Bill Brown
Analyst · Barclays
Okay, well thank you Mick. And as Pam mentioned earlier I am joined here in the room by Dave Melcher, President and CEO of Exelis, who will offer a couple of comments as well. So let me turn now to the separate acquisition deck and I'll begin on Slide 3. This acquisition brings together two engineering driven companies with similar cultures that value technology and innovation to solve some of our customers' toughest mission-critical challenges. The combined pro forma company has LTM revenue of $8.2 billion and EBITDA of about $1.6 billion. This powerful combination creates an industry innovator with much greater scale providing a broad spectrum of technology-based advanced communications solutions. Let me start by providing a high level overview of Exelis and reviewing the transaction details before diving a bit more into the strategic rationale. So now turning to Slide 4, Exelis has a number of leading positions across diverse markets. Electronic systems which is about 29% of company revenue is a leader in electronic warfare technologies for the air force and navy. The principle strengths are in electronic protection and onboard processing on platforms such as the P8, the B52 the C130, the Apache helicopter and the international F-16. Exelis' flagship product is the Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures or IDECM for the F-18 a multibillion dollar decades long program with about 400 systems delivered to-date. About 21% of the Company is geospatial systems, a leader in space and airborne sensing. Exelis is well known for their world class space imaging business acquired about a decade ago from Codec, the weather sensors as well as your GPS technology. The imaging business has traditionally served the intelligence community but is more recently expanded to include commercial, international and unmanned vehicle payloads. Their products range from a 21 foot wide mirror on the James Webb Telescope, down to small commercial payloads for the World View and GOI satellites. They provide the Gorgon Stare wide area surveillance ponds for defense UAVs and have recently launched Corvus Eye a smaller commercial version targeting the public safety, international markets demonstrating Exelis' skill in translating government technology to the commercial world. Exelis' weather payloads have been on all NOAA weather satellites launched since 1978. The CrIS or the Cross Track Infrared Sounder is a primary instrument on the joint polar satellite system and ABI or the Advanced Baseline Imager is the main mission sensor on GOES-R. ABI has also been selected as the main mission sensor for Japan's Himawari and South Korea's GEO Comsat two-way weather satellite. In GPS Exelis has been on all U.S. GPS navigation systems ever launched and is currently delivering the first payloads for the GPS3 program. Information Systems is about 34% of the Company and provides full life cycle mission critical solutions for customers like NASA, where Exelis manages two of NASA's largest communications contracts and the FAA, where Exelis owns and operates the ADS-B network a core element of the FAAs next-gen program. Night-vision in tactical communications represents about 13% of company revenue. Exelis has been the industry leader in night vision for over 50 years and is one of only two U.S. manufacturers of image intensification tubes. And their tactical communications business has a large installed base of more than 600,000 radios. The remaining 3% of Exelis provides composite aero-structures for commercial and military aircraft. They have 10,000 employees including about 3,000 engineers, $3.25 billion in revenue and funded backlog of about $2.8 billion. So turning to Slide 5 on the transaction details, total purchase price is $4.75 billion at 23.75 per share, 70% in cash, 30% in Harris shares. Bridge financing is in place and we anticipate a combination of term loans and new bonds to both finance the acquisition debt and refinance parts of existing Harris and Exelis debt at what are historically low interest rates. Pro forma net leverage will be about 2.9 times net-debt to adjusted-EBITDA at closing with significant pre-payable debt and the opportunity to rapidly deleverage. This structure provides balance sheet flexibility and preserves our ability to invest for growth while we reduce net leverage to about 1.5 times by year three. Of course this is subject to approval by Exelis shareholders as well as customary regulatory approval and we expect the transaction to close in June of this year. On Slide 6, as you may know, Exelis has a very large pension liability relating to the legacy ITT business with an unfunded liability of $1.9 billion at the end of 2014. Current historically low interest rates should provide a strong positive bias to net under funding overtime. We have done significant due diligence work with specialist outside advisers and with a high-level of government cash reimbursements and the smoothing that is allowed in the recent MAP-21 legislation, pension funding requirements are clear and fully factored into our thinking. On a pro forma basis pension liability as a percent of market cap is well in line with defense peers. Turning to Slide 7, this is a highly strategic and compelling combination that generates significant value for our customers. The complementarity between the two company’s technology and capabilities strengthens our core franchises and provides optionality for portfolio shaping. It also builds a stronger platform for growth and immediately creates significant scale and more balanced earnings for Harris. Cost synergies are meaningful and the timing of the transaction is excellent given the confluence of an improving budget environment, low interest rates and a team with the background and the experience to successfully integrate the two companies. So let me say a few words about each in turn. Now turning to Slide 8, we bring together complimentary technologies and capabilities that strengthen our core franchise in space and intelligence, advanced weather systems, air-traffic management and tactical communications. On a pro forma basis our classified business is about $1 billion in size with significant growth potential. For example by combining Exelis’ world-class electro-optical technology with our market leading RF capability we will be able to offer responsive multi-mission solutions to the intelligence community. In weather, our tighter linkage between Exelis’ on-orbit sensors and Harris’s ground processing capabilities can help customers increase performance, lower cost and improve time to market for new weather systems. By having increased access to unique data sets, we can accelerate apportion to value-added services and predictive analytics. In air-traffic management Exelis is strong in surveillance, while Harris is the leader in communications and the combined company will be the prime contract on four key FAA next-gen programs. And finally our combined tactical communications businesses will drive significant scale efficiencies across our supply chain and our manufacturing assets. But the combination also provides a stronger platform for growth. And on Slide 9 we highlight a few examples, leveraging our complimentary international channels, pairing our world-leading radios Exelis’ night vision offering and putting our avionics onto Exelis’ existing platforms and then finally accelerating growth in value-added services in geospatial, weather and airport operations. So moving to Slide 10, this acquisition creates scale and improves our competitive position in the government market and also results in a more balanced earnings profile for Harris. In Slide 11 our diligence work has been thorough and we are confident we can achieve run rate cost synergies of $100 million to $120 million net of what is returned to customers through cost plus contracts and fixed price contracts that periodically reset. The breakdown of savings is roughly one-third from consolidating headquarters eliminating public company cost, one-third from operational improvements like manufacturing, supply chain and program efficiencies and one-third from functional efficiencies and overheard reductions. The cash payback is under two years. Now turning to Slide 12, transaction value was $4.75 billion a multiple of 9.3 times 2014 EBITDA. We expect GAAP EPS to be slightly accretive in the first year and a significant contributor thereafter with free cash flow approaching $1 billion in year four. And then finally on Slide 13, the timing for such a transformational acquisition is excellent, both internally and externally. Over the last three years since joining the company we've focused on improving fundamentals and shaping our portfolio. And in the face of a constrained government budget and declining revenue environment we aggressively addressed our cost structure by taking restricting actions and establishing a formal companywide operational excellence program. Our Harris business excellence program is now in its third year and it’s embedded in our culture, and the management team stands ready to integrate the two companies to achieve our cost synergy targets. A full time senior level integration team is being assembled from the best of both companies, and includes my direct oversight. The timing is also excellent from an external point of view, the U.S. government spending cycle has bottomed and recent world events only stress the importance of defense and national security spending. The President's DOD base budget for fiscal '16 is up about 8% and even under sequestration is up modestly with steady growth in the out years. Interest rates are at historical lows and we estimate that our pro forma cost of debt will be about 200 basis points below where Harris is today with a weighted average time to maturity of an additional two years. So as we enter an improving macro-environment our combined company becomes a strong platform for top-line growth with our lower cost structure and greater operating leverage driving excellent earnings growth. Now before opening the line for questions I'd like to turn to Dave for his perspective on the transaction. Dave?