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Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, Oct 23, 2018

$512.29

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you, for standing by, and welcome to the Lockheed Martin Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I'll turn the conference now to Mr. Greg Gardner, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Greg Gardner

Analyst

Thank you, John, and good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to our third quarter 2018 earnings conference call. Joining me today on the call are Marillyn Hewson, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bruce Tanner, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Statements made in today's call that are not historical fact are considered forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities law. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Please see today's press release and our SEC filings for a description of some of the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. We have posted charts on our website today that we plan to address during the call to supplement our comments. Please access our website at www.lockheedmartin.com and click on the Investor Relations link to view and follow the charts. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Marillyn.

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

Thanks, Greg. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call today. As today's release illustrates, we continue to outperform the goals we set at the beginning of 2018, with another quarter of strong operational accomplishments, important new business awards and outstanding financial results. We've seen strong financial performance across the entire corporation. And this performance, coupled with our improved outlook for the remainder of the year, has resulted in us updating our guidance again this quarter. I'm especially pleased to see our earnings and cash expectations continue to grow as we remain focused on operational performance and delivering long-term value to shareholders. Our third quarter and year-to-date financial performance and improved full year projections are the result of the strength provided by our broad portfolio of offerings as each of our 4 business areas contributed to our updated 2018 financial outlook. We will discuss the financials in detail a little later in the call, but I do want to highlight two key actions that our Board of Directors took this quarter in the area of cash deployment. First, we increased the quarterly dividend by 10% to $2.20 per share or $8.80 annually, maintaining our long-standing commitment to a strong dividend. Second, we also increased our share repurchase authority by $1 billion, bringing total repurchase authority to $3.7 billion. This level of authority provides additional flexibility to continue to return cash to stockholders through share repurchases if market conditions and our fiduciary duties permit. Together, these two actions demonstrate our continued strategy of balanced cash deployment and long-term commitment to delivering returns for our stockholders. I'll cover performance highlights in just a moment, but I want to begin by noting several strategic new business awards that we received this quarter, which position us for long-term growth in our existing portfolio, as…

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Thanks, Marillyn. Good morning, everyone. As I highlight our key financial accomplishments, please follow along with the web charts that we included with our earnings release today. Let's begin with Chart 3 and an overview of our results for the quarter. Once again, we exceeded our expectations for every financial metric in the quarter as we did through the first half of this year. Sales, segment operating profit and cash from operations before making our final pension contribution for the year continued to be strong. The $1.5 billion pension contributions we made in the third quarter completes the $5 billion of pension outlays that we've been discussing all year. We continued our cash deployment actions in the quarter, returning around $800 million of cash to our shareholders through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. And we grew our backlog to a record $109 billion in the quarter, with all 4 business areas contributing to that growth. Based on our performance in the quarter, we expect strong results for sales, segment operating profit, earnings per share and cash from operations for the full year, as we'll show in a few charts. We were pleased with how our financial results are shaping up thus far in 2018, and we'll be discussing how our performance this year is carrying over into next year when we get to our charts showing preliminary trends for 2019 later in the presentation. Turning to Chart 4. We compare our sales and segment operating profit in the third quarter of this year with last year's results. I'll note for comparison purposes that the third quarter of this year has 14 weeks in the accounting period while last year's third quarter had 13 weeks in the accounting period, and this situation will reverse itself in the fourth quarter…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And first, we'll go to the line of Myles Walton with UBS.

Myles Walton

Analyst

So a quick question for you, first on the margin side. So the implied mix that you're talking about, can you give us maybe quantification of how much the growth in cost versus fixed price and also maybe by segments, a bit more color on where the 10 to 50 basis points of headwind is coming from?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Yes, thanks, Myles. I'll take that one on. I think the simplest way to understand it is we are seeing pretty much new starts in all of our business areas, and you've seen some of that in prior orders that were released. And frankly, some of that you haven't seen because some of that has occurred on some classified contracts and actually multiple business areas. So I won't be able to get into probably as much detail as you would like in that discussion, but suffice to say that that's actually causing some of that margin pressure that we're seeing going forward as well. The largest single item that is driving the margin reduction next year, though, is actually our ULA equity earnings. Those are actually going -- we expect those to be down nearly $150 million or so from this year's estimate of the equity earnings from ULA. And you should think of that as a pretty significant reduction in both the launch quantity in terms of the number of vehicles launched, but probably more importantly, a pretty significant change in the mix of those launch vehicles. So we have more, for instance, Delta IV launches in 2018 than we expect to have in 2019. Those are obviously the most profitable launch vehicles in all of ULA's portfolio. So that's the biggest driver. But as I said, without going into all the various pieces, maybe I'll tell you what. I'll try to hit just a couple of the business areas maybe very quickly going into next year. I'll give you more detail on this, Myles, when we talk to you in January. But as far as the margins in aeronautics, we actually expect those to be fairly similar next year to what they are this year. And that kind…

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from David Strauss with Barclays.

David Strauss

Analyst

I wanted to ask a multiple-part question on F-35. It looks like F-35 in the quarter grew fairly significantly well above kind of the delivery rate growth. Can you talk about kind of how far in terms of the revenue growth we're seeing, how that breaks out between production and sustainment? Kind of how far ahead we are based on going from 91 deliveries this year to 130? And then last one, on your cost curve, obviously, the price per LRIP is coming down like 5%, 6%. Can you talk about your cost curve? What kind of learning you're seeing from a cost perspective?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

David, I'll take that one on as well. So you had a lot of parts in that question. I'm just going to try to keep up with them. Relative to revenue growth on F-35, I think what you surmise is pretty accurate. And we did have some pretty significant growth in the quarter. I think we were double-digit, actually a little more than double-digit on F-35 in the quarter. As we look, and maybe that's the heart of your question, what does that look like next year, I think, you said relative to the ramp-up from 91 to about 130 aircraft. We would expect F-35 next year to also grow probably at the double-digit, maybe a little bit higher than that. And that's for both production and sustainment activity, David. And the one wildcard that I'll mention that really did surprise me as well as we were getting ready for this call is that actually the development activity on F-35 is going to grow at double-digit rate next year. So part of that is we had a pretty significant reduction in the older SDD contract from 2017 to 2018, but we're starting to see more and more sort of new noncore SDD development activities being added to the contract. And that's actually growing, as I said earlier. That's growing, the development portfolio, higher than double-digit from 2018 to 2019, so that's kind of a pleasant surprise for us. Cost curve, I don't have the learning. Maybe Marillyn does at the top of her head. I want to say we were at the mid-80s to maybe a little bit higher percent learning curve on F-35. I think that's about right that we've been running about that level, almost since the LRIP 1, David. So we're still maintaining that. At some point in time, that will start to level out as we've kind of branched all we can out of our learning curve, and that's where we need to have some potential investments to get some sort of step improvements going forward there. But at least, right now sort of year-to-date and we're still -- or Q-to-date and we're still seeing that trend. Think of it as mid- to higher 80% learning curve is what we're experiencing on F-35. by the way, very much in line with what we've seen on other legacy production programs, if not slightly better.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Rob Stallard with Vertical Research.

Robert Stallard

Analyst

Marillyn, I just wanted to follow up on your comments regarding those programs you've lost in the quarter and the potential $5 billion hit. Are you concerned that this is changing the landscape for defense contracting, and the sort of low ball bids could make your future profitability less attractive?

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

No, not for us. I mean, that's not the kind -- that's not what you would expect from Lockheed Martin, and that was the point in my opening remarks is that we're going to pursue good business for this company and being able to perform at what we say we can perform, too, for our customers. So that's the key for us. How other competitors behave in this environment, I really can't speak to you. You'll have to ask them.

Robert Stallard

Analyst

That was more from the other direction. Is this potentially what the customers are now expecting as they see these prices out there?

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

Well, we have seen -- we've talked about this in the past call, so that -- we obviously made a clarification on what you're asking. We do see that the affordability is a very important element for them, and a lot of these best value procurements, when we know that we've got a good technology solution when it comes down to lowest cost technically acceptable -- lowest price technically acceptable, LPTA-type decision, we are seeing -- we are assuming that's happening because if you come in with a technical solution that's good and comparable, and you meet all of those elements, but then they just go for lowest price and ultimately, that could be the opportunity that the government is taking on affordability. And they cite that. We've seen in the media that they would cite that they've gotten things at much lower than they anticipated. Bruce, anything you want to add?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

The one thing I want to add, Marillyn, is -- Rob, I think I wouldn't necessarily draw a long conclusion from 3 awards. I'll tell you, those were disappointing for a lot of reasons. But the fact that they were really decided, all 3 of them, on sort of a LPTA basis didn't help the situation. It's not getting -- I would argue, the best capabilities for the warfighter in the hands of the warfighter. What else? I don't think that's entirely universal amongst all the competitions that we've seen this year. And we frankly won some competitions where we weren't the highest price. So I do know that you can automatically, as I said, draw a conclusion that, that's necessarily a change from on every program that's going to be competed going forward. So it's not a one-size-fits-all, if you will.

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Jon Raviv with Citi.

Jonathan Raviv

Analyst

Bruce, some of the commentary you provided on the margin, I was wondering if you can give us some perspective on sales growth, including on some of the single aisles, which impacted 2018. How [indiscernible] what the prospect is for growth to accelerate in '19?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Yes, so as we said, we experienced growth all throughout 2018. And we talked about that on previous calls as far as how we came out with roughly a 2% expectation, we ended up actually having 6% growth over 2017. And I think in the past, I attributed that to the significant plus-up in terms of the omnibus increases. Many -- higher rate of awards, and especially in the first half of the year than what we were expecting to have and an earlier turn-on for a lot of those awards than what was historically we've seen. This, I think, speaks to the speed concept that Secretary Mattis always talks about now, is getting things to the warfighter's hands quicker. So I think that was part of the reason we're seeing in 2018 as high as we are. 2019, I'll try to do the same, if you will. I think the highest growing business area is going to be Missiles and Fire Control. I think they're going to grow probably a little bit north of double-digit, maybe not much more than that. Next up is aeronautics, which collectively, I think, is probably going to grow probably in the high single digits, not quite the double-digit level but that's still good growth there. RMS and right now, both RMS and Space are expected to be sort of comparable to where our results were for 2018 or where they're expected to be for 2018. I think that there's a business area or two that I could point to, where there may be some opportunity to get some growth beyond that. The comparable level is probably in both of those. I think we had some potentially good news, for instance, on the Canadian Surface Combatant competition and depending on when that gets fully awarded. I won't go through the entire process. That has the potential, I think, to create some growth going forward. So I'm watching those faces, but you should think of it, Jon, as really the Aeronautics and Missiles and Fire Control sort of carrying the heavy load in terms of sales growth, with Space and RMS somewhat comparable expectation to where they are this year, with hopefully some upside to that level.

Operator

Operator

Next question is from Rich Safran with Buckingham Research.

Richard Safran

Analyst

Bruce, I think this is going to be for you. And I'm going to ask you a bit of a forward-looking question here. And if you feel you can't answer it, just tell me and I'll ask something else. The long-term 2018 to 2020 cash from ops guide was not in the slides. So I thought I'd ask you about that. Would you comment on your 2018 to 2020 cash from operations trends? And would you care to comment on 2021? And if you can't answer it, would you include in your answer just a general discussion of major programs, about what's baked into your guidance and what's not?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Rich. Let me figure out how to better navigate through your question there. So we've given sort of 3-year numbers in the past. We're actually going to talk about that probably more in the January call, but I'll give it a shot here as well. So in the past, we've said that we had expected about $3 billion in 2018. We're ending up at about $3.4 billion, so a pretty good beat relative to our expectations there. We still see in 2000 -- I would say, 2019 we're providing a trend information of at least $7 billion. We still see $7 billion, which we teed up in one of those charts that we briefed previously in 2020. And you should think of that, Rich, as we're actually seeing some pretty good-sized working capital growth in both 2019 and 2020 associated with a lot of our new start programs. It so happened that it happens on a time when it's sort of fortunate for us because it happens in 2 years where we don't have pension contribution, so we're kind of able to have nice, robust cash in both '19 and '20, even while we're growing working capital. The fortunate thing about 2021 is that working capital starts to actually reverse itself, so we actually start to recover a lot of the working capital growth we're actually seeing in '18, '19 and '20. And at least as we sit here today, Rich, and I'm not trying to give a 3-year guidance number for you, but I would think that the 2021 cash ought to be fairly comparable to our cash from operations in 2019 and 2020. And that's despite the fact that we start making pension contributions at a pretty good magnitude in 2021, somewhere north of $1.5 billion or so. So you should think of that as we're recovering working capital in that time frame. We're also starting to have higher depreciation recovery in terms of cash recovered versus the capital expenditure increases we've seen in the last couple of years, and we expect to see next year as well. And then lastly, the profit growth we're getting from the sales growth that we talked about earlier. So sort of those three things is what's giving us a pretty -- as we sit here today, at least, I'll say a fairly good expectation that we can hold at the $7 billion level, at least as we're looking out for the next 3 years or so.

Operator

Operator

Our next question from Sam Pearlstein with Wells Fargo.

Samuel Pearlstein

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

I just want to follow up on that comment you just made about capital spending. And I guess I'm trying to just think about that as we project forward, how much does it increase and when does that increase stop? And is this new facility, that go with a lot of the wins that you've seen to-date? I mean, can you just characterize where that money is going?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

So Sam, I'll take that. It seems like I get this question every year, and every year it seems like I'm saying next year is sort of the peak of capital expenditures. And unfortunately, that's not the case now. But I would argue this is all good news. Capital expenditures next year, probably going to be $1.5 billion or more than that, slightly, so a pretty good increase from this year. At least, in our 3-year planning, the 2020 capital expenditures are actually higher than 2019. And then, they come down actually fairly dramatically in the 2021 time frame. So our free cash flow will start to look better in 2021 because of that. And most of it -- you kind of nailed it, Sam. Think of this as the continuing ramp-up of both buildings and tooling at Missiles and Fire Control to support capacity increases for weapons and air missile defense programs. So I think I've talked about in previous calls that we're seeing significant demand to increase production rates on a number of our programs, particularly the weapons but not exclusively weapons, also air missile defense. And I like to use the example of Hellfire. I think we're building similar -- I think the capacity numbers we're being asked to support, we're going to go up to like 11,000 per year or more. PAC-3, we've got a request that could potentially go up to 500 missiles per year. So we're seeing some fairly good-sized requests in terms of additional capacity. That's the good news. And the good news, I guess, also is that it takes capital to support those requirements in order to support those increases that will result in growth in the out years once that capacity comes online. So that's what's going on at Missiles and Fire Control. At Space, we're completing sort of a fairly large infrastructure support to have a brand-new sort of manufacturing facility for larger satellites that will actually result in a more efficient build of those satellites as well. And that sort of starts to finalize, I think in 2019. And then finally, we actually are seeing a ramp-up of both buildings and the tooling in those buildings at Aeronautics, primarily to support our Skunk Works or ADP programs out in the West Coast. So this is where a lot of the stuff that we can't necessarily talk about is going on. But it does take added infrastructure to support that going forward. So the three big chunks, that's the reason for the capital increases over the next couple year. Marillyn, I don't know if there anything else I left out.

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

I think you covered it, Bruce. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And next, we'll go to Doug Harned with Bernstein.

Douglas Harned

Analyst

A question that I think -- I feel like just has to be asked right now is given the political situation with Saudi Arabia, can you give us a sense of what your backlog exposure is to Saudi and to UAE? And how are you thinking about the current political environment and the relationship with Saudi? How do you work with that with your portfolio?

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

Yes, thanks for the question, Doug. I'll just first remind you and the rest of the folks on the call that most of these agreements that we have are government to government purchases, so anything that we do has to do with following strictly the regulations of the U.S. government. In a way, that includes sales to Saudi Arabia. And we do business in more than 70 countries, so this is just the way we do business, generally speaking, is through government to government procurements. And they certainly are the ones that we've been talking about, the weapons sales we've been talking about to Saudi Arabia. We continue to make progress on the programs that we had talked about from the May of 2017 announcement way back then. For example, we announced this quarter that our Multi-Mission Surface Combatant program with Saudi Arabia has moved forward with some additional -- an additional $450 million contract for detailed planning and design for their multi-mission combatant. That was already on the contract. And then beyond that, we'll just work with the U.S. government as they're continuing their relationship with Saudi. In terms of the outlook, Bruce, do you want to take that?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Yes, I'll take a shot at that, Doug. So I look at this. And really, we were thinking we possibly could get a question on this during the call. But we've really just had, as Marillyn said, the one significant order so far, which was for the MMSC. So think of that as a next-generation LCS, if you will, but more capable ship. The largest order that we've been waiting on obviously, is THAAD, and that has not taken place yet, not sure when that will take place. But the interesting thing about the THAAD order is while it brings a significant increase in the backlog, the resulting sales, profit and cash flow with that order are very much pushed to the right. And you should think of that, Doug, as it's because there's a dependency on the radar that has to have a technology refresh, that is actually some years out into the future. So even with the large orders, we would not have significant sales in the near term because those missiles would be arriving too soon to be supported by the actual radar that needs to be refreshed, as I said. So I think the initial operating capability in Saudi is like 2023, if I'm not mistaken. And just to give you some idea of the level, I don't have -- your question was on backlog. I don't have the exact level of backlog, but I did take a look at sales projections going forward for KSA, and I think we have in 2019 about less than $0.5 billion of sales plan. And I looked out into 2020, it's just less than $900 million of sales. So not a huge amount of dependency on the activity even though the opportunities we've described are much larger than that, obviously.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Peter Arment with Baird.

Peter Arment

Analyst

Maybe, Bruce, just following on to that. Maybe you could just update us on some of the outstanding international contracts that you're expecting maybe before the end of the year and just any levels of backlog, where you sit, that you're finishing up?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Yes. Probably not so much international orders as fourth quarter is always the quarter where we get quite a bit of domestic orders from the U.S. government. It's the first quarter of the fiscal year, and that tends to have quite a bit going on, with new funds being left there. The biggest order, obviously, by far is -- and I should have said that does include international orders as well. And there is the F-35 economic order quantity or block buy. You should think of that as about 219 aircraft comprising lots 12, 13 and 14, both for U.S. aircraft, all 3 variants, as well as a significant amount of international aircraft as well. So that's, obviously, the biggest single order. You should think of that as approaching $30.5 billion or so. We also expect to get the added FY '18 20 aircraft that came on the FY '18 appropriations in the fourth quarter as well. And then, we'll get quite a few -- I'll say the normal, as I said, first quarter, the fiscal year orders for things like the PAC-3 fiscal year '19, probably another block buy of THAAD missiles. All the normal orders have sort of come up with that fiscal year. We're looking at actually growing backlog in large part because of the -- we actually have a record backlog, as Marillyn said and as I've said, in the third quarter, but we expect that number will exceed $120 billion by the end of the year, primarily because of what we just talked about on the F-35 block buy but not obviously exclusive to that. Going forward, in the 2019, I won't go too forward into the year, but we would expect to hopefully get -- at U.S. international, we'd expect to see an F-16 Slovakia order next year. I think we have next year out of the 24 C-130s, that we expect to get probably about 11 will be international aircraft and 6 of those hopefully for Germany in that category. Let's see, what else, I'm thinking out loud. That's probably enough for right now. Like I said, a lot of the other orders in our business areas are really coming from domestic sources, like some Orion orders. We're going to get 2 -- we'll, I can't think what the E stands for. It's the flight of the Orion.

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

Exploration.

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Exploration something. We already got 2 of those orders on Orion next year, so it's a pretty good-sized order within our Space business. And again, as I've mentioned earlier, Peter, we have the potential for closing on the Canadian Surface Combatant, which is a huge program. I think that's probably the largest shipbuilding program in the world once it starts, and we will be the integrator and combat system provider for that. I think the total content potentially that comes out of that is north of $7 billion. So wouldn't expect to get that all in one fell swoop in an order in 2019, but that will be the initial start of something that large.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Rajeev Lalwani with Morgan Stanley.

Rajeev Lalwani

Analyst

Marillyn, I wanted to come back to you, I guess ask you another political question. There's been some discussion recently about lower defense budgets for fiscal '20. I think it's like 5% or so of the decline. How do you interpret that? And do you have any insight as to what the base that may be using to step down from? And if it is some sort of contraction, how do you think Lockheed is positioned? What are the risks and opportunities we should be thinking about?

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

Thanks for the question, Rajeev. I guess as we look at fiscal year '20, right now the President -- that future year defense program input that came out earlier this year was showing an increase -- a modest increase in FY '20 funding levels, and we'll just have to see what's actually submitted in the presidential budget. That doesn't come in until early next year. We'll wait to see. But I'll just remind you, it was very healthy in FY '18 and '19 with -- giving not only us, but our industry counterparts, a lot more visibility. And as you know, we have long-cycle business, and so we've got a lot of things in motion now as we would be looking into 2020. We're always mindful of the BCA caps because they come back into play in 2020 and 2021. And we're always [indiscernible] with our lawmakers to [indiscernible] and they need to address that. And they have been addressing that for these two year bipartisan budget cap agreements that they put in place. So hopefully, they will continue to do that because Secretary Mattis and the Trump administration have highlighted that we've got to continue to modernize our military. Now I do know that the President did come out and asked all the departments across the government to look at a reduction of 5% in their spending, and that's just a way to try to focus on affordability and reducing cost, but we'll see how they come back with DoD because they have also been very strong about the need to focus on defense spending and modernizing our military. So we'll see how that plays out. But back to my point earlier, right now we're seeing a modest increase for FY '20. Who knows, it could be even higher because of the modernization that needs to happen.

Operator

Operator

Next, we'll go to Seth Seifman with JPMorgan.

Seth Seifman

Analyst

Bruce, I wanted to follow up on some of the comments you made about cash and working capital. And so first of all, if we think about bridging the cash from, if we thought about kind of $3.5 billion or so of operating cash flow this year and then not having to -- no pension contributions would probably get you pretty close to 7. And then, your underlying operating profit growth is probably another 200 or so after tax. And then, the working capital kind of takes that -- takes a little bit of chunk out of that. Is that, at least for your initial guidance, which I assume is probably -- you want to take account of -- be a little bit conservative. But is that kind of a -- are those the big pieces in terms of how we get from last year to -- or this year to next year?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Yes, I think you've got it pretty well nailed, Seth. And the only thing I might throw out there is we'll get, obviously, a little bit lower tax -- cash taxes paid because of deductibility of future pension contributions that we'll be making in that time frame as well.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Rob Spingarn with Crédit Suisse.

Robert Spingarn

Analyst

So a couple of questions, Bruce, for you. Just on the F-35, I know you talked about the learning curve and Marillyn did as well, but you did have this tremendous incremental margin in the quarter, best in 3 years. And if you could just talk to how that changes as that learning curve flattens, I think you were about 24%. I'm sure there were some maybe unusual things in there. But if you talk a little bit about that margin trend and how we see that going forward. And then separately, is there -- with the volatility in equity markets, is there a return on assets level or underperformance that would require return to ERISA contributions in '19 and '20?

Bruce Tanner

Analyst

Yes, let me take the -- well, I'll think about your second. Let me take your first one there. So we did have some pretty good step-ups, or risk retirements as we call them, on F-35 in the quarter. You should think of that as mostly, I'll say getting to sort of an annual review of older production contracts that took place in the third quarter. So I think the step-ups we have, the biggest ones were actually on LRIP 8 and LRIP 9. And that's just sort of taking both of those programs, I think -- that's just sort of taking both of those programs from where we had booked profit up to date to sort of where we expect to be at contract closeout. And that happened to be in this quarter. And just given the size of those contracts and the size of the difference we had and where we were booking versus where we expect to be at completion, that ended up being a pretty good-sized risk requirement. Trend going forward, as I said and maybe it wasn't clear, but this is one of those legacy programs that I would think we'd have the ability to do a little bit of margin improvement, and we actually did cross the 10% ROS level in 2018 for the entire program, which we've been talking about for a long, long time that, that was sort of the year we were targeting, and we actually got there this year. I think there might be some potential for incremental improvement going forward. But I think more of the story of F-35 is just going to be the volume of the -- or sort of similar to maybe slightly improving margins going forward trend-wise, as we would characterize it. As far as the pension funding and the return on assets it could drive, I think at the 1% level, I think, Rob, that would probably drive maybe a couple of hundred million dollars of funding in the 2020 time frame. We've talked previously about having 0 contributions in both '19 and '20. I think we're now seeing probably a little bit of a required contribution in 2020, which by the way, we did not have when we first came out with the $7 billion in both of those years. So I think we'll be able to offset -- more than offset that going forward and still maintain the $7 billion we said even with the now $200 million or so of contribution.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Joe DeNardi with Stifel.

Joseph DeNardi

Analyst

Marillyn, just a question from a corporate risk standpoint. I think if we were to go back several years, the expectation was that F-35 would maybe get to 20%, 25% of total sales. It seems like it's marching higher than that. I'm just wondering at what point in terms of its contribution to revenue or earnings it would become unacceptably big just in terms of contribution to the total company?

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

Well, first of all, I don't think it growing in sales is unacceptably big to the corporation, but we like to see it continue to sell all around the world as we've said. We like to see it go the way of the F-16, which, as you know, we've sold over 4,500 aircraft around the world. And today the F-35 program of record is around 3,200, so we hope to see it to continue to grow at that level. I understand your question, though, it being a large element of the corporation. And it really is a program that has -- if you look at it, it's not a single customer and has broad-based support. It's a global product, so not only do we have the domestic customers across fleet services, but we have today with 9 international -- 8 international partners and the 3 FMS customers and many more. They're making the decision on their fighter aircraft procurements that I think they will find the best choice is the F-35, hopefully. It's going to continue to sell and it's broad-based. So even though it is a big program relatively speaking, when you consider the customer base, it's -- I think that helps mitigate the risk. In addition to that, we're seeing a lot of -- yes, as I said in my opening remarks, we're seeing a lot of growth in all elements of our business. So every business area contributed to the growth for this quarter and for our outlook for the year, and we'll continue to see growth. We've got a lot of new programs across the business, and they will help to likewise mitigate the risk of one single program. So I feel very comfortable, and I'd like to see the F-35 sales continue to grow.

Greg Gardner

Analyst

Well, John, thank you very much. We're actually a little bit past the hour. With that, I'll turn it over to Marillyn for some final thoughts.

Marillyn Hewson

Analyst

Sure. I'll conclude the call today. And I want to conclude just by reiterating that the corporation had another strong quarter, and we consider ourselves very well positioned to deliver growth and substantial value to our customers and our stockholders as we progress towards the successful closure of 2018 and as we look ahead into 2019. So I want to thank you all again for joining us on the call today, and we look forward to speaking with you on our next earnings call in January. John, that concludes the call for today.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference. You may now disconnect.