TransDigm Group Incorporated ($TDG)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the TransDigm Group Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mary Hartman, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to TransDigm's Fiscal 2026 second quarter earnings conference call. Presenting on the call this morning are TransDigm's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Lisman; Co-Chief Operating Officer, Joel Reiss; and Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Wynne. Also present for the call today is our Co-Chief Operating Officer, Patrick Murphy. Please visit our website at transdigm.com to obtain a supplemental slide deck and call replay information. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that statements made during this call, which are not historical in fact, are forward-looking statements. For further information about important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's latest filings with the SEC available through the Investors section of our website or at sec.gov. The company would also like to advise you that during the course of the call, we will be referring to EBITDA, specifically EBITDA as defined, adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share, all of which are non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the tables and related footnotes in the earnings release for a presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP measures and applicable reconciliations. I will now turn the call over to Mike.

Good morning. Thanks for calling in today. First, I'll start off with the usual quick overview of our strategy; second, make a few comments about the quarter; and third, discuss our revised fiscal '26 outlook. Then Joel and Sarah will give some additional color on the quarter. To reiterate, we believe we are unique in the industry in both the consistency of our strategy and both good times and bad as well as our steady focus on intrinsic shareholder value creation through all phases of the aerospace cycle. To summarize, here are some of the reasons why we believe this. About 90% of our net sales are generated by unique proprietary products. Most of our EBITDA comes from aftermarket revenues, which generally have significantly higher margins and over any extended period have typically provided relative stability in the downturns. We follow a consistent long-term strategy. First, we own and operate proprietary aerospace businesses with significant aftermarket content. Second, we utilize a simple, well-proven, value-based operating methodology. Third, we have a decentralized organizational structure and a unique compensation system closely aligned with shareholders. Fourth, we acquire businesses that fit this strategy and where we see a clear path to private equity equity-like returns. And lastly, our capital structure and allocation are a key part of our value-creation methodology. Our long-standing goal is to give our shareholders private equity-like returns with the liquidity of a public market. To do this, we stay focused on both the details of value creation as well as careful allocation of our capital. As you saw from our earnings release, we delivered a good quarter. Our Q2 results ran ahead of our expectations, and we once again raised our guidance for the year. During the quarter, we saw solid growth in revenue, both sequentially and compared to the prior year in all 3 of our market channels, commercial OEM, commercial aftermarket and defense. Bookings in the quarter also meaningfully surpassed shipments across all 3 of these market channels. Through February, commercial aerospace market trends have been favorable with takeoffs and landings increasing in the 4% ballpark year-over-year and RPM growth trending in the 4% to 7% range. In March and April, activity took a step back as a result of the conflict in the Middle East with global RPM growth slowing to 2.1% for the month of March and takeoffs and landing cycles dipping into slightly negative territory. However, excluding the Middle East, March RPM growth was 8%, highlighting strong demand in other regions of the world. Time will tell how flight activity is impacted for the remainder of the fiscal year given the current dynamic market environment and evolving situation in the Middle East. To date, we have not seen a significant change in commercial aftermarket ordering activity relative to levels prior to the start of the conflict, including from the Middle Eastern Airlines most directly impact, but we remain cautious here. Ultimately, the impact felt will depend upon the duration of the conflict. Note that we are increasing our commercial aftermarket guidance today despite this market uncertainty. This is to reflect the strong performance seen in our fiscal second quarter and our best gaps at how we will finish the year as we sit here today. As mentioned and as you saw in our results, Commercial aftermarket growth rebounded in Q2 from prior recent quarter growth rates. It was good to see the stronger performance, and it is a reminder of the lumpiness we can at times see in this particular market channel. In the commercial OEM market, Boeing and Airbus are continuing to ramp production rates. Airline demand for new aircraft remains high with backlogs increasing. The OEM production rate recovery to date has been bumpy. We are encouraged by the consistent improvements being made each quarter as well as our bookings pace. Additionally, our defense end market saw a double-digit revenue increase this quarter and also built a sizable amount of backlog that will drive continued growth as we head into the back half of our fiscal 2026 and into fiscal 2027. Our EBITDA as defined margin was 52.6% for the quarter, which includes slightly less than 2 full percentage points of dilution from recent acquisitions. Contributing to the solid Q2 margin performance is the growth in our commercial aftermarket, along with diligent focus on our operating strategy, which is allowing margin performance to expand across all segments. Additionally, improvements in operating margins at our recent acquisitions, Servotronics and Simmonds are running slightly ahead. Next, an update on our capital allocation activities and priorities. Regarding the current M&A activities and pipeline, we continue to actively look for opportunities that fit our model. As usual, the potential targets are mostly in the small and midsize range. As always, we will remain disciplined around our approach to M&A. Additionally, acquisitions are, by their nature, hard to predict. So consistent with the past practice, I will not be saying too much on what is currently active in our M&A funnel. We are pleased to have closed the acquisitions of Jet Parts Engineering and Victor Sierra shortly after the quarter ended. We continue to work towards a closing on Stellant and look forward to owning this business in the not-too-distant future. The capital allocation priorities at TransDigm are unchanged. Our first priority is to reinvest in our businesses; second, to accretive, disciplined M&A; and third, return capital to our shareholders via buybacks or dividends. A fourth option paying down debt seems unlikely at this time, though we do still take this into consideration. We are continually evaluating all of our capital allocation options. Our recent capital allocation actions still leave us with significant liquidity and financial flexibility to meet any likely range of capital requirements or other opportunities in the readily foreseeable future. Pro forma for the announced acquisitions, we have significant M&A firepower and capacity remaining in excess of $10 billion. Moving over to our outlook for fiscal 2026. As noted in our earnings release, we are increasing our full year '26 sales and EBITDA as defined guidance to reflect our strong second quarter results and our current expectations for the remainder of the year. At the midpoint, sales guidance was raised $420 million and EBITDA as defined guidance was raised $210 million. The guidance assumes no additional acquisitions or divestitures and is based on current expectations for continued performance in our primary commercial end markets throughout fiscal 2026. Note that the large majority of this guidance increase is coming from the solid and better-than-expected performance in our base business. With a much smaller portion of the total guidance increase coming from our inclusion of Jet Parts and Victor Sierra now that we officially own both businesses. Our current guidance for fiscal 2026 is as follows and can also be found on Slide 6 in the presentation for today. Note that the pending acquisition of Stellant is excluded from this guidance until the acquisition closes. The midpoint of our fiscal '26 revenue guidance is now $10.36 billion or up approximately 17% over the prior year. In regard to the market channel growth rate assumptions that this revenue guidance is based on, we are now updating the full year market channel assumptions for our 3 primary end markets: commercial OEM, commercial aftermarket and defense to account for the better than originally forecasted results in our first half and current expectations for the second half of our fiscal year. The updated revenue guidance provided today is based on the following market channel growth rate assumptions. We expect commercial OEM revenue growth in the low double digit to mid-teens percentage range. The growth seen here remains dependent on the evolution of the production rates in the commercial OEM environment. We expect commercial aftermarket revenue growth to be in the high single-digit to low double-digit percentage range with this growth dependent upon the dynamic and evolving situation in the Middle East. And lastly, we expect defense revenue growth in the high single-digit percentage range. The midpoint of fiscal 2026 EBITDA defined guidance is now $5.42 billion, were up approximately 14%, with an expected margin of around 52.3%. We are very pleased with our margin performance in the year-to-date period, and we are running ahead of where we thought we'd be. Adjusting for the 2 dilutive factors we discussed last quarter, the margins in our base businesses steadily improved in our second quarter, more than we had expected. As a reminder, the diluted factors are approximately 200 basis points of margin dilution from our recent acquisitions and about 0.5 percentage point to 1 full percentage point from commercial OEM and defense mix headwind. While the margin dilution for the full year from recent acquisitions increased due to the inclusion of Jet Parts and Victor Sierra, the overall dilution remains in the 2% area, plus or minus, due to the slightly better-than-planned performance at Servatronics and Simmonds, each of which we've now owned for more than 6 months. The midpoint of adjusted EPS is now expected to be $39.52. We believe we are well positioned for the second half of our fiscal '26. We'll continue to closely watch how the aerospace and capital markets develop and react accordingly. We're pleased with the company's performance this quarter and our teams remain focused on our value drivers, cost structure and operational excellence. While the current market backdrop as we sit here this morning, is quite a bit less certain, more unpredictable than usual, we'll continue to control what we can control and expect that our disciplined, consistent strategy will deliver the value you have come to expect from us. We look forward to the second half of our fiscal 2026. Before handing the call over to Joel, I'm excited to share 2 recent promotions to EVP. Eric Hilliard has been promoted to EVP of M&A and is now leading our efforts on the acquisition front. Eric has been with TransDigm for over a decade and held leadership roles at 2 of our largest operating units. Most recently, he served as President of our extent Aerospace business, overseeing many product line acquisitions. M&A remains a key pillar of growth for TransDigm, and Eric will continue to fuel this important pipeline. The second promotion to EVP is Mike Carty. Mike joined TransDigm going on 15 years ago and has worked at 5 different TransDigm's operating units, including serving as President at 2, Adams right Aerospace and Electromech technologies. Mike's proven record championing TransDigm's culture and driving value in the organization makes him a great fit for this role. We are always excited to promote from within our organization, demonstrating our commitment to internal talent development and thoughtful succession planning. These are well-earned promotions, and we look forward to Eric and Mike carrying the TransDigm culture going forward. With that, I'll now hand it over to Joel Reiss, our TransDigm Group Co-COO, to review our recent performance and a few other items.

Good morning. I'll start with our typical review of results by key market category. For the remainder of the call, I'll provide commentary on a pro forma basis compared to the prior year period in 2025, that is assuming we own the same mix of businesses in both periods. For reference, the market discussion includes the recent acquisition of Simmonds Precision Products, but excludes the Stellant, Jeff Parts Engineering and Victor Sierra Aviation acquisitions. In the commercial market, we will split our discussion into OEM and aftermarket. Our total commercial OEM revenue increased approximately 12% in Q2 compared with the prior year period. Commercial OEM revenue in the second quarter showed strong growth as we continue supporting higher build rates. Commercial transport OEM revenues, which exclude the business jet submarket were up 19% over the comparable prior year period. As Boeing and Airbus production rates continue to increase, we expect continued strength in the commercial OEM demand. Commercial OEM bookings in the quarter also showed solid growth, compared to the same prior year period, significantly outpacing sales. Commercial transport bookings were up nearly 20% in the second quarter. We are pleased to see consistent growth several quarters in a row for the commercial OEM market. We remain encouraged by the continued progress of both Boeing and Airbus as they ramp their production rates. Our operating units are well positioned to support the higher production rates as they occur. The commercial OEM guidance we are giving today contains what we believe is an appropriate level of risk around the production build rates for the 2026 fiscal year. Our fiscal 2026 commercial OEM revenue guidance range, which as Mike mentioned, is increasing to low double-digit to mid-teens percentage growth range is based on the first half performance and the current outlook in the second half of our fiscal year. Now moving on to our commercial aftermarket business discussion. Total commercial aftermarket revenue increased by approximately 14% compared with the prior year period. This quarter, all submarkets within commercial aftermarket experienced positive growth, our commercial transport aftermarket revenue growth, which excludes our biz jet submarket was up 16%, driven by solid growth in all 4 of the transport submarkets, freight, interiors, engine and passenger. We saw strength in commercial aftermarket transport across most of our operating units. Q2 bookings in commercial aftermarket were also strong, running ahead of our expectations, solidly outpacing sales and supporting the full year growth outlook. Additionally, point of sale at our distributors also grew in double digits on a percentage basis this quarter. We are raising our commercial aftermarket revenue guidance to the high single-digit to low double-digit range supported by strong bookings, a solid book-to-bill ratio and double-digit distribution point-of-sale growth in the quarter. As all of you know, the conflict in the Middle East has increased both oil and jet fuel prices as well as the availability of jet fuel in certain regions. Time will tell how long jet fuel prices remain elevated and what the ultimate impact will be on commercial air traffic. This tree tells us that any effect on the commercial aftermarket will lag a bit, with the amount of lag varying across our operating units given the specific nature of the products of each unit. To date, we have not experienced any meaningful impact. However, we recognize that the uncertainty in the broader market adds risk to our second half. We are cautious and watchful closely monitoring commercial aftermarket business, activity across our companies. Now shifting to our defense market. Defense market revenue, which includes both OEM and aftermarket revenues grew by approximately 11% compared with the prior year period. The past year has been strong for defense, with Q2 delivering another solid quarter. New business wins and elevated demand, both domestically and internationally along with our solid operational performance, by teams were all contributing factors. Q2 defense revenue growth was well distributed across our businesses and customer base. Both OEM and aftermarket components in our defense market were up to the prior year with aftermarket running slightly ahead of OEM. Defense bookings for the quarter increased nicely of year-over-year and outpacing sales for the period. Bookings started the year strong and continue to support our updated full year 2026 defense guidance of high single-digit revenue growth. The current environment is positive for defense spending. As we've said many times before, defense sales and bookings can be lumpy, especially quarter-to-quarter. We are encouraged by recent booking levels and current backlog in our defense market segment and remain confident in our ability to support the increased demand. Beyond our core commercial and defense performance, I want to touch on an exciting moment for our team and space. We were very proud to contribute to the success of the recent Artemis-II mission. TransDigm operating units were present across the spacecraft in addition to our most visible product, which were the 3 reentry parachutes provided by Airborne Systems North America, we also provided a plated insulation from Kirkhill, astronaut restrains from AmSafe, quick disconnects from AdelWiggins, motors from CDA, electronic components from DTC and power-related products for PDC. Now moving on to our value drivers. We continue to see strong success winning new business at our operating units, and I would like to highlight 2 new business program wins from last quarter. Airborne Systems was awarded a multimillion dollar contract for Intuitive systems for a reusable reentry parachute system. This product will support Zephyr, a reusable inorbit manufacturing satellite. In March, DDC was awarded a multimillion dollar contract from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for a series of electronic components, including our Rugged ARIN429-PCi Vezanine cards and multi-protocol avionic cards for their like combat helicopter. These components will be used in their mission computer, digital, video over-corder system, radio altimeter, avionics computing system and integrated communication systems. Now a quick update on our acquisition integration activities. We continue to make good progress at both Servetronics and Simmonds Precision. We are about 2 quarters in our ownership, and we're very pleased by what we are seeing so far. The jet parts in Victor's Sierra acquisitions closed after the quarter end. As we said previously, we are adding 2 solid, well-run growing businesses into the fold with this acquisition. We are excited about both of these businesses and are confident they will be a good fit into our company. I'd like to wrap up by emphasizing how pleased I am with the team's performance through the first half of fiscal 2026. We delivered good results for the shareholders this quarter and executed a solid operational performance. The teams continue to execute on our value drivers, and we look forward to the second half of our fiscal year. Our management teams remain focused on our consistent operating strategy and value drivers, and we're well positioned to convert our strong backlog and bookings in the second half results. With that, I'd like to turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Wynne.

Thanks, Joel, and good morning, everyone. I'll recap financial highlights for the second quarter and then provide some more information on the guidance. First, on organic growth and liquidity. In the second quarter, our organic growth rate was approximately 11%, and all market channels contributed to this growth, as previously discussed by Mike and Joel. On cash and liquidity, free cash flow, which we traditionally defined as EBITDA less cash interest payments, CapEx and cash taxes was approximately $350 million for the quarter. This is lower than our average quarterly free cash flow conversion due to the timing of our interest and tax payments in the quarter. We anticipated this as you may recall, and our Q1 free cash flow came in higher at just under $900 million. For the full fiscal year, we now expect our free cash flow guidance to be closer to $2.5 billion, an increase from the prior guide of $2.4 billion. This guidance includes the post-quarter completion of Jet Parts and Victor Sierra and the interest expense associated with the $1.5 billion debt issuance raised in April in support of the acquisitions and repurchases. Below that free cash flow line, an investment of net working capital consumed approximately $170 million for the quarter. For the full year, we expect working capital to end roughly in line with historical levels as a percentage of sales. We ended the quarter with a sizable cash balance of $3.9 billion, which includes $2 billion of cash from new debt raised in Q1. That debt was proactively raised for the acquisition of Jet Parts Engineering, Victor Sierra, which closed on April 7 following the quarter end. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio ended the quarter just slightly down from the prior quarter at 5.6x. Pro forma for the closing of the acquisitions, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 5.9x. The specific amount of cash we preferred to have on hand there is based on current market conditions. Our current balance and available debt capacity provides ample liquidity to fund pending and future acquisitions through unlikely combination of cash on hand and new debt issuance based on our strategy of operating in the 5 to 7 net debt-to-EBITDA ratio range. Our net debt-to-EBITDA target range also preserves plenty of capacity for additional acquisitions should opportunities arise along with other capital deployment options. Regarding our debt and our capital allocation strategy, is to both proactively and prudently manage our debt maturity steps by keeping near-term maturities well extended. In addition, approximately 75% of [ $33.7 billion ] gross debt balances fixed through fiscal 2029. This is achieved through a combination of fixed rate notes, interest rate swaps, caps and collars. This provides us plenty of protection at least in the immediate term. Our EBITDA to interest expense coverage ratio ended the quarter at 3x, which provides us a comfortable cushion versus our target range of 2 to 3x. Additionally, during Q2 continuing into the first week of April, we opportunistically deployed about $800 million of capital via open market repurchases of our common stock. This equates to approximately 670,000 shares at an average purchase price of below $1,200 per share. Including our Q1 repurchase activity, these recent repurchases bring the total amount of stock buybacks in the year-to-date period of $950 million. These share repurchases are grounded in the same targeted returns criteria we have consistently applied over the years and expect this will meet or exceed our long-term return objectives. We continue to seek the best opportunities for providing value to our shareholders through our capital allocation strategy. We think we remain in good position with adequate flexibility to continue to pursue M&A opportunities or return cash to our shareholders via share buybacks and/or additional dividends during the course of fiscal '26. With that, I'll hand it back to Mary Hartman, our Director of Investor Relations.

Before we open the line for Q&A, I'd like to ask everyone in the queue to consider your fellow analysts, and ask 1 question only so we can get to as many people as possible. Operator, can you please open the line?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ken Herbert with RBC.

Maybe, Mike, just to kick it off, you obviously went through a lot of detail in what you've seen or not seen so far in response to the higher fuel prices and airlines behavior regarding the aftermarket. But just wanted to follow up on your comment on lag as you think about this. If we are in a situation where crude remains elevated, just how would you expect that to flow through your business? It sounds like you're not seeing much risk in '26, but how do we think about this into '27? And maybe what could the potential downside be? Or how are you thinking about this today?

This is Joel. So in -- about half of our can shipments in any quarter should in the same quarter. And so the fact that we're not seeing a significant impact in April gives us a level of confidence in Q3. Obviously, as it rolls forward, we've got less in the backlog at each quarter. As we look at it, the Middle East today is somewhere in the 6% to 10% range as you look at our series of data. And we haven't seen the impact yet. We know it will come in terms of the rest of the world. Engine business has continued to be strong. And as of today, I don't -- I think we've provided good confidence in the our guidance by taking the number up for the balance of the year. We will talk about '27 until we release the guidance next year.

Our next question PAUSE comes from the line of Scott Mikus with Melius Research.

Very nice results. I think this was your highest pro forma organic growth rate in the commercial aftermarket since early 2024. I mean you mentioned all submarkets grew. I'm just curious, was there any strength, normally strong sales in any particular submarket like a rebound in interiors? Or was it kind of channel inventories normalizing?

So I said engine and passenger, which are our 2 largest submarkets, were both strong. All of them were favorable. But those were the 2 that were to highlight. Just looking through the op units, I don't think there was any significant rebounding. We didn't have the headwind that we had highlighted, I think, the last couple of quarters of some destocking that had happened. So that helped us out, but it was good across the board.

Our next question comes from the line of Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs.

Just one follow-up there. Can we sort of feel like we're at the end of this channel destock if the channel bought at the same rate as the total or do you still not know for sure? And then could you talk about where margins go beyond this year because there's obviously some pressure on the margin this year as you bring in some newly acquired revenue. But a lot of times in your history when you have newly acquired revenue, it's initially dilutive to the margin, but then you have faster than normal margin expansion in the medium term beyond that as you are able to gain a lot of value from what you acquired, is there a way to think about where the margins go, '27, '28 versus last year or what the expansion can look like '27, '28?

I'll take the first part of your question. So just a quick reminder, roughly 75% of our camp shipments go direct to an airline or through an OEM to the airline. 25% roughly is what goes through our distribution partners. Yes. I don't think you're going to hear the destocking piece inventory for us in the distribution space was up a little bit over Q1, but not significantly with strong POS of that, I think, is a good indicator for us as we look at it going forward. So in terms of how much inventory is in the actual channel, you never get the feedback of how much airline you're holding. But we're not hearing anything anecdotally that would lead us to believe that, that is a significant either headwind or tailwind.

Yes. Noah, as Joel said, the big driver on the CAM growth was strong pull-through in the 75% of our CAM that goes direct. So it was nice to see that this quarter, and that's what drove it. The second part of your question on the EBITDA margins from here and just where they go, I'll take that one. I think going forward, you sort of -- you know what we target here, and it's the same playbook we work with our op units. We expect sequential improvement on a same-store sales basis, apples-to-apples business mix of, call it, 1 percentage point to maybe 1 percentage point and half with margin improvement year-over-year. And that same expectation historically is what we deploy going forward as well. Obviously, there will be some noise as we finish out this year and next year due to the acquisition dilution because we have more coming into the fold than we typically would have, and that will let us down. But once you walk the starting stores, if you will, the expectation across [ 55 going on 56 of ] our OP units is margin improvement year-over-year in the range I sort of mentioned. And I think that if you're trying to come up with an assumption to build into a model, that's sort of the rate of improvement we'd expect going forward. You could do maybe towards the high end of that range as more acquisitions come into the fold, we'll see. We'll give the 2027 guidance as we give it, but the historical framework still holds on the future margin improvement.

Our next question comes from the line of David Strauss with Wells Fargo.

Mike, on the previous call, you talked about how your aftermarket estimates lagged the peer group by about 5 to 6 points because of your distribution exposure and less relative engine exposure. How do you see that gap closing going forward, the time frame-wise, what do you think about where you're growing in line to potentially above your peer group average on the aftermarket side?

No, I think it's hard to say exactly how things progress from here with regard to commercial aftermarket, given what's going on in the broader environment. Generally speaking though, if you go back the last quarter, we talked about the 5 to 6 percentage points of lag coming half from engine and then half just from some noise in the distribution channel with inventory levels. On the first piece with engines, we'll see where that goes. As Joel referenced, our engine businesses are growing quite nicely towards the higher end of the range across our submarkets. So it's good to see that, and we are benefiting from the broader growth trends in Engine. On the second piece with regard to the inventory and the channel position, most of that noise is behind us. That will go away going forward. So instead of it -- the headwind that presented in the past should be more of a tailwind. So going forward, that's sort of the framework for us as we round out the balance of this year and head into next year.

Our next question comes from the line of Scott Deuschle with Deutsche Bank.

Joel, could you share an update in terms of what you're seeing with respect to your own supply chain performance? And then more specifically, are there any parts of your supply chain where you're seeing meaningful extensions in lead times or your supplier lead times pretty stable for most of these subsidiaries?

Yes. I think right now, I think the supply chain has largely kind of returned to where it was pre-COVID. We had our business unit meetings a couple of weeks ago where we sit with 50 of our 50-plus op units. I don't think anybody highlighted a core issue or a supply chain was affecting our businesses are performing into the 90-plus percent range in the [ cam ] space. I mean we're very high 90% range, close to not quite 100, but high 90s. I think for the vast majority, supply chain has returned to normal, you always are going to have subsuppliers who fall down. But that was not something we heard a lot of. So I think we're -- I can't use that as an excuse for our lack of performance if that was to happen. So good performance by our suppliers.

Our next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies.

Great quarter, Mike. Maybe just addressing the aftermarket issue. Your aftermarket was really good in the quarter, but there's a spare thesis around all the aftermarket suppliers that it will be difficult in 2027. You raised the '26 aftermarket guidance to low double digits. Maybe if you could just talk about what underlying assumptions you've built with that regard in place in terms of the macro environment, whether it's retirement. Can you give us a little bit more detail there?

So in terms of -- for the balance of the year, we don't provide any specific guidance to operating units. We do a bottoms-up forecast. So each of our operating units takes a look at their own unique position in the market, their inventory, what they're hearing from their customers and that becomes the -- our guidance based on what we see. Engine performance -- engine businesses continue to have high level of confidence in what they're seeing, not a lot of open slots in the MRO space. Our passenger businesses, which kind of lagged a little bit last year had been doing far better this year than last year. And I think that's certainly part of the reason for the better growth this year. But beyond that, the result of our guidance is really just based around the confidence that our operating units and the good solid bookings quarter that we had.

And Sheila, just one quick thing to add. I would say, too, we'll see how this conflict and market disruption develops in time. But the vast majority historically of disruptions of this type have been pretty sharp and then it corrects pretty quickly on the other side of it. There's no kind of permanent demand disruption. So we'll see how -- or sorry, demand destruction. So we'll see how the current conflict in the Middle East goes out and the impact it has, but I'd expect a sharp correction on the other side of it once things are resolved.

Our next question comes from the line of Myles Walton with Wolfe Research.

The first clarification in the question. Of the $210 million EBITDA raise is about $50 million of that from the PMA acquisitions that have closed. And then more of the question, in terms of that sequential margin for EBITDA from -- in 2Q from 1Q, it was a touch down, and I'm curious if you looked at that and had sort of thoughts on why that was. It looked like maybe there was slightly more acquisition contribution that was perhaps a drag. But if you have better color.

Yes. Miles, it's Mike. First on the Jet Parts and Victor Sierra, we've not provided exactly a breakout in the past just on what's coming from the acquisitions in terms of the guidance rates versus performance of the base business. But rough justice, the large majority of the increase as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, came from better performance in our base businesses. That's what's driving the bulk of the guidance raise. And then a smaller amount came from Jet Parts and Victor Sierra in the year. But 70%, 80%, the vast majority of it, again, came from better performance in the base businesses. Second part of your question on the margin change and just the delta quarter-over-quarter. I think we went from something like 52.4% last quarter to 52.6%, this quarter in our second quarter. And a couple of puts and takes and some movement here. Obviously, first, with 53 businesses, there's some noise and variability in sequential quarters that happens from time to time. We saw that this quarter. Second, we weighted up slightly in Q2 from the better commercial aftermarket versus expectations. So that probably helped us to the upside. And then obviously, the commercial OEM to third piece sort of grew nicely too, and that went against us the opposite way and probably weighted us back down a little bit. So you rack it all together and we ticked up a bit by 0.2 point and there's just some -- a little bit of noise because of those 3 factors, but still good to see the improvement on a quarter-over-quarter sequential basis.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Goldie with BMO Capital Markets.

How have the customer conversations and the tone of those conversations evolve as the war has persisted? And has there been any notable variation across the geographies?

Of the EVPs that I've talked to and [indiscernible] talked to, [indiscernible] hearing anything dramatic. Certainly, the Middle East carriers are -- I mean they're significantly impacted their RPKs are down 50-plus percent. So certainly, their behavior is probably a little bit different. I don't think we're hearing anything dramatically different from other business -- from other airlines outside of the Middle East today.

Our next question comes from the line of Peter Arment with Baird.

Nice results. Mike or Joel, maybe could you comment -- you gave us some comments on the individual verticals on commercial aftermarket. But obviously, we've seen some major disruption on the freight side of things, and I know that can be a head fake on overall results. But just any comment on freight and historically how that market channel has done or when you think about your operations going forward?

So [indiscernible] is one of our smaller submarkets. I would say of the submarkets, it was the one that lagged the most. It still had double-digit growth, and we saw a little bit of slowdown in POS, but at the same time, our distributor partners had higher bookings than what they had the previous quarter. So freight right now seems to be tracking along with what we'd expect. It's still better than double-digit growth. But admittedly, it's not at the same level that the engine and passenger submarkets are driving it.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Akers with BNP Paribas.

I wanted to ask about aircraft retirement and how you sort of think of that? I mean has been pretty low, but conceivably, the fuel costs stay high, we start to deliver more airplanes. Maybe we see a bit of a pickup there. So just curious how you're thinking about your exposure to some of those older aircraft maybe closer to retirement and just sort of how do you think the business performs through that?

Yes, Matt, it's Mike. We'll obviously see how this develops over time. To date, there hasn't been any kind of spike in the retirement rate. It's actually below the historical average by I think about 0.5 percentage point or so. So no big spike yet. As we've said in the past, when it comes to retirements and the impact of USM on our businesses, we really don't see much of an impact here. We've not historically when the retirement rate has picked up. A lot of that is just because of the price points of our products. They tend to be generally quite a bit below what folks target the part out shops target that is for USM. So we've historically not seen much of an impact. We don't take comfort and get complacent in that, though, we're out there just to making sure, obviously, that nothing has changed, especially as our mix of businesses has changed a bit to via acquisitions, but we don't expect a huge impact here from retirements if there was a slight uptick.

Our next question comes from the line of Sebastian Rivera with Stifel.

This is Sebastian on for Jon Siegmann today. A lot of ground already covered here, but would love to maybe just double-click on the guidance raise. I appreciate the color that I was kind of given already. But if you could maybe provide any color on how you're looking at the combined growth profile for JP, DSA in 2026, That would be super helpful.

Sure. It's Mike. These are great businesses. We're excited to own them. We're in the very early innings. We're about a month in. So still assessing the businesses, working with the teams, but we're obviously very optimistic about the growth trend here for both companies. They operate in the PMA space. This is a good submarket within commercial aftermarket. It's growing nicely. It's not explosive growth, but it's growth that's a little bit above trend for that overall space. So we're excited to now own both businesses and be able to take advantage of that and continue the trend up into the right for both Jet Parts and Victor Sierra expanding their footprint and the work they do with the airlines and their end customers.

Our next question comes from the line of Gautam Khanna with TD Cowen Securities.

Two questions and they're quick. One, any evidence in the discretionary aftermarket is slowing anywhere. And if you could just characterize how big that is as a percentage of your aftermarket? And just quickly on the M&A pipeline, is it -- are you seeing a good mix of both aerospace and defense-oriented firms? Or is it concentrated one way or the other?

So we haven't provided before any kind of split between discretionary, nondiscretionary work. What I would say is, I don't believe we've seen any material shift though in either area. Q2 bookings were our all-time high in terms of CAM bookings, and we saw good solid growth across the board. And there was nothing that I heard at our meeting a week or so ago that would have led me to have a different view as of today.

Gautam, it's Mike. On the second part of your question on M&A, I'd say we're seeing a good mix of both. Most of the companies we come across have a mix of both. Obviously, I think you know the bias from our end would be to buy more commercial rather than defense. That remains the case going forward. But we look at both. We're seeing a good mix of both [indiscernible] and it's not necessarily tilting one way or the other. Active mostly is the small to midsize range too, as we said in the prepared remarks.

Thank you. This concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mary Hartman for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today. This concludes the call. We appreciate your time, and have a good rest of your day.

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.