ATI Inc. (ATI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Well, good morning, everyone. We'll go ahead and try and get started here today. Thank you very much for coming out here to the ATI Investor Update here at the New York Stock Exchange. It's really exciting to have you here. My name is Dave Weston. I'm the Vice President of Investor Relations for ATI. And we have a really exciting message we think have for you here today. So let's see if we can go ahead and get started. Obviously, in conformance with SEC regulations, there will be a lot of forward-looking statements in our presentation today. And as you know, those projections could vary from actual results. So obviously, for -- as an SEC regulation, we'll make sure that if you need to follow up on any of the specific risk factors for ATI those are posted on our SEC filings on the ATI website. So a few things from a housekeeping perspective. You see we do have food and drink over here on the side of the room. We have restrooms back through the hallway over that way. We will be serving lunch here at 12 noon after the presentation is over. And also from an emergency perspective, is there -- for some reason there is some type of an emergency, proceed back towards the lobby they will help out. And if you need any help here in the room, you can contact any of our ATI team members, Natalie Gillespie, Clay Hillin over in that corner over there and we'll make sure that we get to everything you need. From a scheduling perspective, you can see that our prepared remarks are scheduled to run approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes. We'll then do a 15-minute break, and then we'll resume with in-person Q&A, wrapping things up in here at 12 noon today. Before we get started, I certainly want to thank everyone from the ATI team that has worked so hard to put this presentation together, and of course, all of our 6,000 employees out there who are working every day to deliver those results for our customers. I certainly want to thank the folks here at the Stock Exchange and our team with Q4, who've helped us put this whole presentation together. So thank you to everyone with that. And now with that, I'll introduce our Board Chair and CEO, Mr. Bob Wetherbee.

Great venue and thanks for coming, across town, across the country, wherever you came from. It's hard to believe business has been transacted at this location since 1792. So we got a good update on the history of the building, and it's a great venue for talking about kind of where we're going as a company. Last time we did an Investor Day was February of 2022. And when we look back on 2022, a lot of things have changed for us. Certainly, we're coming out of COVID. COVID was still ranging in February 2022. Mr. Putin had not quite yet moved to Ukraine. And when we talked about the aerospace business, there was a lot of uncertainty in terms of what could be there. And -- what we look back now, for those of you who are new to the story over that 21-month period, it's really about our results are confirming the actions that we've taken, so we did what we said we were going to do, right? So taking a brief look at the business, we've certainly transformed our business. We've certainly exited our standard stainless business. We've certainly looked at building an advantage in titanium. 2023, I think, could be the year of titanium for all of us, so much change going on and the ability for ATI to grab a little more share in that market as customers are extremely worried about their surety of supply in this changing environment. And we've been able to add some capacity, both some bringing back old tech idled capacity that we idled during COVID to be really helpful in this transition and transformation as well as going more global. Part of the share shift that we've had has really been about moving from a North American-Centric business to a more global Aerospace & Defense player. And certainly, that's been very helpful to have our OEMs participating in that and helping us get to more LTAs. Some for more than 2 or 3 years, some through the balance of the decade. So a tremendous change in the business over the last 21 months. The bottom line, we've had a great impact by adjusting our pension, situation where probably -- this will be the last investor update, we ever talk about pensions, which for ATI has been about a 30-year quest to get to that point. But the EBITDA side, really doubling where we were only back to 2021. Recognizing 2021 was a tough COVID year, but to really see the business perform. It's been a great team effort. And the bottom line is we've been able to do what we said we were going to do. And that's something we take a lot of pride in. So to be able to talk to you today about where we're going is very helpful. So we're going to go right to the beginning. By 2027, ATI has a vision and a path and a lot of actions that we believe we can take to get to $5 billion in revenue and $1 billion of EBITDA. So where do we expect to end this year? I got to be careful of my decimal points with Don Newman in the house, but we're going to be in the $4 billion top line range and we're certainly going to move us to about $5 billion by 2027. And we should close the year just under $600 million of EBITDA and then getting to $1 billion is well within the path that we have and the actions we believe are within our control in the current market environment. So we're pretty excited about it. It's organic-based. We have a tremendous organic growth portfolio, no disrespect to the bankers that are in the room who are always looking to see if we're interested in M&A, but it really is a great organic opportunity. And its fundamentals really hits down to the markets we're in, the margins and the cost structures and the footprint we have as well as you'll hear later today from Kim Fields, our COO, really about the efficiencies and the capacity that we're able to find in our existing business. So a good news story, organic growth to $1 billion of EBITDA by 2027. So I get to be the lead off, open up, and then I'll get to close for a few minutes before the break. I'm going to talk about the markets, the strategy and some of our key priorities, as we go through of what's changing within ATI and what's not. I can tell you, our strategy is not changing. We love Aerospace & Defense and all the things that go with that. Kim Fields, our President and Chief Operating Officer, will talk about capturing the opportunity. It's one thing for me to define it, it's another for her to say, well, this is how we're going to actually turn it to the bottom line. So I think you'll see some significant changes in how ATI approaches our operations and how see that as a sustainable opportunity for us going forward. And then, Don, wherever Don is, he'll come back and talk about how does all this look to the bottom line, and then we'll open it up for some -- hopefully, some pretty aggressive questions. I appreciate the time. And certainly, our goal is to deliver for our shareholders, and we feel like we're on the right path to do that. So our strategy is delivering, as I said, confirmed by our customers as well as the results. There are 3 major elements of that strategy, growing the core in Aerospace & Defense. We have a great foundation there, and we've been able to grow you'll hear a lot about that this morning, sharpening our operational advantage. The real opportunity for us is execution over the next 3 years. 2027, as I said to many of you feels like a long way off, but it's not. It's really here as the Aerospace & Defense markets continue to grow. People are looking for commitments, and we're seeing that faster than we have seen it in other times in our markets and positioning for the future. Do we have all the right products and all the right capabilities today? No. But we're going to live within our capital discipline to deliver those. And you'll hear Don talk about some of that as well as Kim. But growing the core, sharpening our operational advantage and positioning for the future all made possible by a great team of people. I heard Dave thank our 6,000 employees around the organization, probably going to be closer to 7,000 by the end of the year, but they're doing a great job in terms of delivering for our customers. So one of the things we wanted to do today is define some terms, right? So you'll hear us say, hey, these markets have strong fundamentals, right? And I know many of you are not new to the ATI story and many of you are not new to Aerospace & Defense, but it's helpful to remember why do we love these markets, significant growth opportunity that's going to outpace GDP for the balance of the decade. That's our fundamental view. And I think our customers are demonstrating that with the orders that they're putting out for us. Our backlogs have grown. Good conversation about when will backlogs peak. We'll let that come through the Q&A, and we'll have those kind of dialogues. The second issue is material science. It's back in vogue. We have a lot of applications that cannot perform. Our customer applications cannot perform without material science at the root of their solution. So that feels good about where we are in the market and our seat at that table as well as the stronger margins. Now Don always likes to talk about margins are a result of a lot of things. But I would say the products that we're delivering allow us to earn the margins that we're seeing. The growth in those margins, they're rewarding us for providing a solution to a major problem that they have. And there are certainly a lot of challenges as the Aerospace & Defense ramps as they run into new challenges, whether it's engines in the Middle East or its challenges with some of the technologies, the newer technologies of people are using. We usually get that first call, and that's the fun part about the strong fundamentals of the market. We have really differentiated solutions to earn those margins over the long term. So it's a great time to be in the titanium and nickel business in Aerospace & Defense. I'll say that for sure. So let's take a deeper dive into the markets. Aerospace, no secret. We're looking at the build rates that are up. We were here in February of 2022. We said by 2025, there would be about 100 narrow-bodies and about 20 widebodies. And I think some people in the audience kind of gasp and thought that was a little aggressive. And for the last year or 2, we've been kind of accused that they were kind of conservative. So as we look forward, we still see strong growth probably more confirmation yet to come on the widebodies, and we'll talk about that in a minute. The other shift for us is we've historically seen spares being about 25% of our business in the engine space. And that number has really changed. We'll talk about that in a minute. And then share gains. A lot of conversation about what's going on in the titanium space as well as the nickel space. But we're on track to have ATI be greater than 65% revenue in Aerospace & Defense. And feel pretty good about that. We had 61% in Q3 and as we get into 2024, I feel very confident we're going to become 2/3, aerospace and defense into the future. So let's talk about build rates. Everybody always wants to know what's your forecast built on, right to the chase. Our forecast is built on 120 narrowbodies and yes, 24 widebodies. Some might say a little conservative. And we would say that's true. We'll wait for Boeing to decide where the 777-9 or the 777X is going to play out when that's going to play out. We're pretty optimistic about what's going on with Airbus, but about 120 narrow-bodies, 24 wide-bodies going forward. And couple that with some shifts in our business, the share gains in Europe, in particular. Historically, we have been a North American-centric airframe supplier, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. But through the last 12 to 18 months, gotten very global. So as we've said before, we love every plane built anywhere in the world. We feel we're well positioned in the titanium space. A good example of that is our sales into the airframe market. We're up 55% in Q3 over last year's Q3. So we're seeing the benefit of those things. Titanium was designed in for obvious reasons, lightweight, fuel efficient, emission efficient and increasingly durability. So good fundamentals for the long term for titanium. Our growth here, as you think about growth or top line growth, probably 2x the industry over the next -- balance of the decade probably, primarily due to the share gains actually move -- we haven't seen the full benefit of those share gains. We'll see those in 2024. That's when we'll start to a real feel of the benefit of all that work. But could you accuse us of having slightly conservative financial forecast, I would say, on a wide-body build probably, and we can get into that in the Q&A as we go forward. Engine side, it's 35% of our business. We're definitely seeing good growth there. When you think engines, think nickel, titanium we're in the hot section of the engines for the most part. Think about our isothermal forgings and the very customized nickel alloys that we make. Those -- in the high-pressure turbines, compressors. Those are the disks. We don't actually make the parts, but we certainly get them pretty darn close to being finished for our OEM partners. Why the people care, it's really about high strength, things like pre-persistence for the engineers in the room in terms of the durability of these parts. But certainly, the spares in this part of the market have really increased significantly based on where these airplanes are being used. But Kim will talk about more where these capture moments are for us, how we're capturing them and what that means to us for the future. But a very strong future at probably double the industry growth. So in 2022, we're talking about next-gen engines. I think everybody in the room recognizes next-gen is now. So we have to come up with a new term, maybe the next next-gen. But 90% of what's going on in the world today are those new next gens. We're well positioned for that, certainly. I talked about MRO, the growth, just general MRO is up 45%. Our portion of the MRO for spares and engines is up 60%. So a pretty big part of what we're doing. Everything we hear from the OEMs is that they expect that to continue for a variety of reasons. Number one, legacy longer, right? A lot of airplanes -- so anytime when we see an A380, we're spending a lot more time in Dallas and when the A380s are flying into Dallas. It's obvious that there's some legacy planes and legacy engines still out there. A lot to be said about some of the market issues that are out there in terms of, are the engines performing to the spec. We are getting as much time on wing. And where are we with some of the quality issues or concerns in some of the other programs. We're certainly benefiting from those. I hate to say it that way, but we are part of the solution that those OEMs are looking to solve their problems with. So -- and we're getting the Next Gens first time through the shop visits, right? So all those kind of things Rolls-Royce talk yesterday in their Capital Markets Day about what they're seeing, and we're certainly seeing the same thing with them. But it always comes down to demand resiliency. So people ask us how confident are you in the demand? The combination of things in engines, the combination of things in airframe. We feel very good about the best days in Aerospace & Defense are still ahead of us. So let's talk a little bit about defense. Think about ATI, there's 5 big alloys, right? Nickel, titanium are big. The other ones you're going to hear about today are zirconium, hafnium, and niobium So where are those? A lot of those are in defense and they're specialty alloys for high-temperature, high-performance applications. Kim will show you some of those specifically as it relates to commercial space. But we're on everything that flies, floats or rolls for the defense department in the United States and increasingly in Europe and around the world. So let's start with the flying part, think CH-53K with the Navy, right? We're going to see demand go from about 4 a year to 25 a year. No small ramp, no small ATI component on those engines, nickel around those frames and transmission systems. We're on the F-35, F-18, F-15, Obviously, the spares history of military jet engines. Lot more spares, a lot more time at full thrust for those programs. So we're seeing a lot of engine activity there as well. And probably with a 20% increase in the F-35 spend over the next period of time, we'll see the benefit of that. We're not active on the frame as much as the engines on the F-35, but all signs lead to positives as well as the early days of hypersonics and additional space technology. So a very strong position to grow from in Defense. As for the floating, I think zirconium, it's the base material in the nuclear Navy. So 4 new aircraft carriers being built, new submarines, the Aukus program, so we're saying going from 1 sub a year to 2, right, which seems like a pretty big change 1 to 2. Well, it is actually from a nuclear Navy perspective as well as the refueling opportunity that keeps on giving for years to come. So we feel well positioned for the growth that's coming in the floating side of military, not only with the U.S., but certainly with the Aukus partners. And lastly, what's going on in the Ukraine has changed the game for ground vehicles, armored vehicles for a variety of reasons. We're on all programs, whether it's U.S. programs like the Abrams or the European programs like the Ajax. We see a lot of activity here. The Booker, if you're familiar with the M10 Booker and some of the optionally-manned vehicles that are coming a lot of titanium for lightweight, payload, fuel efficiency, distance traveled, speed travel, all those kinds of programs, along with U.S. demand, coupled with foreign military sales. So tremendous activity with our customers in that space. But again, you see demand in the plus 20% range for the foreseeable future, year-over-year growth. So feel really strong in terms of where we're going there. So one thing today we want to introduce you to is what we call Aerospace Like. So we've spent a lot of time on Aerospace & Defense demand 65% of our business is the target. But there's another 10% of our revenue that really looks and performs and acts like Aerospace that we haven't been as specific about talking about today. But altogether, that would get us to about 75% of our company, really driven with the fundamentals of Aerospace & Defense. So there's kind of 4 issues that we look at. 4 things we're looking at to make sure we're aligned with our strategy. #1 is high growth, right, significantly better than GDP, high barriers to entry, a great place to be. If you can do it in Aerospace & Defense, how do we leverage that capability of ATI to other markets that are coming to us. Kim will talk about some pretty exciting things about customers willing to provide investment versus us having to provide the investment. It's a good sign of the capabilities that we're pursuing. It's not new technology for us in these markets, right? We have the big 5 alloys I talked about. That's core to these markets as well. So the base material science, advanced process technologies and the people relationships are key. And by the way, they have equal or better margins to Aerospace & Defense, just not as big, but important to the overall growth of ATI, and you'll hear a lot of those stories today. So let's talk about medical. Probably a few titanium implants in the room, heart stents, hips, knees, MRIs, we kind of look at this as the MRO for humans, right? So there's a pretty strong base here. 21% of Americans will be 65 or over by 2030. So a pretty strong base for MRO parts for humans. I hope we appreciate that. The little sense of humor that we bring today in New York. But the challenge here is -- the technology continues to evolve, and it loves nickel and titanium. Kim will show you a very specific opportunity later today to bring that closer to home. But very strong growth. Hard to estimate exactly how much, but we'd probably say plus 15% to 20% per year -- year-on-year for the balance of the decade. Electronics. Now when we've talked in the past, Electronics has always been things in your pocket, things on your wrist. So today, we're going to shift gears a little bit and say ATI is moving from just components to the fundamentals of chip manufacturing with something called hafnium. So hafnium can be a precursor material that gets put on to the chip and the wafers to separate the electron flows on those chips. It's an insulating barrier. And every next-generation chip requires hafnium, and ATI is the global, premier, high purity at scale producer of hafnium. So we're well positioned. And with the growth of the semiconductor world, I think it's not just devices in our pocket today. It's not just iPhones or cell phones. It's everything, right? The other thing that hafnium does for the chip builders, it allows significant downsizing in the size of the chip. So not only does it help the production of the chip, but also the performance of the chip. So a lot of exciting things going on in hafnium. And again, Kim will touch on some of those, how we're going to capture that opportunity. But with 80% growth in hafnium consumption between now and the end of the decade, we're well positioned to take advantage of that. And Specialty Energy uses all of ATI's materials, whether it's titanium, nickel or hafnium and niobium. It's very small today. Historically, we were an oil and gas energy kind of company. We all know oil and gas has a pretty short cycle, sometimes quarter-to-quarter, year-to-year. I think what we see coming is some fairly strong trends around energy storage, small modular reactors, take a little longer hydrogen reactors. We're getting a lot of volume there, opportunities. And we even have a lot of people pursuing us around fusion energy and some of the technologies that are coming. So a lot of work going on in that space that positions us for the future quite well. And it's quite small today, big potential. And we feel like it's a core part of ATI that we can leverage in that space. We do it with our customers. We couldn't live without them. We feel we have a great group of customers. It's where the action is. It's where we get the first call. As customers continue to grow and push, guess what, they run into their next set of problems. And we have some really strong partnerships. Kim will share her anecdotes as an operations leader when she's out and she gets the feedback from the customers, it's affirmation, confirmation of where we're going. The good news and why I'm talking about it in the market segment is, it's with OEMs, right? We've really shifted our channel. We historically had some strong distribution channels. We still have those, but we're really focused on moving to OEMs which reward us with long-term agreements. Nearly 2/3 of ATI's revenue base is locked up today in an LTA of some type, which for us is, an LTA is usually longer than a year. Most times, multiyear to the balance of the decade for an increasing number. So with that, think about where ATI is. We have a seat at the problem-solving table. We have a seat at the design table. And so as a result of that, we're seeing today's problems into tomorrow's solutions. We're a critical part of the value chain. I think everybody in the value chain in Aerospace & Defense today is critical. There's not a lot of places to go, but we tend to be -- we're hottest, coldest, lightest whatever you need, they're going to come to a material science solution with ATI. And we feel that -- because we've proven to perform, we've been able to capture the margins and continue to capture the margins that we deserve for the long term. So with that, I'll think about one last thought, and then I'll turn it over to Kim, which is 1 ATI. It's taking us a long time to become 1 ATI. We started a decade ago as 5 different business units and we got to 2 segments. We still report in 2 segments, but we really are operating as 1 ATI. And what that allows us to do is to leverage our process technologies, leverages our material science knowledge and leverages our people. And as a result, I'll let Kim take over, and I'll let her talk about where we go from here as we grow the core, sharpen our advantage and position us for the future. Long way around, Kim? Come on up. Thanks.

Thanks, Bob. All right. Great. I don't usually have a crowd this quiet. I'm going to start with that. So I suspect it will get a little louder during Q&A. But yes, there's a lot of things I'm excited about that I want to share with you today. We picked out some of those examples. Certainly, we can talk about more, but there's a lot of great things that we're working to come here at ATI. Bob talked about what he -- Bob shared the details of -- sorry about that, shared the details of our tremendous markets we serve and the incredible customer demand and opportunities that we have. We are well positioned to capture with focused execution as 1 ATI. To understand how, we're going to capture and gain $1 billion in revenue and increase our margins to deliver $1 billion in EBITDA. I'm going to share with you some of the things we're doing around growing our core to meet this incredible demand, applying our operational knowledge to increase yields and efficiencies to generate cash for growth. And then lastly, how we are positioning ATI for future growth, both in the near term as well as the long term through innovation, capacity and capability. All right. So what sets ATI apart? Let's talk about that. Really, our customers understand what the difference is, and as Bob mentioned, they call us when they have a hard problem. And it's probably why a large major engine OEM chose us to partner, to develop and produce their proprietary alloy for hotter, longer engine use. That's why a second major engine OEM chose us and uses us as their sole powder supplier and are partnering with us to develop their next-gen alloy for longer time on wing, with their engines. And that's why the third engine OEM has come to us to help them to develop and streamline their screening and scanning protocols to ensure the highest quality product is on their planes. Our customers know the difference, and that's why we get those calls and they're willing to pay for that difference. I'll share with you today where that difference is coming from. Yes, we've talked about -- you can see here on the screen. We've talked about all the great technologies we have and the great equipment, the largest rolling mill in the world, the best ISO forging. We're a leader in high purity, diverse alloys, nickel and titanium. But as Bob just mentioned, we also do hafnium, niobium, zirconium, but anybody can buy equipment, right? Where does the magic happen? And that's with our people, with our world-class experts in melting, predictive modeling and thermal mechanical processing. They engage with our customers to apply this expertise to push our equipment past its boundaries to discover stronger, harder materials to push to create 0 defect melt. And also, when our technologists go, hey, what about putting cobalt in titanium? What would that do? That leads Titan 27 which is an alloy that we developed that is stronger and allows you to make thinner weld sections for Aerostructures. Our team asks why? Instead of asking -- I'm sorry, instead of our team asking why, our team asks, why not? Why don't we try this? And our customers see that it's different and come and partner with us and collaborate with our best and brightest in their expertise to create new solutions. Just last month, I was at one of the supplier conferences, Bob kind of referenced this when he was talking, and one of them said, hey, you are our favorite material supplier to work with. That doesn't happen by accident. That takes hard work, focus, transparent communication and a lot of collaboration and that's really how we set and differentiate ourselves. So our team working together as 1 ATI is leveraging this unique capabilities and our world-class smelting and processing experts. We're focusing on best-in-class rolling and finishing, forging end-to-end jet engine supply chain and producing the highest purity alloys. This unique value proposition positions us to grow our core, and titanium is a great example of how we're doing that, and I'm going to share a little bit about that. There -- historic demand today from our customers, they're needing more titanium and they're coming to us. Their supply chain and security and challenges and disruptions and they're looking for a very stable, consistent source that they can rely on. Through our operational efficiencies and restarting our idled assets, we were able to increase our capacity by 45% over 2022. By 2025, we'll be increasing our titanium capacity by 80% when we bring on our second electron beam furnace in Richland, Washington. This is a really -- this is a story of the 2 Cs, both capability and capacity. Currently, Richland produce standard quality material that goes into the airframe. With the second EB furnace that we're going to bring on, we'll be able to make premium quality product that's needed for jet engine production. And really, what that allows and gives us is flexibility and nimbleness as the markets continue to develop and evolve that we can make both of those products to meet the growing demand overall -- over the whole market. Today, I want to introduce our operating model. This is the model that we're using to translate strategy into day-to-day execution. At the foundation of it is our 80-20 tool, which really helps us define where are our strengths, what are the things that are unique or have competitive advantage that our customers are willing to pay us for and take those unique capabilities and focus all of our investment in resources and capital to grow. This is really based on the Pareto Principle, 80-20. 80% of the value comes from 20% of the inputs. And where we've been focused the last few years is really focusing on building those things that we do uniquely very well and not trying to be all things to all people. One area that you've already seen this model at work, Bob mentioned, we talked about it a couple of years ago is around the standard SRP. Yes, we took that business and we transformed Specialty Rolled Products from a standard stainless steel business to a specialty nickel and titanium business. And why did we pick nickel and titanium? Really because that is where our strengths are, that's where our competitive advantage was, that's where our sweet spot is. There's high demand in those markets with high barriers to entry. It's difficult to qualify, it's difficult to scale. And we were able to leverage our outstanding rolling and melting capabilities in this space. And so how did it turn out? Well, we did what we said we're going to do. Last quarter, we were at 35% Aerospace & Defense business in that portfolio. We took a transactional distribution-based business, and moved it to an OEM long-term agreement type business. And today, 1/3 of that business is under long-term contracts. We were able to reinvest in development, and today, our sales from new products are about 20% versus 3% historically. And we were able to remove cost and inventory, which took out 17 days of WIP and ultimately, the EBITDA of this business is 3x what it was before the pandemic. This has provided a very strong foundation for this business, and now we're taking that to the next level, where we're looking at even more specialty products like zirconium sheet used in the chemical industry. A second example that's ongoing right now. You heard Bob talk a little bit about hafnium. Another place that we're looking at what is our sweet spot, what is our core, is around hafnium. In this business, we are focused on zirconium oxide. It was a mature business. It's an important application. We're well positioned, but it was really more of an annuity for us. As we started -- as part of that process of making zirconium, the separations process creates hafnium, that was a byproduct. And as we started to look at those markets and look at our unique ability to produce that product at scale at very, very high levels of purity, we realize the importance to the electronics market, as Bob mentioned. But that's not all. That alloy hafnium goes into other -- as you add those to other alloys provides growth in markets like commercial space and hypersonics. A $400 billion market that's growing. So alloy that goes into with niobium is C-103, and it's used on the propulsion nozzles of the second stage of the best engines in the world. I have a video I'm going to show, so you can see a little bit of our product here at action. Roll the video, please. [Presentation]

So what you saw there glowing is C-103. That is our product. It's running -- that's running at about with 2,400 degrees. Obviously, it's out in space as we're exiting the atmosphere. And that's where you can see the true power of that alloy where it's holding its shape, it's holding its strength and form. It burns for about 8 minutes, but that's an important 8 minutes that gets it out of the atmosphere. And we are the only provider -- integrated provider of both niobium and hafnium in the world. We're investing to grow in this market. By 2025, we'll be at 50%. In 2027, we will double output of this, and this will be a needle mover for us, both on the top line and the bottom line. It positions us well for growth into -- well into the next decade. Another area that we're using our operating model is right at the tip of the spear, at the top of that pyramid is really using our ATI production system and our lean tool kit to execute, to improve both our yield and our efficiencies. We're improving our productivity and yields to generate higher revenue and we're streamlining our value chain to reduce lead time and cost to expand margins. This is one example of, what you're seeing here on the graph is a graph that we have at each of the process steps throughout our operation. We focused a lot, and I know we've talked with you about how we focus in the first half of the year on increasing our melt capacity. So this is a graph of one of the process steps. And you can see as the melt capacity is starting to increase, and we're bringing that incremental melt on, it's coming to the next step in the process. And this is one of call it, 8 to 10 process steps of creating the billet. As you can see, as that melt starts to come through, it's a theory of constraint. Some of you might be familiar with that. You solve one constraint and then the bottleneck moves downstream. And so you can see -- as that's growing and going over the target, the team pulled these lean tools, and we focused on how do we relieve that bottleneck to create more capacity. And so by looking at this, really the focus became around how do we change our turnaround time? When that equipment comes down after 1 material is done melting, how do you get it back up and running quicker for the next one. And so think like a pit crew, if any of you guys watch race car driving, a pit crew that comes in as this equipment comes down, where we created standard work, we put together parts kits, we worked on the flow of moving the actions that you could do before that equipment comes down. And then as the equipment comes down, those carts rolling in, those people coming on and getting that back up and running as fast as possible. We were able to improve our turnaround time by 60% here. And you can see what that's done at relieving that bottleneck and moving -- allowing that flow of material and additional capacity with very little capital, but more focused on how we change our work structure and our work strategy, we were able to relieve that bottleneck and increase the capacity of our operation. The team did a great job at improving melt throughout the operation and reducing this downtime. In addition to the 60% reduction in the turnaround time, we were able to take out from 5 days of WIP down to 2. And you can see that's well below what our target is within the operation. The value of the ATI production system is bringing together the team to reduce inventory and systemically bringing down working capital. And so that's how we're focused on working on -- bringing the working capital down to generate cash is systemically changing how we run our process and the standard procedures that we do. We're already making progress on this goal, and we're going to continue to make progress, and I'm confident that we'll meet our cash generation targets. A second example, as we continue to increase our melt is in our forging facilities, we did some work. I think we talked about it around upgrading some of our control systems to generate more ISO forgings through the operation. Now we've pivoted and this second half of the year, we've been looking at downstream processing, machining and ultrasonic testing. So in machining, we've been focusing and making some small investments, adding some headcount and increased machine utilization, and over the last 7 weeks, we've been able to increase our machining output by 15%. On the ultrasonic inspection, there's been a lot of talk about the increased needs for inspection and demands to meet quality levels. By focusing in this area, and again, changing some of the work processes, changing how we staff this, we were able to increase our ultrasonic inspection by 25%, allowing us to meet the higher expectation and requirements around inspection for these jet engine parts. There are many examples of this across the business where we're doing this systemically at addressing and going after bottlenecks and relieving those bottlenecks. The last one I want to just talk about, I'm very excited to share is some of the investments that we're making they're going to position us for the future and strategic bets that we are making today to generate those. We're investing in capabilities that are foundational to accelerate that growth. We're investing in greenfields. We're investing in brownfields. We're investing in new capabilities and innovation. One area that we're investing is in process technologies like additive manufacturing. We've been in additive since 2015 for the aerospace industry. And in August, we announced a brand-new facility down in Florida, near the Space Coast right in the middle of the Defense Primes. This facility has been designed to be a secure facility and will allow us of opportunities in naval, space, aerospace and hypersonics. It's a huge leap forward in our capability for additive manufacturing. It will allow us to be -- to print the tallest parts in the industry and is really focused on large format printing. In addition, in this facility, we will have both the printing capability as well as the downstream processing. So it'll have heat treating, machining and testing, all within one facility, which will allow us to do rapid prototyping as well as scaling up the operation for production printing. Our customers are excited. They're already making commitments. We anticipate this facility being online by 2024. Titan 23 is a great example because it allows me to show a little bit about how we're leveraging the strengths across our business. This alloy development will -- we'll be able to utilize this new additive facility that I just mentioned to accelerate our development of new alloys for additive printing. Stronger, lighter, temp resistant, those are the type of characteristics that we are investing to develop. Titan 23 is a great example. This was actually an alloy that was developed for landing gear as well as structural forgings, but it's perfect for high-temperature titanium parts. It's 20% stronger, and it has incredible formability. But maybe most importantly is it has reduced thermal distortion, which allows you to print both thick and thin parts on one print. And that -- this is inherent in the additive process as you're printing. You've got the plasmas at very high temperatures. Ti64 is very, very difficult, if not impossible, to use an additive printing as it's designed today. To be honest, the bottom line is Ti64 has actually probably been around longer than most of us have been alive here in this room. And so as you think about these new advanced technologies, process technologies that are coming, this material is well suited to allow you to make titanium parts through additive processing. It allows us to print the unbuildable and solve the unsolvable. The last example I'm going to share that really brings us back to 80/20 as I think about what is our sweet spot, where is our strengths. Sometimes, as we do this analysis, it leads us to hard conversations with our customers. Nitinol is one of those. As we looked at it, we had determined this really wasn't core to our product portfolio. Nitinol as you can see here, is used for heart stents. It's used for joint replacements. It's a really unique material that is super elastic, but it also has a memory -- shape memory to it. So when you form it into a ring, it wants -- if you compress it, it wants to pop back to that shape. And if you think about stents, one, how they're inserted, right? They come in, they compress them, they bring them in, it will pop open automatically. And then as your heart pumps through your arteries, it needs to be able to flex, but come back to its original shape. So a really unique application that this material was best suited for. So as we are talking to our customer, we started to understand how important this material was, how it was being used, what the application was. But maybe even more importantly, they began to understand how important we were and the capability of being able to produce this at the very, very high quality levels that they needed for human use. They recognized and we recognize this is a premium product and they were happy to pay a premium price for that. And in fact, this customer values our know-how in this area so highly that we are in the process of implementing a customer-funded capacity expansion so that we can continue to fund their growth and support them as they are growing in this marketplace. It's a powerful reminder for us that the materials we produce are unparalleled. Yielding the returns we deserve. So today, I've shared a couple of things I'm excited about the future -- in the future of ATI. We're focused on growing our core, where our strength is and where we are valued and can command price. We're working on sharpening our operational advantage, making operational efficiency and yield improvements across the full value chain and leveraging that across the enterprise. We're positioning ATI for the future by directing investment into innovation, into capacity, into capability where there are known needs and demands. We are confident in our ability to grow and deliver $1 billion additional revenue and deliver -- and resulting in $1 billion of EBITDA. We have the team to win. Now Don, I'm going to let Don come up here and share the details around the financials.

Thanks, Kim. Can everybody hear me? It's nice to see so many familiar faces. So I'm going to present our longer-term outlook. I think Kim and Bob did a great job helping understand more about the value opportunities in this business and they're profound. You're going to see some of that reflected in the targets that I'm going to share. So those targets and it's the primary reason why we're here today, I believe, is to talk about our 2027 outlook. So we're going to discuss 2027 revenue, EBITDA and margin targets. We're also not just going to talk about the consolidated. We're going to talk about some of our segment performance expectations. And then after we're done with that, we're going to step over. We're going to talk a bit about cash generation and how to think about cash generation, hopefully answer some questions that you already have around how are you guys going to get better at this cash generation? And how can we get comfortable with that? And then finally, something very, very important to us, and I know it's important to you is capital deployment. You can generate it, but it's also critical what you do with it. So that's what we're going to spend time talking about today. I'm not going to try to answer every question that I think you guys are going to have are on the financials. We know that we're going to have time during Q&A that we can do that. But I will try to lay the groundwork to make it a bit easier to connect some of the dots and for you to be able to get more comfortable with, why we're, #1, excited about the business; #2, we see an amazing financial trajectory and feel very comfortable with the numbers you're going to see. So with that, let's start with, I can master the clicker. Let's start with revenue. So we're going to end 2023 with revenue between $4.1 billion and $4.2 billion. It shouldn't be a surprise. It's consistent with the trends that you've seen during the year and just announced Q3, $4.1 billion to $4.2 billion. 2025, our targets that we've shared with you guys are relatively consistent with this, the target you see on the screen. We expect 2025 revenue to be between $4.5 billion and $4.6 billion. Let's dive into this a little bit. When we originally shared our 2025 revenue targets, it was February of 2022. It might seem like a lifetime ago, but no it was February 2022. At that point, we expected revenue would grow at a compound annual growth rate of between 9% and 11% from our base period of 2021 through 2025. Of course, things changed after that. The midpoint of that 9% to 11%, keep in mind, write it on a piece of paper, $4.1 billion, that was a target, $4.1 billion in 2025. Well, after we gave our announcement, of course, demand ramped. And it didn't just ramp, it ramped in areas we wanted it to ramp. Titanium, for example, where we pick up very, very healthy margins, but it hit nickel, and we started -- seeing other tailwinds in the business. So we reacted the way you would expect, hey, we had some idle facilities. Let's go ahead and fire them up. They've got -- they're going to deliver great ROI, low-risk investment, so let's get them fired up. And so we added capacity. As a result of those changes, we upped our February 2022 target a few times. And let me give you perspective. So again, we started with a midpoint of $4.1 billion. By the time we got to the summer of 2022, we saw the ramping of the demand. We upped the target, hey guys, we're seeing good tailwinds, we want to give you a perspective. We think we're going to be at the top of the range. Then we signed up new sales commitments, $1.2 billion in sales commitments, we upped it again. We refired our facility in Oregon. We upped it again. And then most recently, we shared in our Q3 earnings call that we're adding a fourth VAR to specialty VAR. It's a bit different than the first 3 that we had built into our plan. But again, very low risk within our capital spending program, not a material amount of cost to restart it, another $50 million of revenue, we upped it again. So now we're sitting not at $4.1 billion, we're sitting at $4.5 billion to $4.6 billion. And instead of -- the expected 9% to 11% CAGR from '21 to '25, we're now -- we have blew right past the top end of our original expectation. Now we're expecting a CAGR over that time period closer to 13%. I don't like missing targets, but if I'm going to choose a target to miss, I'll choose to miss to the upside, and these are the best circumstances you can think of, right? Good fundamental demand in the business, good decisions around capital deployment to meet it, very profitable sales. Yes, we'll start conservative and we will up those kinds of targets any day. So that gives you a perspective on how to think about 2025. We don't expect the growth to stop. I think this is an important part of today's conversation because I've met with many of you numerous times, and sometimes I'll get a comment around where it seems like you guys are going to top out in 2025, right? Build rates are going to flatten out. At that point, you've pretty much hit your Apex. And I've shared with you that's not even close to true or right. Well, hopefully, as a result of hearing what Bob and Kim shared and not just what's happening in aero, but also these aero-like industries are a real contributors to sustained growth. And by the way, we don't expect growth to stop after 2027. So we'll get into that. So we expect our revenue in 2027 to be between $5.2 billion and $5.4 billion, okay? So that's as much as a 20% increase in revenue between 2025 and 2027. That's certainly not flattening out. So where is that growth coming from? All the drivers that we've already talked about are key end markets, we've got great end markets. Aerospace & Defense is ramping. And then we've got these wonderful aero-like that are contributing, things like hafnium and niobium, for example, that are great products to offer and in high demand. We've also picked up share, picked up share in key titanium and nickel, for example, with great customers. We've extended work with existing customers, and we've picked up new ones. So those are contributors. We added capacity. That's that Oregon melt facility, but we're adding more capacity and this isn't a surprise. We've talked about this as part of our capital plan. And so that's a contributor to this sustained growth. And then you can't forget about price. We don't really talk a lot about price because there's positives and negatives talking about it. We'd rather not experience the negative when we meet with our customers after bragging a lot about price. But I will tell you this, when you hear some of our peers out there saying, hey, we got this price, we got that price. I haven't heard anybody's statement around price and capture that says, they're exceeding our capture rate, okay? So I'll give you some perspective. So take a step back, think about this, all end market share, capacity, price, we've got multiple levers that are driving growth, okay? Now as you take a step back, also just walk away with the idea that we believe that these 2027 targets of $5.2 million to $5.4 million are conservative, okay? And I know you're -- we're probably not supposed to make a statement like that when we explained, hey, we're going from $4 billion to $5.2 billion in a handful of years or $5.4 billion, and we expect it to keep going. And I think these are actually conservative numbers, but that's how we sincerely feel about it. You probably have a sense, why? Not only we have multiple levers, but you heard Bob talk about the conservative assumptions, for example, you have around build rates, right? We're not going to -- we don't feel like we're getting over our skis in terms of those kinds of expectations. So that's how to think about -- how we're thinking about revenue. So now let's think about what kind of profits are these revenues going to generate? So let's start with 2023 for perspective. Just recently, we guided our full-year earnings per share and -- for 2023. And what we said is at the midpoint of our range, we expect to post $2.25 on earnings per share, again, at the midpoint of our range. You guys -- everybody in the room has a model, I know you've already done the math. And you know that $2.25 in our business means almost $600 million of EBITDA, right? So we expect to do about $600 million of EBITDA in full year 2023. Now you go to 2025. For 2025, we've been pretty consistent in the EBITDA margin range that we've talked about. We expect EBITDA range of 18% to 20% for 2025, okay? So you do the math on that, what it indicates is an EBITDA range of between $800 million and $900 million for 2025. What are we thinking for 2027? What we're thinking is and what we're experiencing for very valid reasons, these numbers are up here, our margins are continuing to expand. And 18% to 20% in 2025, and our estimates is going to grow to 19% to 21% by 2027. So what's driving the margin? The revenue growth, of course, that's revenue or the EBITDA growth, of course, that's revenue. What's driving those margin expansions because that's really important, isn't it? Well, think about this, our mix is getting richer and richer and richer. Think about our end markets, we're seeing growth in our jet engine, light-body and narrow-body jet engine sales, great margins for us in that business, it's not just that defense. Our experience in margins around defense, they are absolutely accretive. And that goes to the fact that our defense products are in a very high demand, and they're very value-added. They are not commodity products. okay? So that's accretive. And then, of course, we have our hafnium and niobium type products that are ramping and creating significant value and expanding margins. That's not all. Again, price. Price is something that we've been successful in capturing under LTAs. And this is not blue sky. This is stuff that we're doing, we've done and we're doing, and we expect to continue to do it. So we're getting price on LTAs. We're also seeing price opportunities, especially outside of our industrial offerings around transactional business. So we expect that's going to be a big contributor. So -- but one thing I will tell you, as you're thinking about how do they bridge this growth from '21 or '23 to '25 and '25 to '27 how much are they really depending upon price, right? Because that could be an indicator of risk. And I will tell you the -- what we've built in as far as price outside of what we already got in our LTAs is very limited. So one of the other reasons why I believe our forecast numbers for '25 and '27, especially for '27 are on the conservative side, okay? So you can see those drivers as part of the reason why we're going 18% to 20% and then from -- and then to 19% to 2021. It's not stopping. It's not -- that's not all, a better way to say it. When all this is happening, and you're seeing the increase in the volumes in our business, there are some really wonderful things that happen in the plant. You have better absorption. So you get better efficiency off of the equipment. So that's a benefit. And it's a huge benefit that helps to offset the inflation that we see in our business. We shared with all of you 2022 is a hyperinflation kind of -- I know not quite hyper. But you know what I mean, high inflation. We were in the black. We offset all of it. 2023 so far, inflation has eased some, but it's still there. We've offset all of it. We're offsetting it because we're picking up efficiencies, we're getting better absorption, all those kinds of things, benefits the overall margins. So -- and then the last thing I would mention is when you think about the new capacity we're putting in place like in Richland, Washington, brand-new equipment, equipment that is -- it's the right tool for the right job. It absolutely brings accretive margins with it. So a lot of very positive supportive drivers for why our margins are going where they are, all right? Now both of our segments, so we're going to talk about segments for a minute. Both of our segments are driving the top line and the bottom line growth. And there's a couple of key things to take away from this. So both of our segments are expected in 2027 to generate more than $2.6 billion in revenue. Do the math on that, that's at the low end of our '27 range, okay? Being a little bit cheeky, but I'm telling you that both of these segments are going to do well. They're not just growing the top line, but what they're doing is they're also expanding their margins. So you look at the margin profile for HPMC through 2025, and it says, hey, we're going to be in the low 20% to the mid-20%? You get to 2027 for all the reasons I've talked about, we expect to consistently post 25% margins, I'll add or better. I know Kim probably doesn't want me to say that, but I'm going to add, or better, okay, from -- in the '27 timeframe. All right. What's happening with AA&S? AA&S, we're going from kind of mid-teens to upper teens consistently posting EBITDA margins in the upper teens. Just -- I know you guys have these numbers memorized go back to 2019 for AA&S, the margins. EBITDA margins for AA&S were in like the 8% range, okay? We've already got them heading toward the mid-teens. So delivering on this upper teens is not as much of a stretch as you might think. So those are really good outcomes. So how are both of the segments doing it? There's unique things that they're doing, but there's also very common things because this 1 ATI is a real thing. So 1 ATI means that all of our business units were attacking their efficiency, their inventory intensity and their materials flow. They're attacking their cost structures in a consistent way. And so they're unlocking a lot of the same types of benefits in every one of the business units. Then you take a step back and you realize, well, there's a lot of overlap or commonality around end markets. We're heading towards 65% A&D margin business. You only get there because you're doing A&D on both sides of your business, right? So there's commonality there. There was some difference also. There's a lot more -- there is jet engine on the HPMC side, not so much on the AA&S side. But the strong defense that's over on the AA&S side is differentiated from the defense that's being done over at HPMC. But there's commonality, which is a really important thing to keep in mind. The other part of 1 ATI that kind of comes out as you think about this segment performance is how the segments interact and really create synergy for each other. So before I leave this, I want to give you a sense of this, right? So think about HPMC and the world-class capabilities that it has around titanium melt, okay? It produces some of the most extraordinary titanium and nickel products in the world, just amazing, miraculous things. Well, to get a good portion of their nickel from AA&S, okay? And AA&S is a world-class smelter of nickel. Well, that titanium that HPMC melts. Some of that goes right over to AA&S for airframe. We also have chemical type processing within AA&S to create products like hafnium and niobium-based products. Well, hafnium goes across, it's used within AA&S, but it's also sold over to HPMC for engine applications. So a lot of interaction that's happening. I think it's a fundamental change in how we run our business. It's something that's creating and adding value every day. And I think you're going to see more and more of the evidence of the power of this 1 ATI as time unfolds. Now I gave you 2023, and I gave you 2025, and I know you guys have drawn a straight line between '23 and '25 and saying, I know where the 2024 numbers are going to come up. And while I appreciate the math and I appreciate the logic probably makes sense for us to talk a little bit about 2024. And I'll give you some insight. So we still have to close the books, no surprise there. We'll still give our formal guidance on 2024 as part of our Q4 meeting in February. But -- just to give you guys a sense as to what we're seeing and what we're thinking, let's talk about it. So first of all, from a revenue and demand standpoint, Aerospace & Defense, it's going to continue to ramp upward, up and to the right, okay? So that's pretty solid. We restarted the Oregon melt facility and it was ramping in 2023. We just announced that we added the fourth VAR said, guys expect that's going to really hit the income statement in the second half of 2024. So what you're going to see around that facility is a continual ramp around that melt activity. And sometimes it takes about 6 months between the melt of the material and when the product goes out the door, okay? So you can imagine the lag that you're seeing and you can kind of model it that way. And we I think we've done a pretty fair job in terms of giving you a sense of the revenue generation of that restart, all in with the fourth VAR, what we've indicated is, guys, it's probably helping to generate about $150 million, $160 million of revenue and incremental margins say, in the 30-plus range, probably closer to 35%, okay? So that's what we're thinking in terms of A&D and titanium. In terms of our industrials really in Q2 and in Q3 of this year, we saw industrial demand really pull back in effect, not just volume, but it also affected price. Those headwinds, they're going to be with us through Q4, and we actually expect they're going to be with us probably for the first half of next year. We'd love for that not to be true in the recovery sooner, but that's what the indications are. So as you think about it and should it be a straight line from where we end this year to next year, that would definitely be something what I think about for the first half as you model expectations, okay? So great things happening, but there's this realism around that industrial for the first half. Sometimes you get questions around the Asian Precision Rolled Strip business. It's been kind of in the trough because of economic conditions in China. We are waiting for that recovery to happen. It's not a huge part of our business, but just to help you refine your expectations, the idea is we could -- we right now expect modest recovery in that joint venture in, again, the second half of the year. But we don't see it coming back in a screaming way. EBITDA. Let's focus actually on EBITDA margin. For EBITDA margin, the way to think about it is we've been making good progress in our EBITDA margins. That progress will continue as we're marching toward our 18% to 20% range in 2025. And one thing to remember is, and I know you guys are smart, you understand this, the trajectory around margins does not unfold in a linear pattern. From quarter-to-quarter, half to half, you can see inflections, you can see different movement, plus or minus, but I'd encourage you to look at the -- watch the trajectory, watch the trajectory, we'll be marching toward our targets. And one key example of an inflection is, again, think about the second half of the year and those -- that melt facility that's going to continue to build. And then we get the fourth VAR that really hits us in the second half of the year, which should cause an increase in the margins, which will be beneficial, okay? As you're thinking about modeling 2024, one of the key areas is income taxes. And I know some of you have published on this already, Kim put out a good report on this. And that's recognizing that because of our really strong profitability, we are -- under the accounting rule is going to be required to provision taxes at a more normalized rate in 2025. I don't like EPS effect, but I like the underlying cause. Profitability is the reason to have to do something. So -- but the way to think about it is when you model it, you want to model it, assuming a 23% effective rate. It will be a little bit more than that, but just use 23% for now. But from a cash tax standpoint, it's going to be a lot lower. We're still burning through NOLs, and so we've got significant tax shields for U.S., and that will protect us through 2024, okay? Spoiler alert, when you get to 2025, our cash and book taxes are going to be more aligned, okay? So we'll be kind of through most of our NOLs, right? But that's the way to think about taxes. So that will help you shape the line for between '23 and '25 a little bit more accurately. All right. So let's get back to our long-term outlook. So cash -- consistent cash conversion, it's critical to value creation. We get it. And it's one of the reasons why every day, and that is not an exaggeration. Every day, our team not just the leadership team, our team as a company-wide team focuses on what drives cash generation. So let's talk a little bit about this. So first of all, we shared in February 2022 that we expected our cash conversion and that's free cash flow as a ratio of net income, we expected it to be in the 90% range or better in 2025 and that target is still the right target for 2025. We won't be all the way there in 2024, but 2025, we feel very good about our ability to deliver on that. So a really fair question is, okay, Don, how the heck are you going to get from like last year, we were in the 50s of cash conversion this year because of the pop in our managed working capital, we're even lower than that. What's the magic to get you to 90? It's not that magical. Three things I'd point to. One is that it starts with profitability. So think about the denominator. Think about the numbers I just shared around our trajectory. And you're already seeing it appearing in our financials. The profitability of the business is ramping. As you do the math around that ratio, it does help, right? So -- and as we -- as you do the math, and I know not everybody's model, what I shared, the net income generation off of $1.1 billion, so I'm using the midpoint, $1.1 billion EBITDA that -- I mean, that drops through -- and by my math, gives you about -- something with a 6 handle from a net income standpoint. And so that right there is an element. Profitability is not enough. You also have to deliver efficient managed working capital. So what are we doing? We're going to talk more about this in a second. But we've got this transitory increase in our working capital. But we fully expect that we'll get back to our longer-term targets and then work to improve on those, which is at 30%, so you rightsize that managed working capital, then it's a long ways toward improving your cash conversion. Another critical part, and again, we're going to talk about it, is aligning your capital spend to your net income and your depreciation expense. So they're not out of whack. You do those two things, your math corrects in a really wicked fast way, okay? So -- but let's talk more about the elements of this, and I'll give you a really -- a better idea. So let's talk next about managed working capital, cash generation, CapEx rather. And then I also want to talk about deployable cash. Okay. So managed working capital. I've said we had transitory increase like three times already. So we had a transitory increase. That means that we had -- not a permanent, but a temporary increase in our managed working capital levels, and they went from 30%, which is where we were at the end of 2022 to 40%. Well, what drove that? Generally, really good things, actually. Things like getting inventory in position as where we're talking to and working with our customers and trying to make sure that we are doing what we can from a supply chain standpoint to get the inventory in place to meet their needs, okay? So that's part of it. And I'll tell you that the overall supply chain is not a well-oiled machine. And so the precision around what's needed, where it's needed, those kinds of things is being developed and becoming better. But that's one of the reasons why our inventory increased. Another thing is Kim talked about all the great things you're doing operationally. Those are creating production gains. You usually don't increase those production gains at the end of your production system, you usually start kind of towards upstream. And so that's causing some production that then goes downstream through finishing, et cetera, and you can hit bottlenecks and you deal with those bottlenecks. So that's another part of it. So we do know how to get the inventory back down to the 30% and below 30% level. And Kim, I don't want to repeat everything that she was saying about this. But I think in terms of material flows, really getting efficient in managing this ramp in our business, debottlenecking. And our team I think is doing some pretty extraordinary things, don't necessarily get to see them in the headline number yet, but it is happening and it's coming. So we know how to get back to that 30%. But where are we going to -- how should you guys model managed working capital going forward? I think I shared in our Q3 earnings call, expect that we're going to end 2023 with managed working capital in the low 30s. Specifically, I said in the 31% to 32% range. So end of 2023. We expect to be down to our 30% target, 30% of sales target by the end of 2024. And then we expect that we'll continue to progress and move that down. Keep this in mind, for every 1% improvement in managed working capital's percent of revenue, it represents about a $40 million to $50 million improvement in our cash position. That's just math. And so we are absolutely incented to continue to improve this and make sure that we're delivering an efficient working capital system. So one of the great parts of the ATI story is what's happening with our deployable cash. And I want to call this out. So with deployable cash and that has everything to do with the cash that you generate and what choices you have to make use of it. We're -- things are lining up for us, some very interesting things. So first of all, our cash generation is ramping. You guys can do the math in your head, seeing the financial trajectory I just shared and with something I'm going to share with you in a minute around our CapEx spend, we're going to generate a lot of cash. It's going to build. It will be better in 2024, better in 2025 and '26 and '27 as this -- the business marches towards these targets. And so that's great. But I think the flexibility that we're building into our deployable cash system is really set to accelerate. So here's one example. We talked a lot about our pension actions in 2023. Those pension actions, there was an annuitization and we transferred that obligation to a third party. The contributions that we've been making to the pension plan historically are not small. They're behind us now, but they're not small. We contributed between 2020 and 2022 a 3-year period, nearly $0.25 billion to our defined benefit pension plan because of the actions we've taken, we're not going to have those contributions going forward. That means capital we can put to work to create value for you. And that's pretty important to us. So that's one part of it. Another part of it is the cash pie is growing. And I'll let you guys do the math on your models, you'll see what the ramp in our cash generation, free cash flow should look like. And so that's going to be another positive indicator about this idea around growing deployable cash. And you can do the back of the envelope right now. Think about a business that's going to generate well more than $1 billion in EBITDA, efficient managed working capital system, reasonable CapEx, and I'll define that in a second. Plus, we're going to continue to attack our outstanding debt, which is going to reduce our interest costs and on and on and on. And you see this thing has got a really powerful cash generation engine that exists. It's one of the reasons why I truly believe that the best days of value creation for ATI are ahead of us. Now generating cash is really critical, but what you do with this is pretty critical too, right? So let's talk about capital deployment. We talked in our business about a balanced capital deployment strategy. We want to consistently invest for growth, while also delevering, derisking the balance sheet when it comes to debt and pension obligations. It's not just that. We want to return capital to shareholders. So another leg of our capital deployment strategy is returning capital to shareholders deliberately and consistently and we're in a fortunate position where we can do all of that. So let's talk about what each of those elements look like. So let's talk about growth first. From a growth standpoint, again, this is just the first leg of our capital deployment strategy. We are in an enviable position to have a robust list of organic investment opportunities. The high priority and high-profile opportunities or things like our titanium melt that we have added, and we are adding. The are adding is that -- is the Richland facility -- Richland, Washington facility that Kim and Bob have spoken about. But that's not the only thing that we're investing for. We're also investing for very advanced forging capabilities, machining capabilities, the secure facility that Kim shared around additive manufacturing is an important investment for us. It's not monolithic, but the opportunities that it opens for us are really profound. Well, all those things are included in our capital spending plan, what's the plan, Don? Well, there you go, $200 million a year between now and 2027, $200 million a year. I will also tell you, I don't currently expect a lot of variability in that $200 million from year to year. It's not going to be $300 million in 1 year, $100 million the next year. We're not going to drag it around like that. So think model, $200 million a year is probably the right way to do it. So -- now the other thing to keep in mind, just for your information, about $80 million of that is maintenance related. $120 million is growth related. So there's a balance there, but what I love about this is it's consistent investment for growth. Now the discipline that you saw in our business around capital spending that existed throughout COVID and after COVID is going to continue. Our minimum returns for growth CapEx are 30%, minimum. And most of our projects return much higher than that. So again, we're in an enviable spot because we can focus on organic growth. So what do we think about M&A? You're not going to see a lot of change here. We've looked at a number of transactions. The reality is we haven't seen a combination of need to have capabilities at prices that present a compelling business case. So guess what? We didn't invest. It's not that they weren't good businesses for someone else. They just weren't good businesses for us. For us, we're going to continue to keep our eye open for great capabilities that we think are really beneficial to our business, and we'll consider those opportunities. But I would also say with the robust list of organic opportunities we have I really feel like that organic list, that organic investment is going to provide good growth for the business, and it's also going to provide great returns. So that's our bias. Now let's talk about delevering. From a delevering standpoint again, we're talking pension and we're talking bank debt, we're quite -- we make this a high priority. So let's talk about pension, first. We've been on a pension glide path since 2015, and we took a huge step forward on that glide path in October. We executed an annuitization. We transferred 85% of our pension obligations to a qualified third party. That represented about $1.4 billion in gross pension expense, it's gone. One of the benefits of that is it lowers our pension expense about $45 million from where it was on a run rate basis before the annuitization. So a really rich, good outcome with these actions. Now we retained -- like I said, we sent 85%. We got about 15% leftover. So about $250 million. And the key takeaway on the remainder is, it is fully funded. What that allows us to do is it allows us to hedge our positions so we reduce risk, and we don't have to take outsized risks in terms of how we invest the portfolio, to generate enough earnings to cover service costs, interest and things like that. So we're in a good spot from a pension standpoint, a great spot. We don't expect to make any substantial contributions to define benefit plan, we don't. I don't know how else to say it. So debt, we're being very deliberate in derisking our balance sheet. From a debt standpoint, we're, again, in an enviable spot because of our ramping profitability because of our ramping cash generation, our debt metrics will drop, right? Our net debt, for example, is going to, in a very quick fashion drop to our target range. Our target range for net debt to adjusted EBITDA, just to be clear, between 1x and 2x, right? It's -- there's no magic in this number, except below 1x, it feels like I have a pretty inefficient capital structure so you don't make it 0, but above 2, it's probably more expensive than it needs to be, especially with our cash generation. I call that relative debt because it's a ratio. It's not just about relative debt. Real debt costs you interest every year. Our weighted average cost of interest in our portfolio is 5.7%. It's not outrageous. But we have pieces in there that are more expensive. We've got to convert, for example, that's got an interest rate at 3.5%, but you guys know how converts work, and I'm going to talk about that in a second. So we're going to not just grow the business and improve our ratios. We really want to attack our gross debt. We've created a lot of flexibility to make choices around that in terms of repayment options, things like that. And again, the walk away from this conversation is we are in a cash position where we can choose to reduce our gross debt and derisk our balance sheet, while at the same time, return capital to shareholders and grow. So let's go to the last leg. And the last leg is returning capital to shareholders. Since 2020, early 2020, we have repurchased $225 million in shares. We had a 2023 authorization for $75 million. We fully spent that money in November, bought the last $30 million. Today, I'm announcing a new program. We're going to keep this cadence going. The board has been very supportive of returning capital. So the next piece, another $150 million. We're going to execute that in 2024, okay? So -- but the way to think about the return to capital via share repurchases, it accomplishes 2 things: one, returns capital, easy; two, it helps to offset the dilutive effect of our convertible notes. Those convertible notes mature in 2025, they are deep in the money, and they will convert, converting to roughly 18.8 million shares, okay? Why is that important? Well, it affects our valuations and the stock price, those things. Our objective is to offset that dilution. We've already offset almost $2 million of the $18.8 million with the $150 million approved today, depending on the share price that you assume we'll be able to take out another 3-plus million shares. So we're marching in that direction, right? So that's great. And of course, every share we purchase today is effectively a partial dilution on that pension, that potential convert. The other thing to remember is I truly believe that our stock is undervalued. And so any share I buy today is going to be at a bargain price relative to where it's going to be. And you guys can do the math and you probably already have on the trajectory we're on, with the delevering that's happening, the cash generation, et cetera, et cetera, the potential that exists in our stock. So that's how to really think about our objectives around share repurchases. A fair question we get asked periodically is, would you guys consider a dividend? And the answer is Yes. The short answer is yes. But for all the reasons that I've shared about the share repurchases, right now, our preferred methodology for returning capital is share repurchases. That's what you're seeing. And -- but you guys run the math on the cash that's in the business and will be in the business, how there's going to be a building of cash and so you could foresee a dividend in the future, just not promising anything right now. All right? So with that, I'm over time. I just want to thank you for the opportunity to share the ATI story. We are highly confident in our growth, our margin expansion, our cash generation, trajectory and feel strongly that we have the right capital deployment strategy to drive our TSR higher and higher for your benefit. So with that, I will turn the stage back over to Bob.

All right. Thanks, Don. So always great to follow a passionate and energetic CFO who has totally immersed himself in the facts and figures of the business. So I've been in a few of these. You have been to a lot of these. I always watch as the heads go down. We make a comment, the heads gone down, the typing starts, the notes get written down and do that with our operating team, too, when we go around to the various plants. And -- so it's always good. I always make my notes. What are we saying to people, what are they hearing? What are they putting on their pads. And hopefully, this is what's on your takeaways from today. Number one, Don's comment the best days for value creation at ATI are ahead of us. We really believe that. We've built a foundation to get there. Hopefully, that's a key takeaway because we're positioned in some phenomenal markets. Second is, I would say the strategy continues, right? We're not changing our strategy. We continue to grow in Aerospace & Defense. We found some markets very similar to that, that can leverage that and grow. We're not in the truck wheels to be honest. We're into things like medical, energy, specialty things that nobody else can do, very much a differentiated world. So strategy is delivering, A&D-focused. The second is, we're in the early stages of some phenomenal growth cycles, things that are going to extend through the balance of the decade. It's not going to end -- the world is not going to end on 2027. We see growth continuing beyond that. And that's part of the reason we wanted to share our view of 2027 today, pretty powerful stuff. And the third thing I hope you take away from us is we are raising our expectations for this business. It's one thing to have shareholder pressure, analyst pressure, but we believe in the business. And so our expectations for ATI are much higher today than they were in 2022. So hopefully, that carries through to you. You saw it in 2025's numbers. You see it in 2027. We've been conservative in some of the widebody build rates, but to hit $5 billion in top line, $1 billion in EBITDA. I was challenged by my team not to say this, but there's really an organic path to probably closer to $6 billion, right? And when you're at 5.5%, yes, you can actually feel it and see it. So our notepad, this is what's on the ATI notepad for our 6,000 employees as they drive for the future and significant increases ahead. The last piece that's not on the chart, and I stand 2 minutes away from a great break is the leadership team. So what would I take away about this leadership team. We may not be the flashiest, we might not have the best accents in the world, but true to form, it really is about A&D focus, totally invested in A&D, totally invested in making nimble quick decisions. All the low risk, no risk options in the world, they are gone. They went out pre-pandemic. So we're going to be faced with all kinds of risks. So the leadership team focused and nimble, and not a can-do attitude, I would tell you, this leadership team has a will-do attitude, which is we're going to do, we said we're going to do. And that's what leads our customers and hopefully, you as our shareholders to believe they were proven to perform, not only in the applications, but in the demand and in the return to our shareholders. So with that, hopefully, that's what's on your pad. If not, we certainly got some Q&A time to help flesh out what's on your pads. But I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Weston to get us to the break, but I really appreciate the attention that you've all invested in ATI today. It's a great place to recognize the New York Stock Exchange and the success we've all had here together. And I look forward to a very aggressive Q&A. The tough part for us is over. The fun part is just beginning.

All right. Thanks, Bob. 15-minute break. The presentation should be available -- it's almost instantaneously if you're download in advance for the Q&A session. And we'll do a in-person Q&A starting here in 15 minutes. So thank you for your time. [Break]

Okay. So thanks for sticking around for the Q&A session. We're going to run until approximately noon to get as many of your questions on as we can. And I'll be moderating. I'll pick as I see hands go up for questions. And we do have 2 mic runners here in the room. For our benefit as well as for the folks who are listening, we'd appreciate you wait till we get the mic to you so the folks online can hear your question. Feel free to introduce yourself if you want, otherwise, we'll just go ahead. Who wants to kick us off today? Rich?

So I had kind of a defense question for you. So you've -- in aerospace, you've been abundantly clear, you've been gaining share as aerospace derisks from Russia, et cetera. U.S. defense companies clearly weren't getting a lot of titanium from Russia, but non-U.S. defense companies were. And it seems that there is -- also, there's a bit of -- a lot more of a capacity constraint over in Europe, for example, that it is here. So I thought maybe you could comment a little bit about what's happening and if you want to talk about U.S. defense trends in here as well. But I thought maybe you could talk about what's happening here as far as share gains and what you're doing in non-U.S. defense and how that's impacting you and impacting the guide?

I think I can take that one. Do you want to moderate to me? Yes. So defense in Europe, so we have refocused our commercial team in Europe to be focused on Aerospace & Defense. So it was kind of the last piece of ATI that had to be focused. So we have the team on the ground, business development, sales, that whole thing. We've always had people there, but I think the refocusing the A&D, it was kind of our last transformational step in A&D. The second piece is we are very involved in Europe, I would say, U.K. France, Germany. If you think about the big ground vehicle engine, people in -- the jet engine people in those countries we're in pretty good shape. They were heavily invested in titanium more from the Russian side historically. We had to change our game. We obviously have to be globally competitive, and we're prepared to do that. But I think -- the 2 things that we see, and we're on the Ajax program in the U.K., we have some other programs that are smaller, but similar to that, that we didn't talk about. But they're interested in assured supply from a globally competitive player. And increasingly in Europe, you still get even in defense, you get issues of the Carbon Border Adjustment tax issues. Is there a green titanium, well, ATI actually produces green titanium either hydro or nuclear-based power to supply those things. So we fit into where the Europeans want to go on defense. So I think we don't have huge facilities in Europe, but there's a tremendous pull on our resources to do that. And we actually participate actually in June -- May or June of last year -- this year 2023 May and June of this year, we were in Europe, meeting with all the leaders, the U.S. Embassy puts on an event for us to talk to all of the defense leaders in the U.K. We'll have another one of those in France this summer. So the tremendous pull on ATI for global supply again, our goal -- our need is to be globally competitive in that, but there's growth there. The 85% of the defense spending, 90% is in the U.S., which is why we talk the most about it, but we feel well positioned on those vehicles. That help, Rich?

Timna?

Thanks for all the great details. So at your last Investor Day, you laid out targets for 2025 and now we're getting 2027. And so appreciate the further information. The one thing I was kind of stuck on was that in the last presentation, you had said 18% to 20% EBITDA margins for 2025, and now refining that to 18%, 19%. So just would like a little more color, but I think that opens the door to a broader question of how you're containing costs? I would just like a little more color on that.

Sure. Why don't I take a shot at that. So the 100 basis point increase between '25 and 2027. I would make the statement really, I believe, overall, the dollars and the margins are on the conservative side, when you look at our targets. We want to make sure that we make promises that we will deliver, can deliver. And so the increase that we're seeing on the numbers I shared are clearly reflective of a number of driving forces. Number one, the fact that our mix is getting richer, and I think there's opportunity to the upside. We are capturing price, and we have and we will expect that we'll continue to. I think there's opportunity to the upside. And we can go on to absorption and the other volume benefits, efficiencies that Kim talked about but in the end, I think that the '19 to '21 range that we have shared clearly drive some pretty compelling numbers on -- just on the surface. So we're comfortable sharing that to give you that context.

From being at the higher range, what would keep you from that? Like what could go wrong...

What would it take to get to the high end?

Yes, from the prior range to the more narrow range, what keeps you from being more optimistic? What can go wrong? Maybe some things that are out of your control or are there items that you're budgeting for perhaps?

So the -- when you say the more narrow range, so we were 18% to 20%, now we're 19% to 21%.

For 2025, I saw 18% to 19% for EBITDA margins?

No, it should be 18% to 20%. It should have been 18% to 20%. So as far as getting to the higher end of the 2027 range, what's going to drive it there? It's going to be, again, the mix, right? The strength in our Aerospace & Defense demand, strength in our growth in things like hafnium and niobium. The efficiencies that we're picking up in the business, you mentioned cost management. What are we doing around cost management? Actually, some pretty powerful things. When you think about through COVID, we took more than $100 million, almost $200 million of structural costs out of the business. And we didn't stop at that. We saw significant inflation throughout 2022 and 2023. We more than offset that inflation. And in these long-range targets, the -- we are expecting to continue to more than offset inflation through cost reductions and efficiency gains in the business.

I'll just ask one more and I hand it off then. On the labor side, while we're talking about costs, we had a labor disruption '21, the USW level, and that agreement, I believe, is due in 2025. I just wanted to think about how you're looking ahead to that, especially given all the broader labor issues in the market?

Yes. So I'll start with, we don't have any labor agreements that are coming to the end in 2024. So that is -- that's one piece of good news. But we have just finished 2 negotiations, one of them with the USW, in one of our other Pittsburgh operations. And I'd say that negotiation went fairly uneventfully. I think we are continuing to build relationships, communicate with our employees. They had very reasonable expectations unlike kind of what you see in the headlines and what we've been seeing here maybe across the country. And so we're anticipating that this negotiation is going to be based on a common base of understanding of our business, which we spent a lot of time sharing with them over the last couple of years and how we continue to improve and grow. We've added jobs in Vandergrift with this large capital investment that we've made to finishing. And I think there's opportunities for us to continue to grow and do that and partner with USW to get there. So we're looking forward to it. I think the relationships continued to improve and yes, I think they understand what our strategy is and how we're growing, and we are executing and doing what we say we're going to do, and I think there's a lot of satisfaction with that.

I would say one of the things the USW is big on is investment. And when we invest in melting, invest in our finishing specifically for aerospace and defense, they feel that connection. So I think we're moving in the right direction there.

Just wanted to ask another question on titanium. And you didn't talk at all about feedstock and titanium sponge. And I'm wondering how you think about the sourcing of either sponge or scrap to accommodate that growth? And I'm under the assumption that Japan is running at full capacity. So I'm wondering if you have to find new regional sources? And would that include China now? And any kind of risk there? And then I guess, just because I ask you every year, I assume Rowley is still not going to be restarted.

Yes. There's like 6 questions in there, Chris. So I'll see, I'll take a couple. I'll take the sponge questions. I'll let Kim have the scrap questions, she's involved deeply in that. So titanium sponge is the raw material input to titanium melt. I would use the parallel around nickel in the titanium sponge world. So we have global customers where we need to be globally competitive. And so we will search the world for the right raw material, right? So we get up until about mid-2022, we were importing and using Russian nickel, right? So if there's high-quality or capable supply anywhere in the world, and they can do titanium sponge, we'll qualify them for the structural applications. There's a lot of support for that. We are very protective of our intellectual property on the premium side. So we're not as interested in there. But I do think there are multiple sources globally that we can tap into on the sponge side. So that was kind of question number one. Today, it's no secret that titanium sponge comes from Kazakhstan, right? I think the Japanese are relatively full, although I do think they have some brownfield expansion opportunities that they're evaluating. And we feel well served by those. But I can tell you if there's a titanium sponge producer in the world, somebody from ATI has been there, right? So we're very engaged with that. You used the term, I think, Rowley, not everybody new to the ATI story is -- knows who Rowley is or what it's about. But we did have titanium sponge in the United States for a long time, us and one of our first competitors had one in Nevada. And the U.S. does not currently have U.S. production of titanium sponge. We are not planning to restart it anytime soon. I got to be clear on that. But we do get inquiries on a regular basis from the Department of Defense with the question of what would it take to restart that facility, and we can tell them what it would take and what it takes is a business case that we don't have today, right? And so if the government sees that as a strategic need, then we can fill that strategic need with their money, right, to be honest. But the other thing about government funding for an investment in critical materials is it has to be a sustainable business on the other end, which is a good thing that the government is investing in that kind of thing. So we can tell the DoD, what it's going to take. We're certainly willing to support national security in the United States to do that. But today, there's no business case to do it. So a lot of conversation, but no business case. And Don did not jump off the table when I said that. So that's good. So do you want to add -- there's a little color on scrap before we go to the next question.

Sure. Yes. I mean, obviously, with sponge being tight, scrap is going to become really important. So we are doing a lot of work at a couple of different things. How do we increase our scrap content. Today, we're actually seeing a little bit of reverse in pricing scrap is more expensive than sponge. Primarily, but -- we're doing this primarily because of the potential shortage as we continue to grow our titanium business, we're focusing and investing in how do we increase the blend rates and increase the use of scrap and it really comes down to the processing and the cleaning of that scrap. And how tightly you can control that to keep carbon and other contaminants that get in that need to get mixed with prime material. So we are doing a lot of work. We're working with our scraps processors primarily to increase the quality of the scrap that we're getting so that we can increase the content. There's probably a couple of small investments again, it's within our guidance that we share that we'll do that will help expand our use of scrap even in our Albany, Oregon facility that we've just brought back online from an idle capacity. In the past, some of you might remember, in the past, it has used scrap, but that was a couple -- at least a decade ago, if not longer, that they had that capability. So we are looking at that as well as to Timna's question, looking at cost out to making sure that, that's a competitive long-term melt source.

With the VAR. What about in 2025, how much of a contributor is -- that's coming on? And then what are the risk corridors around the timing of certification and some of the barriers?

So for the fourth VAR, what we shared in our earnings call was the run rate revenue off of that -- it was a VAR with some additional efficiencies that we're picking up. The expectation is it was about $50 million, 5-0, on a run rate basis. And so that's the way to think about it for 2025. Yes. In terms of the ramp for 2024, we are going through the process of bringing that unit back online. I think we would expect that it would be melting at a run rate in Q2 of 2024. And then there are a number of months between melt and product going out the door. And that's why we say, it really be -- it's a second half contributor really to our earnings.

In 2025 for the EB furnace?

Well, second half in 2024 and then full year $50 million top line run rate for 2025.

So his question was about the risk on EB.

I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about the fourth VAR.

He was pulling the Chris-thing and had like 2 questions in there at the same time. You got the first one.

Okay. So you're asking what's the contributor for the second EB?

Yes.

So the way to think about that is we expect that we will have probably first melts off that asset in very, very late 2024. 2025 is really a qualification year. And it will contribute probably $50 million in revenue, possibly less than 2025, and then it would be, of course, much closer to its run rate in 2026.

Yes, I think that helps the qualification process for standard products is different than for rotating products. right? So one of the advantages that, that facility brings to us is it's a brownfield expansion. So we already have a facility. We have the people, the processes, the equipment. We're just building something newer. So to go from start of first melt and say, Q4 of 2024 to standard quality or airframe type titanium, very short process. So I think Don's answer is pretty close. So we should see some good impact in 2025, full benefit in 2026 when we believe the industry will really need it.

Yes. One thing I would think I would add too is, as you think about that Oregon restart that we did in the fourth VAR et cetera, again, the all-in on that is revenue in the kind of 160 range at run rate. When you think about the EB-2, the EB-2 will contribute more than that. And so one reason for that. It's newer equipment. It's pointed toward higher-value activities. It's creating the right tool for the right job when it comes to producing some of our products. So really, maybe the way to think about that at run rate is a revenue contributor more in the $200 million annually at run rate.

And then just a follow-up. Are you aware of any competitive new starts on EB furnaces coming through or on the timeline all?

On titanium melt?

On titanium melt. Yes.

Yes. So we know there are some guys in West Virginia that are working hard. We think we're ahead of them by quite a bit. So I think that would be one. But that's somewhat of a replacement of older capacity. I think whether -- how much of it is net new will still be a question for them to answer. Yes. And we see a couple of others kind of floating around the world in parts of the world that don't have scrap to melt, right? So in the Middle East, they have a lot of low-priced energy so they'd like to be a melter, the question is, well, what are you going to melt, right? And so it's the feedstock, it's part of the issue in other parts of the world. So there are some. I think the advantage we have is scale. The advantage we have is nimbleness on speed and certainly, the breadth of the flexibility to move the capacity around to optimize what we have. Everybody wants to be in the jet engine business, but it's a really high barrier to entry. Does that help?

Thanks, everyone. First question on AA&S. Aerospace & Defense as a percentage of sales in 2027 versus 35% today...

I would say, assume it would be closer to 40% by 2027. And a lot of that's reflective, I think, of growth we have strong growth expectations around defense in AA&S, which will be a strong contributor. And then I think another important data point for -- and we talked today about Aerospace & Defense and Aero Like. So as you look at AA&S, what's the mix between A&D plus Aero Like versus the other categories? And what you see is more than half of the AA&S revenue by 2027 should be from Aero Like and A&D. So the mix is improving for certain around that segment.

A couple of questions on cash. So the first one, if you take the cash you're going to generate in the fourth quarter, I think the cash you're going to generate next year. Your cash balance, even if on a $150 million share repo, you're going to build a significant cash balance, I think, higher than you want to run with. So...

What are we going to do with all that cash?

Yes. I guess it looks like you're going to have $700 million, $800 million in cash and spend $50 million on share repo. So kind of -- that seems too high from -- I think you're delevering on gross debt.

Yes. So your math, I can't disagree with. So the key takeaway is, number one, what are we going to do with the cash? And I know that some folks are wondering, okay, are they going to go on a spending spree? Okay. I hope what's clear from today is we're not looking to spend significant amounts on organic or inorganic for that matter, okay? So what you're saying is absolutely right. We've got several destinations. We already covered off one, which is CapEx in the $200 million range. So that leaves delevering and it leaves return of capital to shareholders. We have no interest in building a war chest of cash on our balance sheet. So the $150 million program that was approved just in the last 2 days, is another program. It's not the last program. And so what our Board does is we advise them, we give them our profile on cash position, overall liquidity and whatnot, and we make recommendations on share repurchases. And one key thing to remember is we have a goal in mind when it comes to repurchases and it's to offset the dilution of those converts. And so those converts are 18.8 million shares and so $150 million isn't going to get us where we want to go. If we got -- if we have ample cash, then you can expect that we will continue to attack that objective. Another thing to keep in mind is, we've got a great Treasurer, and he has built in options for us to be able to attack debt. And delevering as one of our key elements of deployment is important. We have some maturities in 2025. Those are our nearest maturities and that's a convert for $290 plus it's a note. We've got $200 million ABL term loan that we can repay at any time. It's carrying an interest rate of about 7%. It's just because it's a variable interest rate. So we can attack that with some of the cash that's available. But we'll be really thoughtful and disciplined with that cash. Hopefully, that does that helpful.

Yes. I mean when you say offset -- I mean we think...

So here's how I view it. To do it by 2025 and maintain this rational allocation of capital, that would be really tough unless we saw a pullback in our stock price, and as you can tell by today's numbers, I don't expect that. And so my -- I think a fair objective is, and maybe a way to model it is if we're successful and bringing in offsetting that dilution by, say, 2027, that's probably a rational rhythm, but there's a few different dynamics.

Okay. Got it. And then the last one on cash, just seasonality and you work to improve where it's not back-end loaded?

So for folks that are familiar with our financials, we do have a heavy seasonal rhythm to our cash generation. Some of it, we think we can levelize. And there's a number of benefits that you can get if you're successful in spreading that out some. And one of Kim's key objectives is around managing capital, for example, is pointed right at that. And so it is something that we are targeting to change and ultimately improve. I don't know if you want to share anything more than that, Kim? or Bob?

Well, I mean, as Don said, the term we use is level loading, how do we level load our operations. It's better for our customers, it's better for our employees. If we're able to do that, there is some macro seasonality. There is a little bit of a restocking at the beginning of the year. People are managing their inventory. So there's a little bit that comes from a customer demand standpoint. But primarily, we have the ability, working, one, with our customers to get their inputs and some certainty around what they need through the year and try to level low that production. And then we are spending a lot of time on these bottlenecks, machine uptime, predictive maintenance, so that we can continue to operate when we want the machines to operate. And so there is a lot of work these bottlenecks are kind of the first stage of that because you want to be able to flow once you have material started, you want it flow easily through the rest of your process. And so as you're able to get that. The other piece is we've had a lot of hiring. We hired 1,100 people last year. So there is a learning curve they're going through. These are really technical roles. I talked about ultrasonic testing that's 880 hours to qualify on an ultrasonic inspector so that they can do the work. We're planning on hiring another 1,000 people this year. So we are continuing to ramp and add shifts and crews, which does also create some of that push and pull around inventory. But our goal, as Don said, is through this year's to level out. Supply chain disruptions are leveling out. I think customer demand is getting a little bit more stable and they're clear on what they need. MRO has kind of been up and down, that's stabilizing and then get these employees on board, which will help us level. And that will really drive that leveling of the working capital.

So thank you for asking that question. All of our operating leaders are live on television. It's good to hear that question from all of you, but yes, they're well said.

Thanks. Just curious in the revenue targets for 2025 and 2027, should we think about that as expected reported revenue or are there going to be fluctuations in metal prices that affect that? I think the initial 2025 target was made with a certain expectation of metal prices and in addition to better-than-expected sales, one of the reasons why we're getting there so much faster has to do with those changes in metal prices that weren't part of the target. So how should we think about those 2 pieces for '25 and '27?

Yes. I truly appreciate you asking that question. So when you look at the '25 and '27 targets, we neutralized the recent run-up in metal prices. So for folks that have been following us in 2022, we saw a big run-up in commodity and metal prices like nickel and cobalt, et cetera. So that really lifted our surcharge revenue, for example, our pass-through revenues to the tune of like $300 million, $350 million. What's happened since, by the way, is like in the second half of 2023, those metal prices have kind of come back to where they were in 2021. So when you're looking out to our '25 targets and our '27 targets, the assumed metal prices are kind of normalized and very much aligned to the 2021 normalized situation. So we don't have any tailwinds for metal in those '25 and '27 targets. So what will happen is if metal prices go up, then our revenue would overperform on those targets. If they come down, they'll be below those targets. But as many of you know, the effect to our bottom line because of metal price movement, it's pretty minimal. It's just what goes on in revenue. Does that help, Seth?

Yes. Yes. So unchanged as far as the EBITDA dollars go.

EBITDA dollars and then -- and even...

The revenue and the margin rate.

Yes. Yes. That's right. Yes.

Maybe just to follow up. One of those input costs, one that probably hasn't come down as much yet as sponge, which we talked about a little bit. Have you guys absorbed already a significant increase in titanium sponge prices? And if so, were you able to -- I guess, you've been able to pass that on contractually?

Yes. So I.

I'll take that one.

Yes, go ahead.

You've done a great job moderating here [indiscernible] going here. So I'll ask Kim to add the color because she's done a lot of the work on this. I get to talk about it. She has to do it. So if you go back to titanium, say, 10 years ago, it was a very vertically integrated business and titanium response was cost centers, whether it was for us or our other domestic competitor. So over the years, obviously, we idled that facility, warm-idled it, just in case we needed to leverage in the negotiation in the future and as a result of that, we were buying sponge and everybody went to buying sponge globally. So the implication of that is then the commercial contracts have to change just like nickel, just like aluminum, just like some of these other metals to allow that to pass through. But there is no LME, right? for titanium sponge. So that caused a little angst. So over the last few years, we've worked very hard to create a capability to pass it through. And Kim and her team have been at the front of that. If you want to add any color to that?

Yes. So I think this new reality, as Bob is saying is that the OEMs recognize that titanium is in a completely different spot as far as cost and volatility. So we've been working to add that as a pass-through into all our major contracts. There's one remaining that will be starting here this month that we're going to do that in addition to inflation indexes because not all those titanium contracts also captured kind of the level of inflation. And given what's happened with the demand around titanium, all of our contracts have been reopened over the last 1.5 years, 2 years, and we've been able to renegotiate that. So we haven't. I think the short answer is we haven't had to absorb a lot of inflation from sponge and we've got a mechanism in place that we're passing that through starting as early as the beginning of this year.

So if I could just add, so absorb that. The demand profile allowed us to build in derisking mechanisms into our long-term agreements. I think that's a really positive indicator that drives home really the competitive -- what's happening competitively and from a demand standpoint and the derisked position that we've been able to create.

Dough Ruth, Lenox Financial. Could you offer some commentary on what you think is happening with the electronic business and where you see the business going in the next several years?

Electronics? Yes.

Well, as we talked about with hafnium, I think Bob mentioned, historically, we were probably more in the sheet and component part of the electronics business. I'd say selling hafnium, all of the modern day chips use hafnium as a precursor chemical in the chip manufacturing. So we're seeing huge demand. Obviously, everything -- every device we have is getting smarter. Hafnium allows it to operate at a higher level and at a smaller, so micro level processing as well as this pull to reshore chip production here in the United States. So Intel is building a big facility just up the road from our Oregon facility that produces the hafnium. So we are seeing all of that economic demand is growing really rapidly. I'd say the thing I'd add that's unique from our perspective is we have the purest hafnium at scale anywhere in the world. To the point I was sharing with someone at the break, some of our customers, [ Deco ], and some of the others say, we buy your -- and Samsung, we buy your hafnium and we actually use it as a sweetener for some of our other hafnium that isn't quite as pure. So there is a huge demand. We are investing to double that output by 2027. If we could do that today, it would all be sold. So there's a lot of demand there.

Does that help, Doug?

Yes.

Just on your M&A comments and [ acquisition ]. I'm kind of curious about just a couple of things. First is how big -- where do you see holes in the portfolio? Is this something you could see -- start seeing in 2024? And if you've answered this and I didn't hear it, I apologize, but I'm assuming, is any of that baked -- as you got growth drivers there, is any of that baked into your '27 targets?

Our '27 target is 100% organic, to be really clear.

Yes.

Do you want to cover the other questions?

Sure. So when you think about Kim use a phrase that we use a lot of is 2 Cs, capacity, capability, very different meaning, right? So for us, if there's a strategic capability that we could acquire, we'd be interested, right? But it would have to fit either growing our core, sharpening our operational advantage or positioning us for the future. So a great example of a potential M&A area where we spend a lot of time is in the additive space. And as Kim talked about it, our view of additive is defense, defense, defense and then maybe commercial aerospace, right? Just because of the testing requirements, the risk tolerance of defense and commercial space in there. And so we looked at a lot of things. But they didn't have the material science capabilities, and they usually had equipment that was 2, 3, 4 years old and an additive 2 or 3 years, the equipment changes a lot. So we said, well, let's not buy somebody else's experiment, let's build the core capability that we want. And so you heard Kim talk about large format, the defense department really wants that. They want if not classified manufacturing, near-classified manufacturing. So our view of where additive is really going to accelerate and move the needle is on the defense side, not on the commercial aerospace, at least for this generation of the airplane. So as an example, I think we look at a lot of stuff. We put a lot of miles on, but there hasn't been anything compelling that fits strategically that is more efficient to buy than to build. That's kind of how -- is that kind of the gist to your question or did I [indiscernible] that?

Yes. I just -- I mean if you don't find anything, I guess, considering where your bias is, we should consider most of that going to buybacks.

Oh, the cash?

Yes, generally. And I think you had asked, Rich, about how to think about the size of M&A. Hard for us to do since we haven't found anything of great interest at this point. But we really are not going to be looking at things that don't move a needle for us. We're not going to become a serial acquirer. That's not our strategy. So if something is of interest, it's probably got to be at least $100 million of revenue that gives you some context.

Sheila Kahyaoglu at Jefferies. If I could ask 2 questions, please. So the opposite end of the spectrum. When you think about a new deal or capacity you said you have a 30% return hurdle. So how do you think about your existing portfolio and potential divestitures on the cyclical -- more cyclical businesses?

Yes. So we think about it a lot, actually. And so if you go back over the last 2 years, we've divested of quite a few things. We had a melting facility in the U.K., Sheffield U.K. that we weren't -- any time we're not willing to invest in something, it's a pretty good sign that we should be thinking about somebody else owning, especially in a relatively capital-intense business. So we've divested there, we divested our castings because we didn't have the scale. We had some smaller things. We don't run a lot of $50 million businesses very well. That's not our strength. So we divested of flow forming business, I think, is a good example of that. We have probably 2 last businesses that they got to make it or break it. They got to be accretive or we're going to have to do something. But it's just 2 small product lines that are left. One of them, we're working on hard in Europe. It's hard to tell where exactly Europe is going to go. And then obviously, any time we talk about the Asian footprint, we're trying to understand what are the global or geopolitical issues there. Now traditionally, we get the question about our Flat Rolled Products business and that same question. And I think what we're seeing there is the shift away from stainless steels to nickel and titanium gives us the chance for that business to be highly accretive. I think Don answered that question, it can be 50% A&D along with the AA&S business and the melting is integrated. So we don't really have too much left -- if I have one legacy of my life is that all our underperforming or nonperforming businesses are gone, and we've put a lot of effort into that. So that's kind of how I would answer that. Do you have any other thoughts?

Yes, I mean I think as Bob said, using that tool, I talked about, we do a portfolio analysis every year. We're always looking at this, and we're looking at businesses. Are they accretive? And if they're not, what are the actions that we have to take to bring them up the curve. Along with what Bob said as we've looked at divesting businesses, we also looked at that core, what is our core and making sure that we're having synergies that when we're investing in one part of the business, we're able to leverage those across and get additional value from that. And so some of these businesses like Sheffield and others may not -- may be great businesses, but I said they were primarily in oil and gas and energy. They weren't in the aerospace side as heavily. And so as to invest there when I had good investments for our core markets, they weren't going to win. And so we've made those decisions, both from the profitability standpoint as well as the strategic fit. And we do that with every capital project that comes in as saying, we talked -- I talked a little bit about hafnium. It's a great example. We're investing in that. It's aero-like, it's electronics, but it has a long-term growth trajectory into hypersonics and commercial space, which is in our core and that high-temperature alloy can be used in a lot of applications. So there's the financial analysis that we look at, but there's also the strategic fit of helping add capabilities.

If I could just add one more thing.

We spend a lot of time talking about..

We like the topic. So with everything that was described here, it's not always about, hey, the conclusion is we're going to sell it. We've had -- we've done these exercises. We've had some underperforming parts of our portfolio, and we've turned them and I can think of -- I won't share the particulars on it, but an operation that was meaningful to us, and it was posting low double-digit margins, EBITDA margins and because of the efforts of the team and they executed very quickly and very deliberately, they drove that margin profile to something closer to 20%. So we like the approach that we take on these things.

And if I could ask about a few parts on pricing and the EBITDA bridge. How much are you assuming? How much price is locked in via your long-term contracts through the end of the decade? And how do we think about engine durability issues and how it changes potential content per platform?

Okay. A couple of questions in there, too. Do you want to take the durability question and then we can let Don take the price question.

Sure, sure. So obviously, some of the challenges that our customers are having. One is very public. The other ones are having some similar time-on-wing challenges, is driving MRO up. And I think Bob or Don mentioned this. So what traditionally would be about 25%, we've seen kind of in that 40%, 45% MRO, which was, like I said, it was a wildcard thrown into this ramp that we are running of trying to keep up with that at the same time. What we're also seeing, though, that probably hasn't been fully understood by our customers is as the shop visits are accelerating and happening either because there's more hours on the engines or because of some of these issues they're seeing when they're bringing them in, they're looking at a window and saying, okay, if we're going to have a shop visit that's coming out here to do turbine disc replacements, we're going to do that all when it comes in for the problem. And so there is going to be an acceleration in growth on MRO for the hot section because that is one of the areas that gets hit on each of these shop visits that's getting pulled in. So we are anticipating that. We're in conversations. I think they're still working to quantify what that impact will be and the timing, as they're figuring out their other issues around quality and inspection and other things that they're doing. So there is going to be a big opportunity, I think, for us to continue to grow our revenue along with the share gains that we got with our contract renegotiations as well. So there's a lot of upside.

On the durability issue too, Sheila, I think the issue is material science. There's still some material science options that will improve that, and we're engaged with all the OEMs in that. And it's not that far away, which I think is part of the opportunity for durability.

In terms of the bridge, so thinking about '25 to '27 is a nice clean [ short ] period. The way to think about that, Sheila, is probably about 2/3 of the growth that you're seeing is tied to volumes, about 1/3 is price and mix. And if you drill into that price and mix, 1/3, I would say 2/3 of that would be LTA related and the remainder would be transactional. So a lot of that, long short, a lot of that price assumption is tied to our LTA and high percentage.

I had one clarification on the 2025 revenue targets. So as you talked about when you gave the last update, this are built on an assumption of 100 narrow-bodies -- wide-bodies and you updated that number, but for 2027. Would you be able to share what sort of underlying build rate assumptions you're [ deeming for 2025 ]?

Yes. So I'll try to do that and see if I can clarify it for you. So the real -- the 2025 numbers were 100 narrow-bodies and 20 wide-bodies. That was kind of where we started. Today, we're thinking -- that's 2025. I think that was your question. The 2027 stuff, about 120. If you read AeroAdvisory or some Jefferies report, you can get to 130 maybe, depending on if you include the A220 is a narrow-body? That's the next great definition we'll have to work through. But it could be 130 to 140, but where will -- what will the supply chain be able to support? So that's why our conservatism for 120 narrow-bodies in the short term. The wide-body, we were at 24, and I'm happy to have any conversation you want about why isn't it 28? And I'd say, well, let's see how the 777-9 comes into service and when it comes into service. And so it was what do we actually expect in 2027. We do expect the 777X or the 777-9 to be there. The A350 is going to 10, 787 can go 10 to 14. So I think there's tremendous upside on the wide-body. It's a question for us of when, right? So that's why we have the conservativeness, but we were at 20 for 2025, we said at least 24 by 2027 with some upside. Is it that -- was that your question?

So no change in 2025 underlying build rate assumptions in your financial forecast.

Generally. Yes, generally not. No. The dilemma for us is we don't -- we don't want to [ sell ] to the build rates. You've heard this before from us. So it's what -- we have one -- there's a big -- there are 2 major OEMs. One had a lot of inventory on the ground. And we're trying to figure out where they are in that process. We tend to be, I'll just say, for today, 12 months ahead of the build in terms of our sales. So we're seeing really strong demand. It's hard to tell exactly what that's tied to, but we feel pretty good. But 2025, I'd say, we're at the current build rates today, that's probably close to the 20 and the 100. Yes. Long-winded answer, but that's what you're looking for.

On working capital, so even getting the -- it depends on where you get to below 30%, but it still implies from here to 27%, there's a fair amount of absolute working capital build. So how do you benchmark that somewhere around 30% as being the right level. I mean I don't know if you look at peers or is that the right level? Or is there ultimately a better level that you think you can get the business to?

So the short answer is we absolutely compare ourselves to peers. We also understand that we have a different vertical integration in our business than most of our peers. So we try to be thoughtful around that. The reality is 30% is not a magic number. We've been there before. We don't consider that the destination. We believe that we can do meaningfully better than that. And so the question is how quickly can we move it from 30% to x and so we do have some intentions around that. But no, we believe we can do meaningfully better than 30%.

Okay. I mean it's embedded, obviously, in your margin guidance, but what's happening with corporate and closed cost from here to over the next couple of years?

Yes. It is a -- they're not blown out. We're doing a good job in managing them and keeping their inflation rates or their growth rates well within our current growth rates for the business unit. So think in terms of low single digits kinds of inflation on those corporate costs.

And I don't think we heard the HRPF [indiscernible] where are you on utilization on that now? What's embedded going forward? Are you still doing tolling? I don't know.

I have to answer those questions for like 3 years. I'll let you answer this time.

Okay. So yes, we are still doing tolling actually for a couple of different partners for carbon, carbon steel primarily, it's a great partnership. They get to utilize some of our capability. And certainly, as hot rolled prices escalate, there's a lot of demand. So we are still doing that. We are using it for our specialty materials. I mentioned zirconium is one. C103, that's one we didn't talk about, but we are working to develop and create bigger ingots of C103. It's kind of a heat transfer problem, so there's some science that needs to be done. But if we were able to do that, we could roll that on HRPF. So we are looking at some new developments that would be a big breakthrough for that material, less welding, less failure points for hypersonic vehicles and skins and other things. So I think there is a lot on the utilization that we're continuing to drive on the specialty side. The carbon ebbs and flows a little bit. I think it is, it's been down with industrial, I think, the last 2 quarters, but it does appear to be coming back, demand starting to come back. So go ahead, Don.

Yes. And I think what you would -- what I would add is for the targets, we haven't baked in any growth related to conversion services. It's staying at this pretty modest level for the duration of the planning horizon. Not a big contributor to the profits. I think I last heard it was -- we're in the low 30s.

Yes. Yes. And it kind of varies between, call it, 60%, 65% and 30% depending on the conversion demand.

Yes.

30%, I would say, is our demand. You say that's our utilization on our specialty products.

Yes.

I think we have time for one more question.

Before we wrap up, anyone..

We did such a great job.

Okay, over to you Don.

So just for clarification as a follow-up on a question that Timna asked, we're going to make sure that the slide reflects the EBITDA margin range to make sure that there's no confusion. But I want to be really clear, in our 2025 targets, it's 18% to 20% EBITDA margin. In our 2027 targets, it's 19% to 21%, okay? And so if the slide doesn't reflect that, it will. All right. So hopefully it helps. Thank you.

Last question.

Yes. Just for clarification. On your 2027, when you're talking about the buyback trying to offset the $18.8 million of dilution from the converts. Understanding there's a lot of things that can happen, what would be the right share count to be thinking about if you were able to do that by 2027.

So right now, we've got a fully diluted share count of 150. Obviously, that includes the assumption that [ this thing ] converts. So if we're successful in offsetting all of it, that means you'd be in the low 130s.

Got it. Got it. So that would be kind of the way to be thinking about as we're trying to do our EPS walk.

Yes. Can I give you some math to make that a little bit easier. So set aside the share count for a little bit, you guys need to model, I get it. So 2027, the march from EBITDA to net income, here's some elements for you to assume. So again, this is 2027. So at that point, you're talking $1.1 billion of EBITDA. You guys already have that. Depreciation. Our depreciation should be up in the [ 1.75% ] range. That sounds really precise, and I don't like doing that, but I think [ 1.75% ], by then, we've gotten some debt maturities that happened. We assume no early repayments. That gets you an interest rate about -- excuse me, yes, interest expense of about $90 million. And then there's a little stub there just for your accuracy, there's minority interest for [ 15% ], throw that in there as a bad guy. And that assumed tax rate around that 23%, okay? You do the math on that, what that gets you and just doing [ mental ] math, it's probably around [ $630 million ] of net income after tax, okay? That's 2027. I can give you 2025 too, but that will give you a sens as to -- as how to think about that march from EBITDA to net income.

Well, I think we've hit our time here. Logistically, we do have lunch, and we'll hang around for discussions afterwards. But I'd like to turn it back to Bob for some final commentary if there's anything more you'd like to say, Bob, before we wrap up.

I don't.

Okay. All right. Well, then with that, we thank you very much for coming out to join us today, and look forward to talking to you as we wrap up here. Have a great day.

Thank you.