Curtiss-Wright Corporation ($CW)

Great. Thanks. And to those in the lunch area, you can make your way in as you see fit. Happy to have with us today from Curtiss-Wright, Lynn Bamford and Chris Farkas, thanks so much for joining us and for the conversation. If there are questions in the audience, happy to hold those in. But at the same time, I'll go ahead and lead the Q&A. I don't know if there's anything you wanted to kick off with from a commentary perspective. Otherwise, we can get right into it.

Just jump right in.

I want to give you the freedom of navigation to start. So strong first quarter out of the gates, strong results and then raised guidance in several of the areas. Let's start with the largest, the defense market. In terms of the growth rate you're seeing there, how much do you believe is sustainable beyond, I'd say, the initial flood of money from reconciliation that's come through? And how much is more for ongoing investment beyond the current horizon?

Thank you for that question. And for those who don't know Curtiss very well, I'd encourage you to go to curtisswright.com and look at our first quarter's results. And if you go back to May of last year, 2 years ago, check out our Investor Day, it's a good overview of the company and our strategies and long-term growth targets and other financial metrics, which are tracking very nicely, as you will see. But getting to your question, and I think it's good to put in perspective, again, some of you guys know us well, some don't. Our naval defense business is about just over 25% of the company. So obviously, a very significant market. And we feel very, very positive about the prospects for long-term growth in this market. And there's a couple -- you can look at our content on the platforms that's in our Investor Day presentation. You can look at our growth -- our intended content on the replacement for the Virginia class, the SSN(X), which will be built in the mid-30s. So you can just see we're building that kind of run rate of business. But one interesting data point that I think really reflects what business the government intends to put with us is as I imagine many of you have heard, there's a lot of industrial base funding that has been made available. And at our Investor Day in '24, that number was $15 million, and we're up over $60 million today. And it's not the dollar figure that's significant. It's the fact that the government is quite willing to invest in Curtiss-Wright for us to grow capacity and grow our ability to deliver to the U.S. Navy and help us afford capital improvements matched by capital improvements that Curtiss-Wright has made undoubtedly, but to build up that capacity. And there's just a lot of different ways that's coming that is going to lead to the long-term growth. And it's our content on the Virginia class, the Columbia class, the CVN aircraft carriers, the complex overhauls. I mean all those are good, but we're continuously doing new things. We are a leader in additive manufacturing with the Navy, winning several awards in that space. to continuing to do tech insertions even on the Virginia class to building to a significant amount of development work for SSN(X) where we think we will double or triple our content off of Virginia. So you can see that's a nice growth vector right there as that cuts across. And they're already talking about adding 2 Columbia class to the development program. And that's not even to speak about our aftermarket work, which is growing quite significantly and our FMS sales. So there's a lot of things going into it from growing content on platform to pushing the walls out. And one of the things that came through in the new builds is a real strong push from the Navy that they are quite willing to have second sources for content on ships where there's opportunity. And that is something Curtiss-Wright is very focused on is to be able to become a second source on some major components that will really drive very incremental -- meaningful incremental work to Curtiss-Wright. And so you take all those things together and where our naval business is rock solid well into the 2030s and beyond.

How quickly does some of the second source content come online? You've -- I don't know the last date certain, you updated the shipset content for each of your platforms, but have those moved significantly since the Investor Day in Virginia?

I wouldn't say they moved significantly since the Investor Day, but I think there is meaningful work. It's a journey, and it's a couple of year journey. But that mid funding that we've been taking over the past couple of years, not all of that -- some of that's just to us being able to take on increased content as we incrementally can win new content on the existing platforms. But some of that is undoubtedly for becoming a second source and you'll have to build something and cut it in. But again, the Navy, as you well know, is this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon, and we're in it for the marathon, and it's why the business is just such solid growth vectors.

This would usually be premature because we don't have a design yet for a battleship, but apparently, it's going to be nuclear, which is right in your wheelhouse. So as you look at that, and I'm sure it's very early for you all to be looking at it, but they are talking about using the same propulsion system or power system as the carrier. And the carrier, I think, is $450 million of shipset content.

Yes, that is correct.

Do you have any insight into what a battle shipset content might look like?

I'd say it's going to be somewhere between that and a Virginia class. So that's a pretty big wide swim lane. But our teams have had discussions. So there is early days, but really not to the point that I think we'd even begin to round out a number. But we're obviously a critical supplier into nuclear propulsion systems. And so it's great that we have a seat at the table, and we're helping them form those plans.

Okay. Great. Defense Electronics, solid 1Q order growth, and I think you're looking for that to continue. The Defense Electronics revenue has been expected to be flattish in the second quarter, followed by the inflection in the back half of the year. On the 1Q call, you highlighted the recovery. So just maybe elaborate on how the contract flow is happening and the confidence on that reacceleration.

Yes, sure. Maybe just for some context and background. If you step back to '23 and '24, the Defense Electronics segment had a record-setting order book that was only surpassed in the following year. Last year, with some of the full year continuing resolution, the government shutdown, there were some headwinds in the order book. Sales growth was very strong last year at 12%, and it's a very respectable 4% to 6% growth this year. But we did have some timing issues relative to the order book. On our year-end call, we highlighted that roughly $100 million in orders had slipped out from the second half of this last year to the first half of this year. And we said as soon as the continuing resolution and the government budget was resolved, it would probably resume a normal order flow in 60 to 90 days, which kind of puts us in that April-May time frame. So pleased to report that in Q1, our order book was up 18% year-over-year. This was the largest order quarter that we've had since Q3 of 2024. So very gratifying to the management team to see the order book return to such strong health so quickly here in the process. We received a few large orders that were pushed out from this last year. You may have seen the press release on the C-17 aircraft modernization that we released in Q1. We received some orders regarding strategic deterrence and detection systems. We also received some large orders within Tactical Communications, which were arguably hit the hardest last year given the direct connectivity that they have to the government customer, but that was for the U.S. Air Force. So really good things happened in the order book here in Q1, providing us with confidence on the full year. If I step 1 month forward, even into the month of April, the order book was up 46% year-over-year. So a really strong start here in Q2. That again provides us with confidence in the full year. Now Myles, you had mentioned that we're going to see some flatness in the revenue in Q2 and a sequential ramp in Q3 and Q4, more like what we've seen in the past. The good thing about what we are facing or had faced in the order book delays was that it's mostly short-cycle businesses. So we've taken a lot of steps to try to bring in inventory to align with our supply chain so that we can get the product out the door quickly. Management team has done an excellent job, and we have full confidence in being able to hit that 4% to 6% on the full year.

From a margin perspective within that business, which over the last couple of years has been quite, quite strong. Where is the ceiling for your Defense Electronics margins?

I don't think we're going to really give much color on that. So we felt we were there in the past, and we've been able to provide more. And the reason for that is not just to not give a number, but it's really one of the things that's been critical to the pivot to growth strategy is a willingness to reinvest in ourselves when we see solid investments we can make that are going to grow the top line and be accretive to the business. And so we really kind of the -- one of the fundamental principles of the Pivot to Growth strategy. We've been doing that. It's obviously turning out quite well. And the technology in that group is amazing and the things they do, the type of products they provide are truly unique in the industry. And as the teams have those ideas to bring really unique capabilities, we want to lose ourselves the option of reinvesting in ourselves.

Broadly across the aerospace and ground defense markets, there particular areas you find yourself better aligned with relative to the department, both looking backward and as well, maybe the fiscal '27 budget, if there's any areas that you're particularly focused on?

Yes. So there's -- I mean, it's one of the things I think that's powerful about the portfolio with Curtiss-Wright is we have such broad reach across so many programs that we're not exposed overly to any one program. But if you walk through the capabilities that we have, speaking -- staying in defense electronics for a second, but products that we brought to the market that are aligned with the MOSA and SOSA mandates out of the government our interconnect. And I think everybody listens to news and hears about the data centers and things. It's -- the talk is it's gone from the chip to the interconnect to all the pieces. And Curtiss-Wright does all those pieces in a way that's deployable on the battlefield for the soldier. And so our Fabric100 is one example of that. It's a completely unique capability to Curtiss-Wright, which gives the fastest interconnect, which makes the fastest decision-making for the war fighter. There's just 2 examples. Our partner chip with NVIDIA that spans everything from the high-end Blackwell to the Thor processor, which is much more of a sizeway power optimized allows us to take that capability out. And this kind of equipment is needed in everything from whether it's the golden dome to aircraft modernization to next-gen aircraft down the line to the tactical battlefield stuff Chris was talking about that the places where the government is putting money are all places where our products have great applicability.

What about the budget scenarios from here for fiscal '27? How meaningful is it to get sort of regular order process going through the end of the year relative to your guidance and I guess, relative to next year as well, how you'd start the year?

Well, it's pretty exciting to see a $1.5 trillion budget -- $1 trillion budget wherever it lands, I think it's going to provide significant growth. And there's things -- it'd be great to see them just put -- go through the regular process, as you say. I don't know if you hold up much hope for that. But I think we're finding ways to work around that. And some of the things that have become a priority in these NDAAs is being an innovative, agile supplier and they're bending the rules or expanding the rules for ways companies can go to business and contract business. And I think Curtiss-Wright is very well aligned to take advantage of those types of flexibility and just see nothing but bright things for the future there. And across -- within our A&I segment where we have a growing defense presence that the capabilities they have are very well positioned to many of the priorities.

Your international business has been growing double digits for a while now. What's your outlook there? What are your key platforms or products that you're selling? And from an order perspective, what does that outlook like?

Yes. So it has been growing at kind of a mid-teens pace for the past 2 years. This year, it's now roughly 10% of our total business, and that's just direct foreign military sales. It doesn't include all the other products that we sell domestically that end up going internationally. And we did raise our outlook in FMS for the full year here for '26. We're expecting it to grow 10% year-over-year. And we've got a lot of capabilities across the portfolio that support not only the domestic U.S. defense priorities, but also the allied defense priorities. I think as you look across our aerospace markets, you can see that we have embedded computing, not on most of the domestic programs, but also the foreign programs. You think about some of the big name fighter jets, whether that's the Typhoon or the Gripen or the Rafale we're on those programs and many others. As you think about ground defense, we've got a very strong relationship with Rheinmetall, have for a number of years where we provide drive stabilization systems. And the order book has been picking up. You may have seen in some press releases that we issued this last year that we had new order wins on the Puma, Panther, the Lynx, the Boxer fighting vehicle. And Germany has announced that they intend to purchase $29 billion worth of vehicles moving forward through Rheinmetall. And many of those are the Boxer, where we have strong content. So we're well aligned there. And then I think when you step back and you look at naval markets, we do have a lot of foreign naval content. We provide aircraft -- naval aircraft handling systems and to array arresting systems. for use in foreign navies. And these are all very high-margin businesses that we're working within. So the outlook continues to be strong. We're encouraged by what we see going forward. Some of the first quarter order book that I just talked about had some wins in there for TDSS. And as we're looking forward and at the pipeline moving forward, we're very optimistic. So it's contributed substantially to our strong growth rates and what we provided to meet our Investor Day targets of mid- to high single digits. and we expect it to continue to provide some uplift as we move forward.

Is the margin profile there significantly different, better than your domestic profile?

I think when you look across the Defense Electronics business, those margins are so high to begin with that it's -- I would say it's on par in that area. But when you start to kind of venture out and talk about what may be in the other segments like the Naval and Power segment, which is traditionally more of a far part 15 type of business, yes, it's going to be accretive. And you'll see some of that, I think, as we get deeper into the year in the Naval and Power segment.

Okay. Moving to the commercial nuclear piece of the market. So on the aftermarket side, that's actually had a nice uplift, low double-digit growth both in your exposure in the Americas and Korea. How long do you see that pathway of continued growth on the aftermarket side before we get to the new build side?

New build. So just for framing, for those who don't know Curtiss-Wright, of our commercial nuclear business, about 90% is the aftermarket, which is great because it's just a great underpinning of, as you said, really strong growth business. One of the things, I mean, there's always been the normal outage seasons. But with the sentiment towards nuclear changing over the past several years, there's a real push to not allow any more nuclear power plants to shut down here in the U.S. and then that's same sentiment is broadly up in Canada and in South Korea. And so they're going for license renewals or license extensions, 60 to 80 years and even contemplating 80 to 100. And it is early days with that. A year ago, at this time, 9 plants out of the 92 in the U.S. had received their license extensions today, that's 23 plants. Out of the 92, I think over 80% have indicated they intend to and the others are just early enough. They don't need to do that yet. But these cycles are maybe a decade long to do these license extensions. The work goes on over a very long period of time. And kind of talking specifically about them contemplating going from 80 to 100, that really opens the aperture for some larger improvement projects inside of the plants when you have that many years that you're considering the payback for capital projects. And that could be very good for Curtiss-Wright, where we have significant instrumentations and plant control systems that maybe they'll refresh or take from analog to digital in those. So it's -- we have decades of growth in that area.

So one of the bigger areas that investors are hoping for is AP1000s and the orders both in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. And you have talked about an order in 2026 at some point. How is that looking? How is the horse race between whether it's going to come out of the U.S. or Europe looking? And what does that flow path look like after the first order? What do you expect to happen after that in terms of sequencing?

So it's a fantastic business for Curtiss-Wright and it's still a foot race. And I think if you asked me a couple of months ago, I was really thinking the first orders will probably come out of the U.S., but Poland is pushing even more than Bulgaria, I would say, at this point. And so they don't want to lose their places being first in line. So they are really lean in to try and be the leading customer. So -- but just to frame the size of the opportunity, Curtiss-Wright will have on top of the pumps, another significant amount of content. And we think our order book for each AP1000 plant will be $150 million to $160 million. Now over 2/3 of that is driven by the pumps, which is -- and that's the long lead material that will come in first. But in here in the U.S. the Department of Commerce has declared to build the 10 plants, and that was really part of the executive orders, and those will be built on government properties. There's also been a funding stream made available through the Department of Energy to build an additional 10 plants in partnership with utilities, and those will be built at existing sites. Those utilities have been selected and the negotiations are ongoing, and that's all that can be said about that, but it's very much happening. There's very much some leaning for plants being built up in Canada. And then many plants across Eastern Europe that had declared really long before the U.S. and had really reinvigorated our interest in building. I think there was obviously a little bit of energy independence away from Russia more than anything else. But -- so it's a global opportunity. And we're very -- we work very closely with Westinghouse. They know our capacity. I think it will be a steady drumbeat of orders, which is really exciting for Curtiss-Wright. Our capacity is 12 to 16 pumps a year, but we are very much scenario play with Westinghouse. And if more is needed, we will be able to extend our capacity beyond that. And so it's many years of really good revenue for Curtiss-Wright. And that's layering on top of our SMR revenue -- our aftermarket and small amount of SMR work now that AP1000 revenue is just going to lay on top of that and provide a great building block for Curtiss-Wright.

That's 3 to 4 reactors worth per year.

Yes.

And...

I would just say, Myles, for those that are newer to the story, I mean, none of that's in our guidance right now. So if you take a look at the performance and the strong outlook that we have for 2026, the AP 1000 is something that we haven't worked on in quite some time when those orders come in, it's going to be transformational to our nuclear market growth rates.

Good point. Thanks.

And then just so I'm clear on the U.S. portion, your view is there's 10 plants and 10 plants. It's not the same 10 plants.

It's not the same 10 plants. And that was really -- there was some -- that really I don't think became completely clear until really a handful of months ago. And there's other stuff in the U.S. Fermi has declared that they're going to build 4 plants on top of it. Now that's gotten a little less certain. But that is the government's push to get everything moving. And I think as those plants go online successfully, there will be a willingness for more utilities to step forward and be willing to build plants.

Would we expect if you do get orders for that cash flow to be the most impacted in '26 versus revenue and earnings, for example?

Probably. But I mean, it really depends on when it comes in, but we don't think it will be significant revenue in '26, but it could be meaningful to '27. But again, there's a lot of active negotiations with our customer going on. So we're very cautious about speaking to how the contract will look.

But you know we love our cash flow. This year, we're going to set a record low for working capital as a percentage of sales, again, that doesn't contemplate the potential impact of that contract, and we love to negotiate cash in advance on large projects.

I mean -- yes, question. Repeat the question because we don't if there is...

Absolutely.

So the question was really around what gives you the confidence, particularly on the U.S. side. The Poland side, I think, is pretty clear what they're doing. The U.S. side, who are the customers? What gives you the confidence that these 10 and 10 will actually materialize into something real?

Well, I would say, Curtiss-Wright, even though our customers is Westinghouse, and we do have a lot of the knowledge we know through Westinghouse, we're very integrated into the whole nuclear industry. We participate in the NEI boards. We interact with the our team knows Chris right. I mean there's a lot of interactions, and it's with great confidence that the negotiations are active with the 5 utility sites that are going to each have 2 plants. Now I can't tell you what those 5 sites are, that is not public, and they are holding up very close to the vest for whatever reason they're choosing. But things are advancing, and you can just see evidence of the willingness of this NRC to make things successful. And just kind of unrelated connection, but to show the NRC is changing and it's changing in how it works with the industry. The last plant life extension that was awarded happened in 12 months where that was a multiyear process in prior years. So it's -- the world is changing. And I think the momentum for nuclear energy and the energy demands, there's really no choice but for the utilities to build out nuclear power, there's no other way to meet the electricity demand. And I think that's understood.

And I would just offer, there's certainly a lot that's going on there, right, in order to line all of that up. But there's a clear recognition regarding the need for the acceleration of long-lead materials to support that process and ultimate flow and meeting that objective. The conversations that we're having with our customer are very, very active, and we're positive on that this is headed in a good direction.

Maybe to switch gears to the SMR side of the commercial nuclear side. You are under revenue and developing some of the prototypes for a couple of your partners. Give us a picture of where that sits today and then when you think larger orders would actually materialize.

Yes. So it's a great -- as an investor, if you're thinking of where you can invest and benefit from some of the nuclear energy growth. We have the aftermarket today, the AP1000, we believe we're getting orders this year. And the SMRs, the meaningful revenue out of the SMRs is probably more towards the end of the decade and into the 30s, but that is going to grow and layer on. And we've been doing design work with the larger, the 300 megawatt is our focus and up, SMR providers 2022, maybe even late 2021 started doing paid design work. We are pleased to announce that we've moved into prototyping with X-energy this year and that's meaningful because we're getting on to build new things that they test and have their demonstration reactors and that's not to say it's only X-energy that we are doing prototyping with. Some of the other providers, they don't want us to speak publicly about what's going on. For X-energy, they see it as a proof for making Curtiss-Wright talk about the major systems we have and that we are starting to build major systems for the plant. And you take the 6 main 300-megawatt providers, Curtiss-Wright is targeting anywhere from $20 million to $120 million on those reactors. And I think we're well on track to accomplish that with X-energy. We're way up at the top end towards $120 million. I think Rolls-Royce will also be in that vicinity. And we feel really good. I think Rolls-Royce is going to have a dominant SMR position in Europe. And X-energy is -- there's going to be competition in the U.S. I don't think there would just be one winner in any way, shape or form. But I think the great thing is whichever ones get built, we're on track to really get meaningful revenue. And I think that will come in the 2030s. But between here and then, there's a whole lot of good nuclear goodness for Curtiss-Wright.

Maybe the last one on capital allocation. How is the M&A pipeline today? In the last couple of years, you sort of leaned into it and then market wasn't there and you repurchased shares effectively. How is it looking today? And maybe there was a deal today with Parker bought CIRCOR. Curious what you thought about that deal.

Yes. So I mean, M&A does remain our top priority. But as we always say, top priority doesn't mean we lower our principles for what we would choose to acquire. And so there's very much a strategic fit and a financial fit. And we looked at a lot of books in '25, very much aware of the transaction that was announced today. And we've talked in the strategic fit, unique IP, high barriers to entry, but the financial fit also needs to be there, and it was a pretty expensive deal. But that's the market right now. But Chris, I don't know if you want to talk about how we think about things financially, that might be a good closer.

So you know our cash flow is very strong. I mean this year, we're guiding $580 million to $600 million of free cash flow. We've been generating above 105% free cash flow conversion while accelerating our CapEx by more than 30% in the past 2 years and again this year. So we're putting the right infrastructure in place to accommodate growth in the future. But we still have a lot of cash flow since we began the pivot to growth, we've put $2.5 billion towards capital allocation, whether that's returning capital to shareholders buying acquisitions or reinvesting back into the business. And we feel very empowered as we then move forward that we're going to be able to continue to make those right investments, find the right acquisitions. to return capital to shareholders as we have done thoughtfully. And I'll also note that while we've bought back a lot of stock, we've also increased our dividend. This is the 10th consecutive year we increased it to align with sales growth again this year. But we maybe consider that the icing on the cake.

Great. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you.