William M. Brown
Analyst · Barclays
Okay, well, thank you, Pam, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter earnings call. I'm pleased to report a positive start to the fiscal year. Previous restructuring actions and our continuing focus on the things we control in this challenging government environment, such as improving operational excellence, driving free cash flow and returning cash to shareholders led to solid results with higher earnings per share and significantly higher free cash flow. We also had some key wins, which I'll touch on in a minute, and our book-to-bill for the company was slightly higher than 1. Turning to Slides 3 and 4 of the presentation. Earnings per share was $1.18, up 4%; on revenue, down 6%. We generated $139 million of free cash flow compared to $77 million in the prior year with a conversion rate of 109% of income. And we continue to deliver on our commitment to return cash to shareholders during the quarter, increasing our dividend to 13.5%, spending $100 million in cash to repurchase shares and approving a new $1 billion share repurchase authorization. Over the past year, as we restructured and focused on operational excellence to lower cost, we also continued to invest in the future. We increased R&D investment in fiscal '13 by about 5%, and it was up again in the first quarter. And we focused our R&D spend on the most strategic and highest-return projects. This strategy is beginning to bear fruit, and I thought I'd point out a few specific examples that provide some insight into our future competitiveness. By investing R&D resources in a 2-channel tactical radio system, we were successful in winning the Army's highly-contested $141 million Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio Procurement, called MNVR. As you well know, this replaces the canceled JTRS program, ground mobile radio or GMR. Our solution for MNVR is based on our Falcon III radio. With more than 45,000 units fielded around the world, it's the most widely-deployed wideband radio in the market. And just as Harris was first to have a government SRW Waveform certified and working in a radio, MNVR will be the first production radio to deploy the government's wideband networking waveform WNW. Initial shipments will be in time for the Army's network integration evaluation 15.1 in the fall of 2014, and over the next 10 years, the Army has budgeted about $600 million to spend on mid-tier radios. We're also focusing investment on other upcoming JTRS procurements, and we're pleased to hear that the Army is moving back towards a multi-vendor acquisition strategy for both the manpack and the Rifleman Radio, an approach, we believe, is in the best interest of the war fighter and the taxpayer, as competition drives innovation, speed to market and cost-effective solutions. We officially launched our 2-channel manpack radio at last week's AUSA. Our radio weighs less and is 1/3 smaller than competitor radios, has a simple keypad-driven user interface familiar to some 45,000 current tactical radio users, and has the ability to support the full suite of waveforms without requiring expensive add-on appliques. Our Rifleman Radio offering is the U.S. equivalent to our international Soldier Radio, of which more than 44,000 have been already fielded around the world. Our U.S. product, the RF-330E wideband team radio, provides significant differentiation from existing radios, including a substantially longer battery life, shorter connect time to the network and a unique dashboard display that provides the user operational and network status at a glance, such as battery time remaining and number of users and where they are on the network. We also stepped up investments on the international front, and in a recent London trade show, announced our entry into the international ground-to-air radio market. Our international offering is a variant of the radio that will compete for the U.S. market's Small Airborne Networking Radio, or SANR procurement, that replaces the previously-canceled JTRS airborne radio program, AMF. So overall, good early returns on a key strategy to increase and focus our R&D spend. As we mentioned in our fourth quarter call, growing revenue in international markets is important to our year, and we've had some pretty positive news on that front. Our international tactical pipeline has increased in value, funding has firmed up as a result of improving relations between the U.S. and Pakistan, and contract vehicles supporting foreign military sales are in place with encouraging recent increases in ceiling value. Earlier this month, we were awarded an $847 million increase in the ceiling value of a sole-source CECOM contract. And you may recall that last third quarter, we received a $500 million ceiling value increase on a similar sole-source contract, giving us some comfort that communications equipment is a spending priority. In Government Communications, we made significant progress on one of our FAA NextGen programs, known as DataComm. Under DataComm, the FAA is transitioning air traffic control from mainly voice communications to specialized data messaging, improving safety and reliability, as well as providing other efficiencies for the airlines, such as saving fuel and reducing arrival and departure times. To jump-start industry adoption early in the DataComm program, the FAA established an incentive program for equipping aircraft with digital Avionics, and Harris has played an integral role working with the FAA to garner industry support for using the incentives to begin equipping airplanes. This quarter, we received a big boost from industry when 5 major U.S. airlines committed to outfit their aircraft with digital Avionics equipment, achieving nearly 80% of the FAA's 6-year target in just the first year of the program. This strong commitment by industry demonstrates that the DataComm program will continue to be a valued and funded component of the FAA's NextGen initiative. In our Integrated Network Solutions segment, we have particularly strong orders in IT Services and made significant progress in strategically expanding our maritime business. Earlier this month, CapRock was awarded in a competitive bid a 5-year contract from Carnival Corporation for satellite voice, data and Internet services across its fleet of 103 ships, dramatically improving bandwidth capacity to meet growing demand from passengers and crew. With this significant award and our previous Royal Caribbean win, we are now the satellite communications provider for the top 2 cruise lines in the world. So overall, a pretty solid start to the year. And now, we'll turn it over to Gary to comment on segment results and guidance for 2014, and then we'll open it up for some of your questions.