Innovative Aerosystems, Inc. ($ISSC)

Greetings. Welcome to Innovative Aerosystems Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Paul Bartolai, partner at Vallum Advisors. Thank you, Paul. You may now begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Innovative Aerosystems Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Results Conference Call. Leading the call today are our CEO, Shahram Askarpour; and CFO, Jeff DiGiovanni. This morning, we issued a press release detailing our fiscal 2026 second quarter operational and financial results. This release is publicly available in the Investor Relations section of our corporate website at www.iascorp.com. I would like to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results could differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our latest reports filed with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of all historical non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on this call in the press release issued this morning. Today's call will begin with prepared remarks from Shahram, who'll provide a review of our recent business performance and an update on our strategic framework, followed by a financial update from Jeff. At the conclusion of these prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Shahram.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Our positive business momentum carried into the second quarter as we reported another strong result highlighted by significant organic growth in our commercial aerospace and business aviation markets, continued strength in bookings, strong margin realization and efficient free cash flow conversion. We were able to deliver second quarter modest organic growth, driven by growth of approximately 50% in our commercial and business aviation markets despite an unfavorable comparison to the second quarter of 2025. As a reminder, we faced an unfavorable comparison to last year due to the transition of the F-16 manufacturing to our facility in Exton. Our F-16 revenues in the second quarter of 2025 were elevated as deliveries to Lockheed were accelerated to buffer them during the transition-related manufacturing hiatus, resulting in a $7 million year-over-year decline in F-16 revenues. We anticipated lower F-16 revenues due to the IPDG-required approvals and, therefore, shifted the mix of our operation to be more commercial-centric in our commercial aftermarket sales, together with increasing volumes in business aviation. We continue to make important progress under our IA Next long-term value creation strategy during the second quarter, highlighted by 3 new acquisitions during the quarter that further expand our base of recurring high-value aftermarket and OEM revenue across legacy and next-generation aviation platforms. Together, these transactions are projected to contribute $10 million in annual revenue with a blended gross margin profile of approximately 50%, putting us another step closer to delivering on our $250 million annual revenue target. In February, we acquired the S-TEC autopilot product line from Moog. This was an important transaction as it brought us an established autopilot solution to integrate into our avionics cockpit solution. This was one of the key products missing in our integrated cockpit avionics platform. We could have built this on our own, but the solution from Moog gives us a recognized and trusted product. This was followed in March with the acquisition of several product lines from Honeywell. In addition to navigation radios, multifunction displays, transponder technologies and power generation, this transaction importantly included additional autopilot solutions. Coupled with the Moog autopilot, together, these autopilot platforms significantly enhance our integrated cockpit solution and accelerate our ability to deliver autonomous solutions to our customers for both the military and commercial markets. In aggregate, the autopilot product line acquisitions recently made established us as a major supplier of aircraft autopilots with certified and fielded solutions that range from small general aviation aircraft all the way to large Part 25 platforms, including helicopters for both military and commercial markets. These solutions will also be integrated into our UMS platform and Liberty Flight Deck. Our full suite of avionics solutions now include advanced flight deck and mission systems, precise flight and navigation computers, autothrottles, flight control computers, mission computers, navigation and communication radios, transponders, audio systems, electrical power generation systems and proprietary software technologies targeting autonomous flight. This is an important milestone fulfilling the company's ongoing strategy to build a comprehensive avionics ecosystem that bridges legacy platform sustainment with next-generation capability development, ensuring operators can maximize aircraft availability, safety and long-term value. As with the past transactions, these acquisitions expand our reach into new customers and platforms as well as provide an opportunity to reengineer these products and integrate them into our existing solutions to offer to new potential customers in military, business aviation and commercial air transport sectors. Our acquisition funnel remains robust, and we see additional opportunities as we continue to execute on our strategic growth initiatives. This quarter provided clear evidence that our strategy is working as we saw the benefits of both acquisitions and strong organic growth driven by internal investments in new product development. We will remain disciplined in our approach, continuing to focus on transactions and investments that advance our strategic objectives. I also wanted to provide a quick update on the integration of our products in support of the F-16 program. As we discussed last quarter, we completed all required recertifications and resumed full-scale production of the digital flight control computer at our Exton facility. The recertification and resumption of production of the improved programmable display generator is also now complete. We are excited to be fully up and running on these products, and we continue to be optimistic regarding the long-term growth potential of this platform. The F-16 remains a critical asset for our military as well as many of our allies around the world. Additionally, we remain encouraged by the growth potential for our broader defense business as we experienced significant level of inquiries for cockpit upgrades and new aircraft platforms. As such, in the current political climate, we are even more encouraged by the long runway of growth we see ahead. We have made significant investments to position our business as a mission-critical partner with the defense supply chain and believe that we stand to benefit given the strong backdrop for defense spending. At a product level, we continue to move closer to delivering the new version of our UMS platform. We expect deliveries to ramp up through the year and remain excited for the potential of our new UMS platform and our Liberty Flight Deck. We continue to make significant investments in internal research and development as we continue to advance our progress towards autonomous flight through our next-generation Flight Deck Liberty, which employs our UMS system. Our next-generation UMS system is an advanced aircraft systems management platform designed to monitor and control multiple aircraft subsystems from flight controls to environmental and power systems in a unified, intelligent architecture. In summary, we were pleased with our strong second quarter results that further built on our recent strong performance. We remain encouraged by the growth outlook for our business, supported by strength across our key end markets, momentum for our new products and an active acquisition pipeline. We remain committed to our strategic priorities with an ongoing focus on maximizing long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff for his prepared remarks.

Thank you, Shahram, and good morning to all those joining us. Today, I will provide a high-level overview of our second quarter performance, including a discussion of working capital, our balance sheet and our liquidity profile at quarter end and conclude with comments on our outlook for the business, which remains positive given current demand conditions. We generated net revenues of $22.4 million in the second quarter, up 2% from the second quarter last year despite the unfavorable comparison given the elevated F-16 revenues during the second quarter last year, as Shahram discussed. We anticipated a lower F-16 revenues and were able to offset the $7 million headwind by shifting our operations to be more commercial and business aviation centric, which increased roughly 50% on an organic basis. We've now completed all certifications and testing related to the digital flight control computer and the display generator in support of the F-16 program at our Exton facility. We expect manufacturing levels to normalize to support ongoing shipment levels in the third quarter of 2026. Product sales were $14.3 million during the second quarter, up from $13.2 million during the same period last year as stronger volumes of aftermarket products, upgrades to the commercial market and sales to the business aviation market more than offset the decline in the F-16 revenues. Service revenues was $8.1 million, down modestly from $8.8 million in the same period last year due to a decline of nearly $3 million in F-16 service revenues. This was partially offset by growth in the service volumes related to the IRUs and radio product lines. Gross profit was $11.4 million during the second quarter, up 1.5% from the same period last year. The improvement was driven by revenue growth and a favorable mix within the commercial aftermarket business, partially offset by an unfavorable comparison to last year's second quarter given the timing of expense recognition related to the F-16 transaction. As we've discussed previously, we experienced some lumpiness in the timing of expense recognition during the manufacturing transition from Honeywell that impacted our quarterly results. As a result, our second quarter gross margin was 51.1%, down modestly compared to 51.4% last year given the difficult comparison. We continue to expect our gross margins to be in the mid-40% range over the long term with some quarterly fluctuations based on mix. As our military business ramps back up, which has lower gross margins, we would expect our gross margins to normalize. However, as we have discussed, our military business has similar EBITDA margins to our other businesses given a lower SG&A burden. Operating expense during the second quarter of 2026 was $6.5 million, an increase of -- from $4.3 million during the same period last year. The increase in operating expenses reflects investments in R&D in support of growth initiatives as well as onetime acquisition-related costs associated with the 3 recent acquisitions. Net income was $3.4 million or $0.19 per diluted share during the second quarter compared to net income of $5.3 million or $0.30 per share in the second quarter of last year. The effective tax rate was 22.6% during the second quarter, up from 19.2% during the same period last year due to the our overall growth in the business. Adjusted net income, which includes the same adjustments made to adjusted EBITDA in addition to an adjustment for the amortization of acquired intangibles was $4.8 million for the quarter as compared to $5.7 million last year. Adjusted earnings per diluted share was $0.27 versus $0.32 last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.8 million during the second quarter, down from $7.7 million in the second quarter of last year due to growth investments and timing of expense recognition related to the F-16 transition in the prior year period. Our R&D investments during the second quarter were up roughly $1 million versus the second quarter last year. And for the remainder of the fiscal year, we continue to expect to increase R&D spending to support our growth initiatives. Moving on to backlog. New orders in the second quarter of fiscal 2026 were $24.7 million and backlog as of March 31 was approximately $87 million and an increase of approximately $7 million over the comparable period. Backlog represents the value of contracts and purchase orders less the revenue recognized to date on those contracts and purchase orders. The backlog includes committed purchases and excludes potential sole-source production orders from products developed under the company's engineering development contracts programs. Now turning to cash flow. During the first half of 2026, cash flow from operations was $10.5 million compared to $3.1 million in the year ago comparable period, driven by our solid operating results and financial discipline. Capital expenditures during the first 6 months of 2026 were $2.7 million versus $1.8 million for the year ago period. Free cash flow was $7.7 million during the first half, up from $1.3 million in the previous year. Our strong free cash flow reflects the limited capital needed to grow our business, which results in strong free cash flow conversion. At the end of the second quarter 2026, we had total debt of $55.1 million and cash and cash equivalents of $6.8 million, resulting in net debt of $48.3 million. Net debt increased $22.2 million from the year ago period despite over $35 million used for acquisitions and capital expenditures in support of the company's growth initiatives, reflecting strong operating results and strong free cash flow conversion. As of March 31, 2026, we had total cash and availability under our credit line of approximately $49.8 million. Our net leverage at the end of the quarter was 1.7x despite the recent acquisitions, our modest leverage, combined with availability under our expanded credit facility gives us significant financial flexibility to continue executing on our strategic initiatives. Before we move into our Q&A, I'd like to provide a current -- our current thoughts around the outlook for the remainder of the fiscal 2026. As previously disclosed, we continue to expect organic revenue growth to be essentially flat year-over-year given the pull-forward of revenue from 2026 into 2025 related to the F-16 production and service revenue. As we look ahead, we expect third quarter revenues to be in the range of $24 million to $26 million. That completes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready for the question-and-answer portion of our call.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Robert Brooks with Northland Capital.

I thought it was interesting in the commentary that you shifted operational mix away from F-16 to more commercial aftermarket business aviation. Just wanted to hear more discussion on that. The verbiage makes it seem like you -- like the verbiage makes it seem like it was one or the other. And like you kind of [ written ] you have a limiting capacity of being able to execute on F-16 orders in commercial and aftermarket. But I don't think that's the case. So I just wanted to unpack that a little bit more by what you have?

Yes. Thank you, Bobby. So effectively, we -- the approval of Lockheed for the IPDG got us to kind of the -- what was getting us to the last couple of weeks of the quarter. There's over 80 hours of testing that goes for these boxes each before we ship them. And there wasn't much we could ship when you only had a few weeks left to the end of the quarter. So in anticipation for that, we did -- we focused the production more towards the commercial deliveries that we were doing. If we would have shipped more F-16 if the thing would have happened a little bit earlier like early in the quarter. But it wasn't either/or situation. We have capacity here well over the numbers that we're delivering right now with the infrastructure that we have. It was just the way the F-16 product lines, the amount of time it takes at the end before we can test them and ship them, that would have made it difficult to ship a lot of F-16. In previous quarter, we shipped -- last year, we did about -- roughly about $10 million of F-16 product lines due to all the pull-ins. On average, we think every quarter, the F-16 is going to be somewhere between $3 million to $5 million a quarter going forward. And I think this quarter, we just did over $3 million. And so that was kind of a little bit of a shift in the -- going from $10 million to $3 million, and we had to kind of fill in for it.

Got it. That's helpful. And that's -- especially the clarity on the -- you had the capacity to execute on both opportunities. Shifting gears to the acquisitions that you've done in the quarter, you kind of started -- as you mentioned in the prepared remarks, you started to build a pretty unique portfolio. I was just curious to hear what has the customer reception been? Have you got an inbound after announcing these deals? Just wanted to hear what -- how customer conversations have evolved? Have new customers came into the fold because of the platform that you're accumulating? Just more color on that.

Sure. So I'll start with the acquisition we did from Moog. To the best of our understanding, their strategic objectives had shifted over time. The S-TEC product lines that they had acquired a while ago, they were kind of moving away from those product lines, their autopilot solutions that they offer in the market are more integrated into their cockpits. So they wanted to divest these product lines because they weren't really supporting the customer base with it. After we did the acquisition, we've had significant inquiries from all over the world for people that want to buy these autopilot. This has been going on. These product lines are well established. S-TEC autopilot is well established in the general aviation and business aviation markets. So it was very positive. We got a lot of inquiries, and we're in the process of building a backlog so we can deliver on these product lines to the market. The Honeywell product lines that we got, there is OEM contents in that. I think there's still supply -- we still supply some of these to Pilatus as well as Boeing. And so that was very positive because their experience hadn't been that great with the parts of Honeywell that produce these equipment. So we've gained a fair amount of momentum here, especially acquiring this many lines of autopilot product lines. We have acquired from Honeywell, we got the AeroCruze product line that goes in all the lower-end general aviation airplanes. And that's -- that's a good revenue generator that continues to do that. But also the next-generation that we got, which was the KFC 230, which is the new digital autopilot as well as KFC 325, which was the older generation of autopilots. Those are installed in over tens of thousands of aircraft, the KFC 325. So there is revenue associated with maintaining and upgrading those things. The KFC 230 is going to be the workhorse for our own autopilot. It's a very capable digital autopilot that Honeywell developed like 3, 4 years ago. And so, in aggregate, it's put us in a position where we -- I would say we're probably the largest autopilot suppliers right now in the market covering the spectrum of aircraft.

That's very exciting to hear. And just last one for me is, could you compare -- can you compare your acquisition pipeline today comparatively to when you reported 1Q results? And then could you just speak towards your appetite for more, obviously, $33 million in acquisitions over the past 2 months is a healthy chunk. Do you want to get those integrated first before looking for more? Just thoughts there.

So we've -- obviously, we've expanded our engineering group as well as contracts and program management group to be able to more easily transfer these technologies into our organizations and do a build. We are at a position now where we're still looking at acquisitions. We've got the dry powder to go do that. Obviously, product line acquisitions are good, but we would only do that if they're strategic to us. We're also looking at acquiring businesses that complement us. And that's an active -- we've got a pretty active pipeline. And we will continue to evaluate. And if we find things that are of interest to us and they're profitable and the good businesses, we will acquire them.

Congrats on a good quarter.

Our next questions are from the line of Greg Palm with Craig-Hallum.

I'm curious, Shahram, you talked a little bit about the defense market and some of the opportunities that may or may not be emerging in light of the positive backdrop. Maybe you can expand a little bit on kind of what you're seeing pipeline and kind of what you're excited about over the next couple of years?

Yes. I mean in terms of the -- I mean -- I mean, you see what the news is out there and the investment that our government is planning to make in the defense area. And there's a lot of aging aircraft that reside in our -- within the DoD and the funding they're making available to do upgrades to all of these airplanes. There is very, very large programs out there, things like the KC-135, there is -- which is -- there's hundreds of those, about 600 of them out there. So there's a lot of inquiries going on right now. But also we talked about this over a year ago. When we did the acquisition on the F-16, it put us at the table with the decision makers at Lockheed Martin. They're very impressed with the way we've integrated and delivering these equipment to them. And that has opened a lot of new doors for us. So we're discussing a lot of other unrelated to F-16 programs as well as upgrades for the F-16 looking into the future. So we see a lot of positive feedback that we've had on how we executed on integration of the defense contracting organization into our organization. And we're upbeat about the future revenues we're going to get from it.

Yes. Okay. That sounds good. And as it relates to F-16, and maybe you can tie this out to what's baked into the guide for the current quarter, but does it assume -- I assume it's probably some sequential improvement in F-16, but does it imply kind of a normalization of revenues? Or are we still in a ramp-up phase? And if that's not the case, when does F-16 get to more of a normalized run rate?

I think we're there now. Moving forward, like I said, we're looking at about nominally $3 million to $5 million F-16 business a quarter. It's -- again, there is so much you can produce on that product line in a quarter because of the amount of time it takes to put these boxes through the required testing. And once that -- we are up and running now, that's kind of going to be the run rate for it.

Okay. I guess last one in light of kind of a pickup in some recent acquisition activity, what's your appetite going forward? And how does the pipeline specifically look versus maybe previous quarters?

Actually, pipeline looks very good. It's -- Honeywell is obviously, they're splitting the company at end of this quarter. So for this quarter, we haven't seen any product divestitures. That was at least related to us. But I'm pretty sure once that's over with, they will divest additional product lines that they've indicated planning to do so. Some of those are of interest to us. But we've now obviously opened up our aperture quite a lot. And we're looking at a lot of other companies' divestitures. And some of them are just product lines, some of them are divisions, which we find interesting, and we're looking at those.

Our next questions are from the line of Sergey Glinyanov with Freedom Brokers.

so many talks about F-16 program and now they are aware of redesign issues. Just wondering, could it impact on your revenue next couple of quarters or maybe it doesn't matter what's happening with the program overall?

Sorry, can you repeat that?

Yes, sure. So we are aware of F-16 redesign issues. Could this impact on your revenue next couple of quarters? Or it doesn't matter what's happening in this program overall and you can deliver anyway your products?

So this is Jeff. What I think you're asking is does that impact the fluctuation in the F-16 is going to go forward. And the answer to that is right now, it's up and running, the IPDG line is up and running. And that's where we're expecting a roughly $3 million to $5 million on a quarterly basis because, again, the amount of time to test the equipment in the chambers, it's 80 hours. So that takes just the amount of time how much we can deliver. The backlog is still there for the -- keep that in mind for the F-16. So there's still a plenty amount of backlog to be built over the next few years.

Okay. Got it. Maybe I missed some point about your recent acquisitions. So maybe you can put some color on what portion of revenue will bring these new acquisitions?

Yes. As we said, it's about $10 million a year in revenue for the acquisitions that we just did.

Okay. And the last one is in terms of your acquisition pipeline or recent acquisitions. On your commercial side, do you expect your revenue mix will shift toward products rather than services in the long term?

Yes. And that's an ongoing thing. I think the original acquisitions that we did 3 years ago, it, kind of, increased our services significantly from what it was before. We were doing like roughly about $4 million or $5 million in services, and then it became $25 million in services. But as we've done additional acquisitions and as we are developing our next-generation cockpits and platforms, that mix is changing. As a percentage, our production is getting larger than our -- than the way that the services are growing.

Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to management for closing comments.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for your time and interest in Innovative Aerosystems. Have a great day.

Thanks.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's conference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.