Ken Bedingfield
Analyst · Citi
And I think what I would add to that, Kathy, is if I think about the acceleration or the implied exit growth part of the question, I would say, we do feel pretty confident about that, and I think I guess, there are a couple drivers there. One would be you know, we are a long cycle business, and it takes some time for budgets to turn into outlays, and then outlays to turn into our sales. And we certainly try to be careful and thoughtful in terms of how we generate those sales such that we are as efficient as possible and don't motivate [ph] production lines for short-term growth. And then I would also say that where we are aligned within how the budget is positioning going forward, today and dealing with the threats that are identified and the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, Missile Defense Review, we feel good about our capabilities and technology alignment to the mission needs that our customer will face. So, I would say we do feel good about the long-term growth that we've talked about, 2019, 2020 and beyond. And then on the margin expansion, I would say that a couple things, I think we have the opportunity for margin expansion. There are a few things that we need to think about in that regard. Number one, we've been I think effectively managing our cost structure, and that continues. That's a benefit. We also have strong growing production programs, I mentioned Triton getting ready to move into full rate production. That's a benefit. And then we also have a growing set of international opportunities, which should generate a nice margin. Going the other way, we have some margin rate pressure in terms of continued growth and development programs, both in national security space and hypersonic, as Kathy mentioned. So that could put a little bit of pressure on the margins. And if there were a big win, like a GBSD, as we've talked about before, that could have some impact as well, but we do certainly feel confident about maintaining strong margin rate and having a nice set of growing margin dollars consistent with what we see on the top line.