to bill ratio in Q2 and our approximate $8 billion bid and opportunity pipeline. In the second quarter, Kratos' space and satellite communications business continue to transition to a software defined based business, including a focus on low Earth orbit, mid Earth orbit and geostationary orbit satellite systems and as related to missile defense and hypersonic system applications. Within Kratos’ space division, we have been making substantial investments to create the world's first dynamic digital space round product family. With the coming of 5G and new software defined spacecraft, the intersection and integration of space and terrestrial networks, particularly for mobility based defense and commercial applications has become very clear. Additionally, new developmental programs, such as hypersonic and ballistic space tracking sensor, or HBTSS, and tactical intelligence targeting access node, or TITAN, will require a new and resilient dynamic ground infrastructure. Accordingly, a new Kratos product family, the first of which we expect to begin to deliver in Q1 of ‘21 is designed to enable spacecraft and satellite operators to securely connect, operate and manage within terrestrial software defined networks, providing a seamless space to terrestrial ground platform. We believe the same technology can also be used as part of the $1.5 billion plus investment necessary for clearing the C-band spectrum within the U.S. for 5G. And we are in discussions with many of the satellite operators as they begin their transformation to digital infrastructure. We are very excited about Kratos’ 5G and our dynamic software defined strategy. In the second quarter, we announced the acquisition of ASC, an antenna system and technology leader, positioning Kratos to be an even more comprehensive space and satellite communication systems provider to our DoD, national security and other customers. ASC fits squarely in Kratos’ stated strategic model of being a unique differentiated technology product and system provider and being either number one or number two on our market space. In our space business, we were recently informed that one of our largest and most important contracts, which was coming up for recompete at the end of this year, has now been extended by the customer with Kratos through the end of 2021. This is an outstanding piece of news for our company that Kratos now has only significant recompete coming up at the end of this year 2020, which is in our training business. Representative space programs Kratos supports include OPIR, SBIRS, WGS, AEHF, MUOS and GPS and we are currently forecasting our space business to have a strong Q3 and Q4 of this year. Our KTT and engine business, next generation and affordable system development initiatives and programs, which are focused on the expected to be extremely large attritable, expendable and reusable jet drone and tactical missile markets remains on track and on budget in Q2. At this time, we have several Kratos next generation affordable engines in our class running, including for the Gray Wolf low cost cruise missile system, which was recently reported. As I mentioned, Kratos’ affordable high performance engines are focused on new and planned for cruise missiles, powered weapons and drone systems, including as would be associated with the Skyborg and Golden Horde Vanguard programs and also ABMS. Our objective is for Kratos’ engines to be disruptive market and industry growth driver similar to our expectations for Kratos’ high performance jet drones. The class of engines Kratos is focused on is typically the number one bill of material cost item in the related system, and our plan is to deliver more efficient, powerful and capable engines at a significantly reduced cost so that more capable systems can be procured in larger quantities at lower prices. We also see our engines further increasing Kratos’ drone and tactical weapon system’s affordability and low cost competitive advantage, while bringing greater value to the customer set. We are currently forecasting to achieve certain important ground and flight test milestones in our engine businesses in the second half of this year and next year, and we believe that we are on track for our plan to achieve future production for our engines. As we discussed in our first quarter call, KTT’s commercial business areas are being adversely impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. And as a result, KTT’s financial performance for the second quarter came in below our expectations. Unfortunately, this impact is now expected to continue throughout the remainder of 2020 with the current estimated impact being incorporated in our updated financial forecast. Kratos’ C5ISR business continues to perform well, including a large second quarter missile defense related contract award. Our C5ISR business supports missile defense, space and satellite, strategic triad, the unmanned drone area, high power directed energy, combat and other systems. As previously reported, earlier this year, Northrop Grumman announced that Kratos' C5ISR is part of the Northrop ground based strategic deterrent team, and we are looking forward to supporting Northrop, an incredible partner of Kratos’, on this critically important national security program. On the $50 million contract award that Kratos received early in Q1 of this year, which was subsequently protested by a competitor, the customer is currently going through a procurement reevaluation and we are waiting the determination. We are currently forecasting strong revenue and EBITDA performance in the second half of 2020 for our C5ISR business unit with a significant amount of the expected production and deliveries, driven by 2.4:1 second quarter book to bill ratio for this business. Kratos’ Israeli based microwave electronics business continued to perform strongly in the second quarter of 2020, as we increased production on certain programs and we are currently forecasting significant revenue and profit growth in the second half of this year as compared to the first half as these programs ramp. The electromagnetic spectrum and microwave electronics area are two of the highest priority and well-funded areas in both the United States and internationally. And the U.S. and its allies pivot and focus the potential peer near peer conflict and Kratos' microwave business is uniquely positioned to address and grow in this mission critical area. Representative systems Kratos' microwave business supports include F-15, F-16, Gripen, Iron Dome, Barak, Spyder, Arrow and Sling of David. Kratos' rocket support services business had a very solid second quarter, and we are expecting continued solid performance for the second half of the year for this business. RSS is currently working on a number of ballistic missile target and other program launch systems with Kratos' 2021 mission launch portfolio looking very substantial, based on current production and the launch manifests. Similar to Kratos' satellite, C5ISR and microwave electronics business areas, RSS is uniquely positioned in the well-funded missile defense and hypersonic program opportunity areas. Kratos' training solutions business had lower than expected revenues and EBITDA in Q2, and we are focusing on a large international program recompete at the end of this year that I mentioned previously. Our unmanned target drone system’s business continued strong execution in the second quarter with the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Army being our primary customers. We continue to track towards full rate production on the Navy SSAT and another program, increased future quantities with the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force and we're tracking for our annual revenue target drone objective of $0.25 billion in revenue. International target drone demand also remain strong, driven by systems testing and evaluation requirements related to the recapitalization of weapon systems. And we are currently expecting two large drone system orders in the second half of the year. Since our last report to you, we have continued to make significant progress in Kratos' tactical drone system business with a total addressable market opportunity for this class of drone and for the engines they utilize continuing to expand. At the end of July, it was reported that Kratos was one of four recipients of an $400 million ceiling MAC, Skyborg, IDIQ contract. Skyborg, one of three U.S. AF Vanguard programs outlined in the Air Force Science and Technology 2030 initiative, is an affordable unmanned system that will partner with fighter jets and utilize artificial intelligence to conduct strikes and intelligence collection missions that are too dangerous for manned aircraft, significantly increasing capability and being a forced multiplier of the United States Air Force. The Vanguard initiative’s objective is to accelerate the time it takes to go from research to operational use, and the U.S. AF has stated that it want Skyborg to be a program of record and drones to be fielded and operationally capable by 2023. Under the Air Force’s Skyborg program, as reflected in the recent Air Force video, there are envisioned to be multiple types or classes of drones, including expendables like Kratos’ AirWolf, reusables, like our Gremlins or our Mako, attritables, like our Valkyrie and exquisites, like certain Kratos’ other program drones. With these various drone classes and mission specifically designed for permissive, contested and highly contested environments. We believe that in addition to Kratos’ partnership with the Air Force on the XQ-58A and other related initiatives, we are uniquely positioned for future Skyborg the opportunity, including the Valkyrie program, which is a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory and Kratos to develop semi autonomous drones that can work in concert with unmanned fighters. The Valkyrie is affordable. It is flying today. It is not a model, a PowerPoint or an exquisite high cost aircraft. As part of Kratos’ partnership with the USAF on the XQ-58A, we have two Kratos owned Valkyries in inventory that can be utilized or delivered to the Air Force immediately, and we have a hot production line with the first of an additional 12 Valkyries currently scheduled to come off the line in March of next year with an additional one or two a month thereafter. Kratos is currently producing approximately 150 jet drone systems in this class a year in the United States, including our tactical Mako, Gremlin, AirWolf and Valkyrie systems, each of which are flying today. As a result of Kratos’ long production experience with this class of drone, Kratos’ supply chain, our vendor base, subcontractors and partners, are all on board and in place, producing and delivering product in quantities today. As a result, we know the build time and actual cost to manufacture and produce our drones. There was no guessing and no expected large cost overruns or surprises to our customers from what we quote them. As I mentioned, Kratos’ drones are made in the United States of America in concert with our U.S. government partners and U.S. based suppliers. Through our partnership with U.S. Air Force, all Kratos drones, including the Valkyrie, are designed from inception to be runway independent, both at launch and at recovery. As a result, the Valkyrie can be predeployed and recovered virtually anywhere and has certain unrefueled range, performance, payloads, survivability and other characteristics, all of which were determined in concert with our partner, the Air Force Research Lab. The Kratos Valkyrie was also specifically designed to fit inside standard shipping containers, further reflecting the expeditionary nature of the Kratos systems. Kratos’ tactical drone systems, those flying today and in development, including in our very close hold ghost works, are all a result of a multiyear strategy plan and methodical execution, beginning with the DoD unmanned systems strategic roadmap and the evolving Air Force vision, including as described by the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. Roper and the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Brown. For Skyborg, the most current expected timeline and related milestones as recently reported by the Air Force include a kickoff meeting with all four Skyborg winners invited, followed by the down select for drone system experimentation. The Air Force deciding in the next 60 to 90 days which of the four Skyborg prototyping competitors will have their drones participate in operational experiments at multiple test centers around the country to produce the services first autonomous vehicle for manned unmanned teaming. The number of contracts the service will award for these exercises, as well as the number of drones procured overall and from each individual vendor, will depend upon USAF, funding availability and drone unit pricing. The Air Force has identified roughly 15 different mission sets that the program seeks to prove in an effort to achieve operational capability for the Skyborg drone. Information and data from the drones provided flights and experiments will assist in determining the ultimate timeline for the planned program of record and rate production. We believe that the Air Force Vanguard Skyborg program is planned to move ahead very rapidly, including the Skyborg program. We believe that the total addressable market opportunity for Kratos' class of drone systems and for our engine business is continuing to increase with program opportunities that we can discuss, including Golden Horde, ABMF, LCASD, LCAT and ACE, all of which we believe that Kratos' Valkyrie and other drones are uniquely qualified to rapidly and affordably address as I previously discussed. Related to the market opportunity, as I mentioned before, I encourage you to view the Skyborg Air Force Vanguard program video, which provides the USAF vision and notes the various types of Skyborg drones that are part of the Air Force's planned future force structure and ConOps. Additionally, it was just reported that the Air Force recently disclosed their vision for expendable, attritable and other drones as related to the ABMF program, including price and cost points, which we are all very excited about. In addition to the Kratos Valkyrie, as to certain other Kratos tactical drones we can discuss, our Mako jet drone continues to execute with certain customers and platforms, including as was recently publicly reported, the Gremlins program with our partner, Dynetics, has made important progress since our last report to you even with the program experiencing certain COVID-19 DoD range related other delays. Additional flights are now scheduled for Q3, Q4 of this year and we fully believe and expect Gremlins to become a major future Kratos program similar to our expectation for Valkyrie. Kratos' Thanatos program is on track and we continue to have high future expectations for Thanatos similar to our expectations for Valkyrie and Gremlins. On our Rattlesnake program with our partner AeroVironment, this has also made substantial progress since our last report to you and is currently expected to fly later this year based on current range scheduling, which has also been delayed due to COVID. And program AirWolf has also continued to move forward, including certain payload and system integration efforts. However, similar to Kratos’ Rattlesnake, ABMS, Gremlin and other programs, our planned AirWolf flights have been delayed due to the impact of certain DoD range and travel COVID-19 related restrictions with a series of AirWolf flights now scheduled for later on this year and in Q1 of 21, and we also continue to have high expectations for this program. We’re extremely excited and proud of what Kratos has accomplished, and we remain focused on our long-term strategic objective of being a leading drone system provider to the DoD in this expected to be extremely large new market space. We understand that the government processes and related timelines for contract awards, system deployments, test flights et cetera, can be methodical and fluid and are not always consistent with desired public company expectation timelines. I can assure you that at Kratos, we are focused on what we can control and the ultimate success of the long term strategic plan and vision we have communicated to you. As I mentioned before we believe that we have the future tactical drone system market will be in the billions of dollars and various types of drones system, some opportunities in the Kratos class. We believe that we have the right partner, the United States Air Force, the right high performance drone systems at the right time and at the right affordable cost point, to obtain a large market share and deliver value for our customers and our shareholders. Deanna?