Scott C. Donnelly
Analyst · Drexel Hamilton
Thanks, Doug, and good morning, everybody. Despite weakness in our automotive and business jet markets, we grew manufacturing revenues in the quarter as a result of strong military and commercial demand at Bell along with increased deliveries at Textron Systems, E-Z-GO and Jacobsen. Operationally, results were excellent at Bell and in line with our expectations elsewhere. Obviously, we had a couple of disappointments in the quarter with respect to the arbitration charge at Cessna and in other issues that emerged at our fee-for-service UAS program at Systems. While we've made good progress with the training and interior operational deficiencies we discussed during our third quarter call, we have experienced some aircraft engine performance issues in the fourth quarter, which resulted in a pretax charge of $19 million. We believe we've identified the underlying causes that are affecting engine performance and have committed the resources necessary to address these issues. Looking forward with these charges we've taken, we now assume both of these programs in ISR Services will generate 0 profit for 2013. Positive news at Systems in the quarter was that we had better overall delivery performance resulting in record quarterly revenues and significant deliveries for Shadow retrofit units and Senzor Fuzed Weapons. Therefore, as we look to 2013, we see a return to top line growth and a significant improvement in margins led by growth in UAS revenues, primarily from delivery of TCDL systems. Switching to Industrial. As expected, we saw volume soften in the fourth quarter at Caltex as a result of both European and Chinese automotive markets. Greenlee was essentially flat while E-Z-GO and Jacobsen both saw good growth, reflecting new product introductions and ongoing efforts to expand our distribution channels for customers. For the year, we posted a 10 basis point improvement in margins at Industrial on 4% revenue growth. Looking at 2013. With continuing uncertainty in European markets, we're taking a conservative view and expect a slight increase in revenue and margins. Moving to our Finance segment. The fourth quarter capped a 4-year effort to liquidate our noncap to Finance business. During the quarter, we reduced our total Finance receivables by another $65 million, bringing our 2012 liquidations to $820 million and our 4-year total to $8.7 billion. That leaves only $370 million in noncap to receivables, which we will continue to reduce opportunistically. This is the last call in which we will plan to highlight receivable liquidations as the size of our noncap to portfolio is now essentially immaterial. Moving now to Cessna. With the U.S. presidential election and fiscal uncertainty intensifying this -- during the quarter, we saw an unusually slow business jet demand, resulting in 53 jet deliveries, down from last year's 67. In total for the year, we delivered 181 jets versus 183 last year, again reflecting that economic and political volatility that developed during the second half of the year. Looking toward 2013. We're planning on deliveries to be modestly higher than 2012, although we do expect a back end-loaded profile. This is essentially the result of our new model rollout plan this year with new Sovereign first delivering in the third quarter and the M2 and new Ten in the fourth quarter. We also believe we'll see a degree of uncertainty in the jet market as Washington works through its fiscal challenges, but we believe demand will solidify as those uncertainties are reduced. On the aftermarket front, we acquired 2 European service centers, one in Zürich, Switzerland and one in Düsseldorf, Germany, bringing our own global owned service center footprint to 15 facilities. We also signed 2 joint venture agreements in the quarter with our Chinese partners for final assembly and sales activity in China for the Caravan and the XLS plus as we continue to believe that China represents a significant growth market for our Cessna product family. Longer term, we're still expecting overall jet growth to develop as global economies gain momentum, emerging markets develop further and our new products roll into the market. Wrapping up our operations review with Bell. Execution across programs continue to be outstanding and which reflected our strong margins in the quarter. We delivered 9 V-22s and 6 H-1s and 65 commercial helicopters versus 7 V-22s, 6 H-1s and 62 commercial helicopters in last year's fourth quarter. For the full year, we delivered 39 V-22s and 24 H-1s, compared to 34 and 25 last year. During the quarter, we received an undefinitized V-22 contract for lot 17 and long-lead funding for lot 18, which we're hopeful will lead to the signing of a second multiyear procurement contract once the DoD receives authorization to approve new multiyear contracts. We also continue to actively pursue FMS opportunities for both the V-22 and the H-1. On the commercial front, for the full year, we delivered 188 helicopters, up 50% from last year's 125 units, reflecting our investment in new products and increased focus on the commercial helicopter market. For example, we just received an order for 5 429 helicopters from the Turkish Forestry Department, which follows on the Turkish order placed in December of 2001 for 15 429s for their national police force. The 429 also continues to receive regulatory approvals for additional 500 pounds of lift capability, bringing total certification to 14 countries including Canada, Brazil, China, and most recently, Chile. The new 407GX is also selling very well with the recent order for 20 units from Air Methods. Demand is also solid for our 412EP with contracts recently signed with the Colombian Navy and oil production transport companies in Mexico and Egypt. Looking to 2013, based on our commercial backlog and an active order pipeline, we expect a solid increase in commercial deliveries once again. In summary, despite continued volatility in the global economic environment, I think we had a solid year. Our business units: Textron Systems had a number of important program wins, including the Canadian TAPV contract, 2 UAS service contracts and the Navy Ship-to-Shore development program. At Industrial, last year's 4% top line growth reflected our continuing investment in new products and distribution. Cessna improved margins, expanded its service footprint with new service centers, initiated our China growth strategy, announced the new Citation Sovereign and expanded their product launch family with the new long-range Citation Longitude. Bell achieved record full year performance, announced the new 525 Relentless super-medium helicopter, won the #1 customer service rating for the 18th year in a row and opened a new joint service facility with Cessna in Singapore. At the Textron level, we continue to strengthen our balance sheet as we liquidated most of the remaining portion of our non-captive to portfolio while generating nearly $800 million in cash for our manufacturing operations. Consequently, we reduced our consolidated net debt by $974 million to $2.6 billion even after making discretionary contributions into our pension plan. We also returned $272 million to investors through repurchased shares during the fourth quarter. Yesterday, our board approved a new $25 million share repurchase authorization under which we intend to purchase shares to offset the impact of dilution from stock-based compensation and benefit plans, as well as for opportunistic capital management purposes. To wrap up with our 2013 guidance. We're projecting an overall revenue increase of about 6% and EPS from continuing operations in a range of $2.10 to $2.30. Manufacturing cash flow before pension contributions is expected to be $500 million to $550 million, reflecting a significant increase in expected cash income taxes. With that, I'll turn the call over to Frank.