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Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 29, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Northrop Grumman's Second Quarter 2015 Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. My name is Kaitlin and I will be your operator today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Steve Movius, Treasurer and Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Movius, please proceed. Stephen C. Movius - Treasurer & Vice President-Investor Relations: Thanks, Kaitlin, and welcome to Northrop Grumman's second quarter 2015 conference call. As always, please understand the matters discussed on today's call constitute forward-looking statements pursuant to Safe Harbor provisions of Federal Securities laws. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are detailed in today's press release and our SEC filings. These risk factors may cause actual company results to differ materially. Matters discussed on today's call might also include non-GAAP financial measures that are reconciled in today's earnings release, which is posted on our website. On the call today are Wes Bush, our Chairman, CEO and President; and Ken Bedingfield, our CFO. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Wes. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Steve. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Our first half results reflect a continued focus on performance by the great team we have in our company and I'd like to thank our folks for all that they're doing. That focus on executing well in combination with effective cash deployment continues to create value for our shareholders, our customers and employees. Looking at the quarter, earnings per share increased 16%. Cash from operations and free cash flow were also higher this quarter. Through June 30, adjusting for the first quarter pension-free funding, operations generated about $300 million in cash…

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Wes. I also want to thank the team for a job well done. It was a solid quarter and we're on our way to having another strong year. Second quarter EPS increased 16%, which includes a one-time tax item. We recognized $38 million of additional research credits in the quarter, which provided a $0.20 benefit to EPS. Excluding the tax benefit, earnings per share increased 7% over last year's strong second quarter. Our segment operating income for the quarter was unchanged and segment's operating margin rate increased 30 basis points, reflecting strong performance across all four of our businesses. Total operating income was slightly lower than last year, due to lower net FAS/CAS pension adjustment, while the operating margin rate increased 20 basis points to 13.8%. I would note that our unallocated corporate expense for the quarter was lower than last year's second quarter, but on a year-to-date basis, unallocated corporate expense is consistent with last year's results. Turning to cash. Operations generated $626 million in the quarter and $297 million year-to-date before the voluntary pension pre-funding. This year's results are consistent with our pattern of having the majority of our cash generated in the second half of the year. Second quarter free cash flow was $511 million after capital investments of $115 million. Turning to sector results. We had strong performance across the board. Aerospace Systems sales were slightly higher in the quarter and year-to-date. We continue to see growth in our unmanned and space businesses. Year-to-date unmanned sales are up more than 10%, while space sales are up around 5%. These increases were partially offset by declines in a number of other programs, the largest of which was the F/A-18. Year-to-date F/A-18 deliveries have declined to 17 from 25 last year. Ramp-up on production activities for the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Steve. Your first question in queue comes from Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs. Noah Poponak - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Noah.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Noah. Noah Poponak - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Ken, maybe just a little bit more detail or some follow ups on those outlook components. So, understand the unallocated, nonrecurring, the tax rate change, is that also nonrecurring or what does that do to the tax rate beyond 2015? And then the change in cash from ops and free cash, is that all just cash taxes or is it something else? And then does that sustain or not beyond 2015?

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

So, on the corporate unallocated, that is a nonrecurring as is the impact on the income tax rate, Noah. It's just moving income from 2015 to 2016. As we changed the method, it'll continue to push income out 2016 to 2017. So, essentially it's a one-time cash benefit, but we don't have to pay it back in the future, and we will then realize the benefits of the state and those federal deductions in 2016 and beyond. Noah Poponak - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. Is it possible to perhaps, I know you don't want to commit to numbers beyond 2015, it's too early to do that, but perhaps there is a sort of directional break own you could provide. On average, the next few years, the base business converts net income into free cash at X% and then between tax and pension or anything else that's a major bucket, what would drive you off of that regular conversion one way or the other?

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

I would say, Noah, we wouldn't want to comment really beyond 2015. In terms of – you asked about CAS, in terms of CAS, I think there's some information on the website that has some directional data for CAS purposes for 2015, 2016 and 2017, but I don't think I'd want to comment beyond that.

Operator

Operator

Your next question in queue comes from Doug Harned with Sanford Bernstein. Doug Stuart Harned - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: Good afternoon. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Doug. Doug Stuart Harned - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: You have taken net debt up substantially over the last year, and I'm just trying to understand where you want to be in terms of a stable level of cash on the balance sheet going forward? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And so, Doug, let me just kind of frame in a broad sense, because I don't think we want to pick one particular number. We manage the company based on the broad environment that we see. And from a net debt increase perspective, we made a decision in 2013, and we followed through on it, that based on the attractiveness of the debt markets to our company at the time, it made sense for us to change our balance a little bit, go out and take on a little bit of additional debt and use that for share repurchase. We've been doing that and I think that's served us all very well, and we have a very regular rhythm, if you will, to looking at where we are from a total debt position and what it means in terms of the way both we're operating the company as well as what our overall capital structure looks like. So, we want to retain some flexibility in that regard; that's why I don't want to drive a stake in it at any one point in time. But, in general, I would just say our philosophy is, we want to make sure we're obviously respecting and treating our debt holders the right way. But we look for the right economic environment and circumstances to position our overall capital structure in a way that we think it creates the most value.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

And, Doug, I'll just mention that certainly we look to maintain more than a comfortable level of liquidity, certainly first looking at cash on the balance sheet and then beyond that additional credit capacity. But, I would say that we're very careful in looking at our expected cash flows in determining when and where we make those investments and maintaining a comfortable level of liquidity. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And that's important given the nature of our contracting business that we ensure that we've got access to adequate cash to deal with the ups and downs of the budget and the appropriation process, and I think we have a pretty good model for how to do that actually. It's a barely detailed model we use to project what our needs may be and add of course some risk factors to that. So I think in terms of cash on the balance sheet, our approach to managing that is serving us quite well. Doug Stuart Harned - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: But is that fair to say then that the level you're at right now is the level that you're comfortable with and I ask because as you finish this year and complete the 25% share repurchase effort, you look at the cash levels and the question we have is to think about what's the next step, whether you do beyond the completion of this current effort? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. And I appreciate that question as well Doug. It's clear to us that we are going to be, assuming that the growth continues in the factor that we foresee it, continue to be a very good generator of cash as we have been for a…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Gursky with Citi.

Jonathan Raviv - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Jason Gursky with Citi

Hi. Good afternoon. It's actually Jon Raviv on for Jason. I was wondering if you could revisit some of those long-term margin targets by segment that Jim used to talk about and how they might be affected by some structural shifts in your business, i.e., more international and more aftermarket services linked to your platforms?

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure. Happy to talk about that, I would say that I think our long-term objectives in terms of margin rates for the sectors continue to be relevant, and as we look at our business going forward, we see in some respects offsetting factors. We have some level of domestic development work that we see in front of us, and we have some more mature production work in terms of – particularly international opportunities, but other opportunities with E-3D and F-35 starting to ramp in those areas as well. So, we have a little bit of a mix in terms of – potentially lower margin development work and higher margin production and higher expectations on international. That should offset, and I think that's because of those factors that the objectives that we've laid out continue to be relevant. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I would just add to that the numbers that we've talked about over time I think are still meaningful, those are benchmarks, benchmarks that we see as representative of the way the businesses can perform based on a marked view of where we've been and how the industry performs. Let me be clear, we incentivized our team to be better than the benchmarks and that's our core part of the strategy in the company. But as Ken pointed out, there are pressures in both directions whether it is the mix of development and production that we have pressing in one direction or the growth in international pressing in a different direction, but it's our job to manage all of those things. And as I said we measure ourselves on how well we do and that goes directly to the way our incentives work.

Jonathan Raviv - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Jason Gursky with Citi

And as a quick follow-up on talking about services, services not necessarily linked to your platforms, how do you approach that portfolio in light of your competitor or one of your competitors suggesting they want out of that market? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: But we've been a very active manager of our portfolio for many years now on both, I would say the products and the services sides of the company and I think that portfolio management has been working well for us. It's included taking a variety of actions, selling and spinning out businesses, as well as sometimes simply exiting some of our efforts through attrition. And those portfolios of actions have moved us largely out of the low margin commoditized service businesses. In fact, if you look at IS and TS where the majority of our service business resides, those sectors today are reporting operating margin rates in the range of 9% to 10%. So I think that shows you what we've done already in terms of managing that part of our portfolio. I think it's also important to add that we see our remaining service businesses as really important in supporting our efforts with our products business. So, there is really good strategic alignment of the different parts of the business in that way. Just to give an example of that, if you look at the service businesses at IS and TS somewhere in the range of 80% to 85% of that service business is with our DoD and our Intel customers. So we think we've found the balance and mix that's working well to support our broad strategy. We do of course continue to be active portfolio managers and we are constantly testing alignment or asking ourselves whether we're the best owners of each of these businesses and we also work hard just in a broader context to ensure that any decision that we make whether it's a decision to exit or a decision to retain any particular business that such a decision actually enables shareholder value creation based on the market conditions at the time. I think that's a really important part of the thought process.

Operator

Operator

Your next question in queue comes from Howard Rubel with Jefferies.

Howard Alan Rubel - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies

Thank you. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Howard.

Howard Alan Rubel - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies

How are you both – all three of you? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good.

Howard Alan Rubel - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies

Since we're talking strategic, you guys do a nice – the company does a nice job of integrating airborne vehicles. And you look at opportunities and Sikorsky came on the market and there's elements that might very well fit with you. So could you elaborate on what some of the considerations you undertook – because clearly it does have a cash positive contribution to Lockheed now that they've acquired it? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Howard, I appreciate the question. We have a very strict policy that we adhere to that we don't give specifics on any particular transactional activity in the marketplace. But I think I can answer your question in a broad context. We are active and looking at a variety of things that come onto the marketplace. And to your point, we are very thoughtful and our very first thing that we go to is really fit with the strategic factor that we see our company on and how we see individual elements of both our current portfolio and anything that we're particularly looking at how we see those things fitting together to create value. Often times, we can see something that if you will from an architectural or engineering or how we sell something, we can see it fit together, but we can't get to the create value part, at least not in a relative sense to our other opportunities to deploy those resources that would be used in a particular transaction. So we're strong adherents to that create value part of the equation and we're – as we look at a variety of different possibilities out there, we're just adamant that whatever we do honestly stacks up well against our other alternatives, so that's kind of the way we frame our thinking.

Howard Alan Rubel - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies

I appreciate both the discretion and the deliberate answer. Now, I want to just ask on operational question for a second.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure.

Howard Alan Rubel - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies

You've – there's a lot of money – well, there's an enormous amount of opportunity with the UCLASS program and the Senate has provided – basically has created you as, at least one of the viable opportunity or solutions there. Could you sort of discuss how you see some of the unmanned vehicle market playing out from here? I mean, you're clearly the leader and you clearly have some very nifty solutions and it's been an important part of your growth as you outlined in the quarter. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: It is an important part of our growth. It's a very important part of our company and I honestly think we're still at the early stages of understanding collectively from a defense and security and perhaps even more broad perspective how unmanned systems and more broadly, I would say autonomous systems are over time going to play an increasing role and performing the missions that our nation and our allies need to perform. On the target though of your question with respect to airborne unmanned systems, the growing recognition that the surveillance needs are continuing to expand and it's not a linear expansion, it's higher rate than that. Those needs are continuing to expand to address all these challenges that we're seeing around the world, really is a direct connect into the strength of what unmanned can bring; the ability to operate with persistence, the ability to use the extra capacity, if you will, of a platform that you obtain by removing the need to support a humanoid and replace that with mission capability, all of those things play very well. And to the true effectiveness of these unmanned systems and as we've been demonstrating on Global Hawk, our ability to bring the…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Cai von Rumohr with Cowen & Company. Cai von Rumohr - Cowen & Co. LLC: Thank you very much. So, Wes, with your share repurchase, your net debt to EBITDA has increased from a very modest level to a slightly higher level, still comfortable. As you think beyond completing the announced share repurchase, what do you think the correct gross or net EBITDA, debt-to-EBITDA ratio is for the company? And how should we think about the potential for continuing the share repurchase after the current one is completed? Thanks. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hi. Cai, let me kind of provide a similar perspective to the response I gave Doug on a similar, I know not exact question. In terms of looking at the variety of metrics, whether it's the amount of cash we want to maintain on our balance sheet to ensure the robustness of our operations, or if we're thinking about important metrics like debt-to-EBITDA, this is an ongoing process for the company. We take a very careful and thoughtful look at how our overall capital structure plays into what we're trying to achieve strategically as an enterprise and then what the consequential outcomes are for so many of these important metrics, and what those mean for our broader strategy and for, of course, our board and for our debt holders. We're very thoughtful on both fronts. So, we haven't put out there any particular hard benchmarks on these things. We think it's important for us to be able to maintain some flexibility to deal with a changing environment that's out there, but we recognize our responsibilities to manage these things very carefully. And we are very, very mindful of all the elements of the…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Sam Pearlstein with Wells Fargo.

Sam J. Pearlstein - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo

Good afternoon. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: How are you, Sam?

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi, Sam.

Sam J. Pearlstein - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo

Hey. Wes, you kind of made a comment about the current situation with the budget resolution and starting with a CR and that's led you to not change your sales guidance. And I'm just trying to just think through, I wouldn't think you'd get that quick of a turnaround and just want to confirm if there is some sort of resolution or if they get money through OCO, is there any scenario where that ultimately would help you in 2015? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sam, I'm glad you asked the question, because I think it's important to clarify. When we are in a mode of a CR, particularly one that has on the back end of it a potential sequester, it's usually not so much the actual flow of dollars from an appropriation standpoint that impacts us in the near-term, it's more the way our customers are thinking about what might happen. And we've seen a little bit of this in past years when we were in a CR situation and there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether or not Congress would act with respect to removing the BCA caps or what the sequester implications might be. So this is more about our customers willingness to put things on contract or to allocate funds on existing contracts and we'll just kind of have to see what the environment looks like over the next number of months. As always, we're making sure that we are planning for a variety of scenarios. So we don't expect to be caught short, if you will, in any respect with how things might play out. But that small extent of volatility that's represented sort of in the range of our guidance is our thinking around, if we see something similar at this time to what we observed a few years ago when there was this uncertainty of what could happen, when you are in a CR with a potential sequester at the end of it, I think it's prudent for us to be clear that there is some potential uncertainty in that regard.

Sam J. Pearlstein - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo

Thank you. And then just on some of the changes within the segments and I guess for Ken is really if it looks like Aerospace is up, Technical Service is up, you get some sort of a cash benefit from the tax change that you're talking about. Is there anything that's on the negative side or is it those three items that really are affecting your free cash flow guidance for the year?

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

I would say Sam that in terms of cash flow guidance for the year, I think the cash we expect to generate from the sectors is pretty consistent with what we expected at the beginning of the year and the update to the cash flow guidance is primarily tied to our change in tax methods, which is going to result in lower tax payments for the full year of 2015.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Myles Walton with Deutsche Bank.

Myles Alexander Walton - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Myles Walton with Deutsche Bank

Thanks, good afternoon. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Myles.

Myles Alexander Walton - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Myles Walton with Deutsche Bank

First, just sort of clarification – hey, the clarification on the lower share count. Is that buying more upfronts, lower dilution or are you going above and beyond the $60 million this year? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: For the most part that's buying little bit more upfront than we have planned Myles.

Myles Alexander Walton - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Myles Walton with Deutsche Bank

Okay. The question, maybe Ken is on the implied margin in the second half in both IS and AS respectively, 100 basis point plus sequential declines second half over first half and IS has some of that seasonality, AS generally doesn't, I heard you call it the one time in AS, but still it looks like there is more conservatism than not. Can you help us bridge that?

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, thanks, Myles. I appreciate the question. So we did increase guidance somewhat at both AS and IS largely based on the performance in the first half of the year. You mentioned IS had some help from risk retirements on a restricted program as we disclosed. And IS had some positive impacts from program completions and that's both in the first quarter and the second quarter. Also, I'll just mention that year-to-date margin rates for ES and TS approximate their 2015 guidance. Other point I would make is that, our segment margin rate is approximately 12%, so it's not a point estimate at 12%. In terms of other thoughts, we do have the potential, as Wes has mentioned, for some customer behavior changes in the second half of the year, more likely to impact our short-cycle businesses, but we're keeping eye on that risk as we think about what our 2015 segment margin rate is. All that being said, we incentivize our team to perform on this, and several other metrics and certainly look forward to working with a team to continue to focus on managing risk and capturing opportunities in the second half of the year.

Myles Alexander Walton - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Myles Walton with Deutsche Bank

Okay, Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Stallard with RBC Capital.

Robert Stallard - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Robert Stallard with RBC Capital

Thanks so much. Good afternoon. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Robert.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey.

Robert Stallard - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Robert Stallard with RBC Capital

Wes, you mentioned that you expect to expose this year to make up roughly 15% of sales. I was wondering how much of that is already in the backlog, and also where you think this percentage could hit, maybe hit into next year? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So, in terms of the backlog, I think pretty much all of it is reflective in our backlog today. So, I think it's a fairly straight forward projection for this year. We're not guiding it to next year. All I would say though is, international continues to be a growing part of our business. We're excited about the opportunity space that's in front of us and I have in the past sort of clicked through some of those things that might give us the opportunity of your question just to remind everyone of kind of what we see out there. We've earlier this year announced already the Global Hawk in Korea and I see that as a really important first step in the growth of unmanned for our allies. We have Japan very interested in Global Hawk. They made an announcement earlier of their interest. Australia, as well, has announced their interest in Triton. Germany is now taking a hard look at Triton as well. So the whole arena of unmanned, particularly in the surveillance space I think is going to be a very nice set of opportunities for us. I mentioned Japan, not only are they pursuing Global Hawk, they're also pursuing E-2D and E-2D is a platform. I believe we will see a number of opportunities emerge for us around the globe. It is a remarkable capability that Navy is very successfully deploying and utilizing, and I'm sure that a number of our allies around the globe are going to be quite interested in that. Electronics, which historically has been our strongest business in terms of the fraction of its sales that are international, continues to see a lot of opportunities. The SABR program that we announced earlier in Taiwan is one that I think we're going to see some nice opportunities around the globe. Cleary, Korea, is one that is in the near term, more near term than some of the others, but I think that's representative of the breadth of abilities that ES is bringing to the international marketplace. And then both IS and TS have a variety of opportunities out there as well, whether we're talking about air defense systems or we're talking about sustainment opportunities or in some cases the cyber opportunities. So it's an important and growing part of our business and we're delighted to be able to serve our allies in a more robust manner.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

And then, Wes, just to mention, to add on to that, I think that we have international opportunities, we also have a robust set of domestic opportunities as well depending, the international opportunities do at times take a little bit longer to turn into sales, so depending on what moves first, in terms of domestic, we talk about LRS, F-35 ramp up, E-2D ramp up. Depending on what moves first, you could see international growth with domestic growth out pacing it potentially in one year or another. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure.

Robert Stallard - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Robert Stallard with RBC Capital

Okay. That's great. Thank you very much. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Safran with Buckingham Research.

Richard T. Safran - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Richard Safran with Buckingham Research

Hi, good afternoon. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hi.

Richard T. Safran - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Richard Safran with Buckingham Research

So, I have just one question, but it's really kind of a two parter here. Wes, obviously the main focus right now on procurement is Long-Range Strike Bomber, but you recently teamed with L-3 and GD on JSTARS recap, which you mentioned by the way in your opening remarks. So, first thing, is the fact that, a bunch of teams has now been formed, any indication that the program is moving forward? If you could, can you give us some sense of a timeline and maybe size of the program that sort of thing? The second part is, if you mentioned T-X in your remarks, the new trainer, I missed it, but I thought you might give us an update on the program and your current thinking there? And in your answer if you could add any new initiative of the programs that you are focusing on now that I might have missed? Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. Thanks in terms of Joint STARS, first let me start up by saying we're delighted to be able to team with both General Dynamics and with L-3 to pull together an offering that we think will just do an outstanding job of meeting the requirements and doing so in a very affordable manner. So, we're delighted with that partnership and looking forward to the competition. The other competitors that have announced so far, my recollection of that is, both Lockheed and Boeing have announced their interest in this competition. So that'll make it a very good competition and we're looking forward to putting together a very competitive offering. The current state of play on Joint STARS is all public information. The Air Force has indicated that they're planning to award a development contract sometime in 2017.…

Richard T. Safran - The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.

Analyst · Richard Safran with Buckingham Research

Thank you very much. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you. Thanks, Richard.

Operator

Operator

Your next question in queue comes from Carter Copeland with Barclays.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Carter.

Carter Copeland - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays

Hey, good afternoon. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon, Carter.

Carter Copeland - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays

Couple of just clarification details, Ken, on the AS performance in the quarter. I wondered if you could just sort of tell us which was the bigger grower in absolute terms, unmanned or restricted? And then, a second one on the in-theater force reductions in IS, which has obviously have come up in several quarters in your description, how much more downside do you see there for that business, and are we getting close to a bottom related to that? Thanks.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure. Carter, no problem. At AS, I would say, the largest driver for the quarter was unmanned in terms of top-line what drove the performance for the quarter. And then, your second question in terms of in-theater, the biggest in-theater impacts that we see are at IS and the ES, and we project about a $200 million reduction this year in-theater sales to, I think it's about $700 million for the year. And actually last year the bigger piece of that reduction was that IS. This year, the biggest piece of that reduction, probably two-thirds, is ES just as the different programmatic and programs that they have in-theater are ramping down. So that's where we see it for this year and $700 million is kind of the baseline for 2015, and beyond that we haven't yet, I would say, put pen to paper on what that would look like.

Carter Copeland - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays

Okay. Thanks. I'll stick to that.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Carter.

Operator

Operator

Your next question in queue comes from Robert Spingarn with Credit Suisse. Robert M. Spingarn - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Afternoon. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hey, Rob. Robert M. Spingarn - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi, Wes. Wanted to go back to capital allocation, but I'm not going to ask you what you're going to do next from a buyback perspective. But instead, ask you if the environment stabilizing here might make M&A a little bit more interesting, not talking about specific deals, but just your overall view about what's out there, especially given just the size of these very binary opportunities in front of you and dependent on how those might go. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, I think it's very possible that a shift in the environment may cause a variety of additional opportunities to become present in the marketplace, but for us the question would always be value and whether or not anything that we're looking at stacks up well relative to our other alternatives. As I've said in the past, and I feel that way today, when I look at our footprint here in the U.S., I really don't see a big burning hole in our portfolio in some way and that therefore puts us in a position where we feel really good about our portfolio. Our decisions are really genuinely going to be value based, and we really have to see the business case for something to make sense for us. So, the thrust of your question was whether there may be more opportunities coming into the marketplace, and yeah, there may very well be, the question will be how will they stack up relative to other alternatives. Robert…

Operator

Operator

Your next question in queue comes from the line of Hunter Keay with Wolfe Research.

Hunter K. Keay - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst · Wolfe Research

Hi, guys. Thanks for getting me on; I appreciate it. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Hunter.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Hunter.

Hunter K. Keay - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst · Wolfe Research

Good morning – well, good afternoon. I know we've talked about this, so I'll try and ask it a little bit different way. On long-range strike, in the event that you are successful, can you give us an idea of what type of incremental CapEx you might be looking at? And in the event that you're not successful, I know you said that you are not going to necessarily change the way you think about capital allocation per se in a vacuum, but would that change the way you think about M&A in the context of being maybe a buyer or a seller? Not necessarily would it raise the appetite to engage in it, but would it change the way you think about it? Thanks a lot.

Kenneth L. Bedingfield - Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure, Hunter. I'll take the first part of the question and turn it over to Wes for the second. In terms of capital, we've talked about the amount of capital expenditure that we expect to incur in 2015. We've talked about a number around $700 million. We think that's – at this point, we think that's a reasonable number of where we are for the year. And given what we've seen publicly about the timing of an LRS award, I don't think that impacts us significantly one way or the other. I would say that we don't provide guidance beyond 2015, but one way or the other as Wes mentioned we do expect to be strong generators of cash flow whether that's cash from operations or free cash flow as we project out beyond 2015. Wesley G. Bush - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And Hunter on your question regarding whether a outcome on LRS would change our perspective on M&A, let me get to what I think is underlying some of the questions we're hearing in that regard and that goes to essentially the question of scale or top-line growth. And I'll say what I've said so many times in the past, we do not manage our company on the top-line. We manage the company based on value creation. In fact, over the last number of years, we've taken a number of actions that have very intentionally reduced our top-line, because we saw those actions as accretive to value and that's the way we're thinking about our overall value proposition. So the question of – if we're not successful on one thing or another and perhaps that means our sales are not growing as quickly, do we try and make that up some way with M&A, that's not…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.