Ducommun Inc (DCO) 2014 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first-quarter 2014 Ducommun earnings conference call. My name is Britney and I will be the operator for today. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes.

I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today, Chris Witty. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you and welcome to Ducommun's first-quarter conference call. With me today is Tony Reardon, Chairman and CEO, and Joe Bellino, Vice President, CFO, and Treasurer.

I would now like to provide a brief Safe Harbor statement. This conference call may include forward-looking statements that represent the Company's expectations and beliefs concerning future events that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause the Company's actual performance to be materially different from the performance indicated or implied by such statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this conference call are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct.

Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations are disclosed in this conference call and in the Company's annual report and Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements. Unless otherwise required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, after the date of this conference call.

I would like to turn it over now to Tony Reardon for a review of the operating results. Tony?

Thank you, Chris; and thank you, everyone, for joining us today on our first earnings call for fiscal 2014. I'll begin by providing an overview of the quarter including some market color, after which I will turn the call over to Joe Bellino to go over our financial results in detail.

But first, let me set the stage for what we are doing to improve our Company. We spent the last 12 months refocusing Ducommun into strategic business units, aligning internal capabilities and synergies to sharpen our focus on increased profitability and delivering innovative solutions to our customers.

At the same time, we have rebranded the Company as One Ducommun and have been going to the market as an integrated, multifaceted organization. This allows us to take advantage of our strong product portfolio and leverage our diverse customer base.

That said, there are several challenges in the defense market that our entire industry is facing, so we have been working hard to focus our efforts on opportunities presented as a result of the military realignment, particularly in modifications, foreign military sales, and the expanded use of electronics. In addition, we continue to make inroads in the commercial aerospace industry; and the strategy we have deployed in our non-aerospace sector is starting to show results as well. We have more work to do, but we've established a very solid foundation.

Now for Q1. We believe that our first quarter demonstrated the breadth of our product portfolio as well as sound operating execution, with our results illustrating the progress we have made by expanding our position as an innovative solutions provider. Revenue rose year-over-year on continued strength across our commercial aerospace offerings, and we expanded operating margins to 7.8%. This, along with lower interest expense, helped drive earnings of $0.42 per diluted share.

During the quarter, we again paid down $7.5 million of debt, continuing our focus on deleveraging the balance sheet. Overall, we believe it was a very solid quarter and a good start to 2014.

Now let me provide some color on our end-markets, products, and programs. Starting with the military and space market, revenue was down slightly year-over-year as higher AeroStructures shipments, both for fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, were offset by declines in missile systems and defense technologies.

Given the war wind-down and the changing requirements across the Defense Department, we believe that there will be fluctuations in this market until a budget is resolved. As a result, we continue to see overall revenue across our defense and space markets as being flat to down during 2014, reflecting solid demand for upgrades and additional electronics content being offset by sliding order schedules and budget cutbacks.

The Black Hawk, which is still our largest military platform, will remain at lower run rates for the foreseeable future, as we did discuss in the last quarter. However, our main challenge in the military market is the replacement of revenue beginning in 2015 from the terminated C-17 program, as well as softer demand for avionics and electronics controls products. We recorded just under $8 million in revenue on the C-17 in the first quarter and anticipate that the revenue on this program will decrease during the year, with final shipments to take place in the fourth quarter of 2014.

However, we are actively focused on business development strategies within the commercial aerospace and the non-A&D markets to replace lower demand for military and space products going forward. I am encouraged by a number of opportunities already in progress.

Moving to the non-A&D markets, where our biggest customers are industrial and energy, sales rose 2% in the quarter versus 2013, a welcome development and the first year-over-year increase since 2011. Our backlog here grew $11 million sequentially from the end of 2013 to just over $65 million, which is also the best level it has been at in six quarters, as our marketing efforts are beginning to gain traction.

We are encouraged by the demand for our capabilities in targeted niche sectors and continue to refine our strategic approach to grow our presence in these areas. We do anticipate slow, steady improvement here as the year unfolds and are actively engaged in a number of opportunities with new and exciting customers alike.

In our commercial aerospace business we saw steady growth here, in line with robust aircraft build rates, as expected. Our overall commercial aerospace business rose 10% year-over-year, driven by nice pickup in such programs as the Boeing 787 and increased business in the Airbus programs. We also saw growth in the regional jet market and expect this to continue for the next couple of quarters.

Our commercial aerospace backlog remains near record levels. And just as importantly, we are bidding on a number of new opportunities and winning additional content on some very important platforms, such as the Boeing 737 MAX program.

While these awards have not yet been announced, they are key wins for us as, for example, we were recently selected as the sole-source supplier for titanium assemblies on this next-generation commercial aerospace program. Production on our new contracts is expected to begin later this year and continue through 2024. This expands our business base with Boeing and with Spirit, in the process.

Such wins we believe illustrate the power of our product portfolio, our technology, and our ability to partner with leading aircraft manufacturers to bring advanced, fuel-efficient solutions to the market. We look forward to strengthening our relationship via opportunities such as the MAX; and we will be able to provide more color on these wins as we move forward in the near future.

We are also excited about a pickup in revenue with Airbus and the additional growth opportunities we see going forward with this key OEM. We continue to expand our work here, which now includes the A320 series, A350, A380, and the A330 and A340 platforms.

Our teams are working on a number of new business development initiatives which we believe will significantly enhance our Airbus relationship in the quarters to come. We think we are very close on some key A320 awards, and we hope to be able to announce these details in the near future.

Overall, the quarter showed our strengths of our capabilities, our team, and our market strategies designed to grow both margins and revenue and transform Ducommun into a leaner, more responsive, and less cyclical business going forward. With that, I would like to now turn the call over to Joe Bellino to review our financial details. Joe?

Thanks, Tony, and good day, everyone. After the market closed today, we reported our results for the first quarter of 2014.

Overall, our sales of nearly $180 million were 2% higher than the $176 million in last year's first quarter. Revenue growth year-over-year was primarily attributable to our continued growth in our commercial aerospace sector, but also modest gains in both our military products as well as non-aerospace and defense products, partially offset by a 9% decrease in our defense technologies revenues.

Ducommun's net income for the first quarter of 2014 increased 25% to $4.6 million or $0.42 per diluted share, compared with net income of $3.7 million or $0.35 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2013. As further detailed in our earnings release, our pretax income expanded to $6.9 million for the quarter, from $2.5 million in the first quarter of 2013.

This year's first-quarter net income was negatively impacted by a 32% tax rate that did not include any state or federal research and development tax credits. In last year's first quarter, it reflected -- it was impacted favorably by a $2.5 million R&D income tax credit, resulting in an effective tax benefit last year of nearly 50%.

We are pleased to report higher operating income of nearly $14 million in the first quarter of 2014, compared to $10.3 million in last year's first quarter. Contributors included favorable year-over-year trends as sales increased; gross margins expanded 80 points to 19.5% gross margin as a percentage of revenue; and selling, general, and administrative expenses decreased 110 basis points to 11.7% of revenue, representing a solid operating income increase of 190 basis points to 7.8% of revenues.

EBITDA expanded to $21.4 million or 11.9% of revenues in the first quarter of 2014, from $17.3 million or 9.9% of revenues for the comparable period last year.

As we now look at results by business segment, first starting with Ducommun AeroStructures, DAS, in reviewing the results by business segment, DAS reported a 12.3% increase in net sales of nearly $82 million for this year's first quarter, compared to $73 million in last year's first quarter. DAS's sales increased in both commercial aerospace and military aircraft end uses, buoyed by 12% and 13% increases year-over-year, respectively, in those two product areas.

In the commercial aerospace sector, we benefited from increased sales, as Tony mentioned, to Airbus and the Boeing 787 aircraft program. And we saw solid growth in defense products as well.

The DAS segment operating income benefited from the 12% sales increase and an improved product mix, resulting in operating income expanding to $10.3 million or 12.5% of revenues in this year's first quarter, compared to $6.6 million or 9.1% of revenues in the comparable period last year. EBITDA expanded 320 basis points to $12.7 million for the quarter or 15.5% of revenues, compared to $9 million or 12.3% of revenues for the comparable period last year.

Next, in reviewing our Ducommun LaBarge Technologies, or DLT segment, net sales for the first quarter were $98 million and compares to about $103 million for the first quarter last year. The year-over-year decline reflects a 9% decrease in military and space revenues, reflecting softer sales of avionics and electronic control products, which was partially offset by a 2% increase in sales for our non-aerospace and defense products.

We attribute the decline in defense technology sales to timing differences and softer backlogs. And we were pleased to see the non-A&D revenue has stabilized and our marketing development efforts are beginning to show positive results.

DLT's operating income for the first quarter of 2014 was $7 million or 7.2% of revenues, compared to $7.9 million or 7.7% of revenues in the first quarter of 2013. Reported EBITDA was $12.1 million in the quarter or 12.3% of revenues, compared to $12.6 million or 12.2% of revenues in the comparable period last year. The lower operating income was primarily impacted by the lower revenues.

Corporate, general, and administrative expenses, CG&A. CG&A expenses for the first quarter were $3.3 million or 1.8% of revenues, down from $4.2 million or 2.4% of revenues in the prior period.

We attribute this to solid cost management. In addition, the first quarter of last year included our debt repricing fees of $0.5 million, nonrecurring professional expenses, as well as slightly higher benefit-related costs.

Our overall backlog remains solid at $605 million, despite a decline year-over-year in the backlog for our defense technology products. We expect to finalize additional orders on various commercial aerospace and defense technology programs, where we continue to see numerous opportunities. Our non-A&D markets have stabilized, and recent activity suggests that an uptick in some of these end-use markets may be in the offing.

Next, on liquidity and capital resources, as Tony mentioned, during the quarter we continued to delever our balance sheet. We prepaid another $7.5 million of our debt, reducing our debt to $325 million at quarter end; and our net debt has been reduced to $296 million. With trailing 12-month EBITDA of $82 million, this equates to 3.6 times net funded debt-to-EBITDA.

During the balance of 2014, we continue to voluntarily prepay our debt approximately $7.5 million per quarter. We remain committed on achieving our goal of deleveraging to the 2.75 to 3 times by the end of 2015.

In the first quarter of 2014, we used nearly $10 million of cash in operations, compared to $6 million in last year's first quarter. We remain diligent in effective working capital management, and we expect our net cash flow to be similar to historic seasonal patterns over the balance of the next three quarters.

We anticipate capital expenditures for the full year of 2014 to be approximately $16 million. And we use this CapEx to support the expansion of our manufacturing capabilities and new contract awards.

In closing, we continue to focus on achieving sustainable operating and EBITDA margins which, along with diligent expense management and continued focus on working capital efficiencies, should permit the Company to generate adequate cash flows going forward. I would like now to turn the program over to Tony for his closing remarks. Tony?

Thank you, Joe. Before opening the call to questions, I would like to wrap up with a few comments about the quarter and the outlook for 2014. We are pleased that this year is off to a good start in terms of revenues, margins, and earnings; and we remain focused on several areas to position the Company for 2014 and beyond.

First is new business development, in particular: broadening our customer base, growing our non-A&D revenue, and winning new commercial aerospace programs with key customers such as Boeing, Airbus, and Spirit. We are making good headway here and will continue to aggressively look for attractive opportunities to bolster our role on new platforms and diversify our business.

In addition, we are focused on driving our One Ducommun strategy in the marketplace: cutting costs, improving the efficiency of our operations, paying down debt, and increasing the returns on our assets, with the goal of expanding and sustaining long-term attractive margins for the Company.

With that, I will -- Britney, if you will open up the call for questions, we will take those on now.

(Operator Instructions) Patrick McCarthy, FBR Capital Markets.

Hey, good morning, guys. I'm sorry, good afternoon, guys. Thank you very much for taking my question.

I was wondering if you could talk about how much granularity you have in your business with Raytheon. And what I am really wondering is whether the uncertainty on their Tomahawk program is causing you guys any concern at all, and whether or not it might have an impact down the road.

I think that still has to be played out. This is Tony. That still had -- the issues with the Raytheon has to be played out. But we are on the Tomahawk program with them, and we would anticipate that if that program is actually slowed down significantly that there will be some impact with us on that, yes.

Would you think it is a material impact, or is there any way to try to -- maybe not quantify it, but give some sort of sense as to how much concern we should have?

I would not say it's material. In the aggregate, it's not that large of a piece of business that we have with Raytheon.

Okay, great. And then just on the defense backlog, it was down sequentially again. Any sense as to when you think that that bottoms out? Is it 2014? Or do you think it's further out after the C-17 is completely flushed through?

You know what will help us is when we see the budget for 2015. I think that that is really going to be able to tell us a lot. But I think that we should see some bottoming out this year, yes. And we will have a good understanding of where the platforms will be, Patrick.

Great. Thank you very much.

Edward Marshall, Sidoti.

Good afternoon. I am curious. You point out mix and I am just -- I want to see if we can kind of -- is this the legacy AeroStructures business that had the mix improvement? Obviously these are much stronger margins than we have seen since, I don't know, 2009 perhaps.

What -- is it one-off, or is it something that you did last year that right-sized the business and we should see this kind of level going forward? Or help me parse all those comments together, if you will.

Well, Ed, when we looked at it -- and there is more information in the Q on the sales -- that our $81 million of business are up almost $10 million. The sales is driven a combination of both units. Our military and defense structure business was up $4 million, and our commercial aerospace business was up nearly $6 million.

And your question is about mix. And about the mix is -- we are selling more products that are in the commercial aerospace business that have attractive margins; and that is why we refer to that.

Of course, the defense portfolio has always had a little higher margin than the commercial side of the portfolio. And so we enjoyed both of those during the quarter, and it is really a nice trend that we have and hope to continue.

Joe, let me, if I can add something there, Ed, and maybe it will help a little bit. With regards to the sales for the quarter, if you look at the defense side, that was up for us; and you will see some of that data in the Q, but on the military side of the business.

And that actually it was a little bit of a pull-forward on the C-17 program, so we actually had higher sales there and that helped bolster the margin. We did have a nonrecurring pickup that will probably -- well, not probably, won't go forward. That happened during the quarter from subsequent negotiations, that we did get a pickup there, which also was effective on the C-17 program.

So there are a couple of pickups there that we did have, yes.

So with the change in the business and -- bear with me; this has been quite volatile over the last year or so. And I know you have made some changes and this is not a representation of what I should expect for the rest of the year, based on what I hear you saying.

Is this a 10% margin business, 10.5% margin business for you throughout 2014? Or how do you look at this segment and some of the changes you've made there?

You are referring to operating margins.

Operating margins on the AeroStructures.

Operating margins, just to put it in perspective, operating margins a year ago were 9.1% and this quarter they were 12.5%. Certainly, even though we had a few smaller nonrecurring, we certainly would like to be closer to the 12.5% on a sustained basis.

As it may -- it could vary 50 basis points either way in any given quarter because volume and mix have so much to do with it, as you know. So we look at it more in the full-year results or year-to-date results.

But we certainly believe that we have made improvements in our cost structure, and we are targeting some growth product lines within the commercial aerospace sector, that we are benefiting from those in our financials.

Now, this is a margin you haven't seen in this business since again 2008 or 2009. What -- you are targeting some growth markets, I mean; but I assume that has to take so much larger portion of the mix in order for that to be a sustainable margin for the rest of the year.

That's true.

Yes, so help me think about -- I mean, what I should be thinking from a margin perspective for this business for the remainder of the year. Is it going to fall back to that 9%, 9.5% range? Or do you anticipate being above (multiple speakers)

We anticipate that it will be probably in the 11% range to 12%.

Okay. Then as I look at some of the nonseasonal -- I mean some of the non-A&D businesses; and I'm looking in the K here -- in the Q, rather. I note that you had the slip up in military, and you addressed that.

Is there some seasonal impact in maybe the medical and other businesses that run through that business line that I should be aware of? Because it seems like it picked up pretty heavily from the last three quarters.

You know, it's been -- if you go back like three quarters or two quarters, the non-A&D specifically has been inching up a little bit on the backlog side. We had relatively stronger backlog, let's say, Q4 over Q3.

But there is cyclicality in the business. But from our standpoint, we have been working hard on the new business side and we are starting to see some pickups there.

A good example is that we remained through the second year in a row as a partner to John Deere, and we have had nice pickup in the business on that side. So it's really about working hard to get the customers.

So as we said in our comments, I think that what we will see on the non-A&D market sector is some steady improvement as we go along. And it's significantly down from its levels in 2011, so we have got a long way to go before we say we are there.

And one quarter doesn't make a trend. So we will be pushing along there.

Last question, and this is on the C-17 program. I think you said there was $8 million in the quarter, but you said there was some pull forward on that; and I understand the margin impact of that business. As I look at the -- if I look at the cadence of the C-17 program through the rest of the year, help me -- because I am assuming this is not a $32 million program for you in 2014.

No, no, no.

No. Help me figure out what the cadence in the wind-down of this revenue is on a quarterly basis, so I can think about that from a modeling perspective.

I think in the last quarter we said that the C-17 would be in the mid $20 millions for the year. So you can see that we had a pretty solid first quarter.

And as I tried to allude to in my remarks, I believe that it will be stepping down quarter over quarter, with second quarter being a little weaker, and third quarter again weaker, and then fourth quarter will be cleanup. So it will step down significantly as we go forward.

Okay. I appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

Mark Jordan, Noble Financial.

Good morning. First, just a question on the tax rate. On the year-end earnings call, you were guiding to about a 31% tax rate; this quarter was a little bit higher.

Do you think it's appropriate to goose up that tax rate a little bit? Or do you still think the balance of year would be in the 31% range?

Mark, I think 31% full year, it gets -- the tax rate generally -- and it doesn't include any Federal R&D Tax Credit, which we think the outlook is fairly positive, but we don't book it based on that until the legislation is passed.

But in the second half of the year, we have past income tax returns expire, and we relieve the liability out of FIN 48. So we generally get some benefits; and we get audits, regular audits, resolved favorably. So we are able to reflect a slightly lower tax rate in the second half of the year, which for planning purposes we have planned cumulatively 31%.

Okay. In the press release, you talk about marketing efforts where you're using technology-driven customer development strategies. Could you give us a couple of specific examples of what pieces of business you are targeting, and how you are presenting yourself in terms of your skills and capabilities, and who are the primary targets you have?

Okay. Well, I think that the target list is pretty broad-based, but let me, Mark, talk about a couple. I think that the middle of last year we announced a pretty nice win with Parker Aerospace on the A320 -- A350 aircraft for fuel transfer development. And the reason that we won that business is because we really stepped up in support of their prototype development from breadboard through initial production phases.

And I think that you know we're working with John Deere in the same vein on that type of program. We are also able to offer solutions to Spirit on some additional work where we help them redesign some products that we thought would be more cost effective from a manufacturing standpoint.

So it is pretty broad-based. We are bringing the same type of approach to all of our customers; and that is, that we are there to help them solve problems. And we try to do it from a technology standpoint and our know-how, and try to drive the customer issues and help them solve problems with the technical base that we bring to bear. Hopefully that helps you there.

Yes. I think also in prior comments you had made that you had been disappointed in the oil and gas sector, in part because of the low level of technology that you were deploying. Are you finding success in terms of upgrading your business in this area?

Yes, we have. We have had a couple of nice wins there.

But overall, I think it is still in a -- we have to still prove to ourselves that it's a marketplace that we can be successful in. There are a couple areas where we are very successful, and there are some areas that have not been as successful as we would like them to be.

So we do have more work there. But we have been able to go out and generate new customers, if you will, and help them, support their efforts in the field; and we still have more work to do on some other customers. So it is kind of a mixed bag in the oil and gas market.

Okay. Final question. Has Owens-Illinois stabilized for you?

Yes, at a much lower level. But as a result of that, we're able to pick up some business with another customer and we're able to support them through a supplier base.

So I think that we have got a nice strategy there. And in the end [Owens] will be fully supported, and we will probably be in a position in the near future where we have a little bit stronger base with them.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Ken Herbert, Canaccord.

Hi, good afternoon. Hey, I just wanted to first dig a little bit into the DLT segment. The margins in this segment, I think lower than we were looking for; is that any one-time issues there? I know clearly you saw flat to up sales pretty much in each of the segments, with some nice increases, with the exception of the technologies -- or I am sorry, the defense business within DLT.

Is it a mix issue for this segment? Or was there anything else one-time that shouldn't repeat as we go through the year that was a drag on margins?

No, I think that the revenue, as we talked about, the revenue actually drove the margin issue. I think that what we saw was some delay in orders and some slowdown in some orders; and there were a couple of programs that were cut -- not large.

And then we are also seeing on the radar side, we were expecting to win on the F-15 program, for example, in South Korea, for the modernization for the radar systems; and that didn't happen. So the F-15 program is winding down on the side.

Some of that drop in revenue is on the radar rack application. So the rest of it is a mixed issue with some programs being slow to release and other programs slowing down as a result of the war wind-down, quite frankly.

Okay, okay. No, that's helpful. As you think about -- you have talked positively, it sounds like, specifically within the DLT segment, some of the non-A&D opportunities, and the work with Parker, and what you are seeing on the commercial aerospace side there. How do you think, through this year and into next year, margins within DLT can improve as you continue to gain traction in some of these, your non-core defense markets?

And at what point does it become a nice offset and accretive to the segment relative to maybe a bit of a drag historically to the margins we have seen?

Yes, I think that we are working our way through that now. I think we do have some nice applications on the commercial non-A&D side that are at relatively good margins.

But we really have to work through the phases that we are going through. There are still some programs in there that have less than attractive margins for us, which we are working our way through.

So from a business base standpoint on that marketplace, I would say from a pickup standpoint, we are probably looking towards the latter half of the year before we start seeing any pickup on the non-A&D and the commercial aerospace stuff for the DLT programs.

Okay, great. And just finally, you have talked a few times about some wins with Airbus and specifically in the A320; and I know you have announced some nice awards there. Can you just remind us again what Airbus represents, maybe in 2013, and what you are looking for in 2014? How much of that upside do we see this year versus maybe what more is into 2015 and 2016?

Well, I think that the growth for Airbus is going to be more towards the 2015 and 2016 time frame. We had a nice pickup this year, and that is some of the programs that we won in the last two years coming to maturity.

So it's about a $20 million program for us, all up, right now. And we see that expanding as some of the production programs pick up going forward.

Okay, great. Thank you very much. Nice quarter.

(Operator Instructions) Mike Crawford, B. Riley & Company.

Thank you. You also said you saw the regional jet demand improving. So what do you attribute that improvement to? And what, if any, specific platforms are you seeing most success with?

Okay. So, Mike, thanks for the question, but the regional jet pickup was on the Bombardier 700 and 900 series. We saw an increase in the build rate going from 2 to 4, actually.

So we actually picked that up in the last quarter of last year, and so we figure that will even quarter this year. So they just -- we do the same fuselage assembly for that series aircraft; so it has manifested itself in a little bit higher build rate.

So they are actually back to the build rate they were at two years ago.

Tony, the 787 picked up for you. Now, Boeing said that actual deliveries of 787 were only I think 18 in Q1; but they expected to be more the 27 rate for the year.

Did you see a similar pattern? Is there a revenue effect for you, or is it more steady state?

It is more steady state. We are, of course, behind their revenue base from a delivery standpoint, so we are probably six months to eight months ahead of their delivery. So we are running pretty close to the 8 to 10 aircraft a month right now in that program.

Okay, great. Then on the Black Hawk, we know demand is down for 2014. I think we have seen some eight-year plan budget that looks for at least U.S. Army demand for the UH-60M to increase a bit in the next couple of years. And we have seen recent orders come in potentially from Mexico and maybe some other foreign military sales.

Is that -- would you say that any of this possible pickup or foreign military sales leads to a little bit of upside related to projections on how that winds down? Or not?

Well, Mike, I think it is pretty hard to tell. But I would say that we are in the -- we are on a five-year program with them, and so I think a lot of these will just flow into that delivery plan. So we expect the build rate to be down slightly this year and probably flatten out going forward; and I think all these will fill in, into their aircraft build rate.

So I don't think we would see much of an uptick. And if we do, it certainly will be welcome.

Yes, okay. Thank you. Then last question relates to operationally, as you are ramping into new programs and learning how to build things most efficiently, the margins are a little lower; and they improve bit by bit as you learn more. How would you describe your overall level on this cycle of things ramping up and things --?

I think that is exactly the cycle we see, though. I think it starts out at lower margins and then we drive to our projected margins.

We are doing a lot of work and we have done a lot of work over the last year-and-a-half to two years with regards to our new product introduction, to try and smooth out that process and move down the curve faster. So we will have some learning going forward on some of these new programs that will impact margins; and we hope to be able to offset that by some of the efficiency we pick up on some of the older programs.

Right. So that is my question. So, if you had to guess, what is the -- which is winning out in the next couple of quarters? Are you benefiting more from how much you have learned, or are you going to be hurt by starting up on some new programs that will be great for revenues in the long term, but which might have a little drag on consolidated margins as those ramp up? Which is the more important factor?

It seems, Mike, we have gone through really in 2012 and 2013 the early stages of ramp-up of newer products. We talked about the 24 products we brought onboard and of those other ones, the 22 main ones. And they are getting to a more mature stage.

So the way we look at our business, one, we are aligned be able to meet the growing demands of future demands of 737; the current demands of 787, which we have handled very well, going from three a month to seven a month to now almost 10 a month in deliveries, and that program has increased proportionately, plus with some new items on Airbus.

So your question that relates to where are we, we are not way at the top of the learning curve. We are well along it.

We still have a little ways to go, but we are executing very well in the delivery of these newer products that have come on in the last two years. And they are being reflected in the results that you saw this quarter.

Okay. Thank you, Joe. And then last question just relates to your balance sheet. Your senior unsecured notes are callable next summer.

And have you put in more thought on to what you might replace them with? Would they -- you have to use senior unsecured notes again?

Your question relative to the $200 million senior unsecured notes that are first callable in July of 2015 at 104.875% of par: yes, we will probably move to more of a banking credit facility, whether that is a revolver, pro rata loans, or term loan B, as we have. But we know that such a structure will continue to allow us to have flexibility. It will lower our interest expenses and also support our organic and acquisitive growth aspirations.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Gregory Macosko, Montrose Advisors.

Thank you. Most of my questions have been asked, but let me just follow up a little bit. With regard to the Raytheon product line and your sales there, I know that you have talked about them and other customers, and an attempt to sell modules, and sell additional product to existing customers. How is that progressing?

With Raytheon in specific, Greg?

Yes, in specific or in more general terms, either one.

I think, overall, I think what we have been able to do very successfully is present the full product portfolio of our Company. And I think that's the impetus behind driving One Ducommun and going to the market as one Company.

So in specific with Raytheon, we have been able to do a nice job of putting multiple divisions in program and working through some of their new programs, and working with some of their development programs. And we have a number of applications that we are working on with them right now in the RFP phase.

So it is pretty much of a cross-production level. But in the end, it all depends on the specific customer and the problems they are trying to solve as to how well we can cross-sell, if you will, into their program. So we try to understand the problem base first and then go in and give them a solution that fits the manufacturing capabilities that we have in place.

Okay, fine. And then just there has been a lot of questions about profitability in the two different divisions, one up, one down, and some shifts. Just stepping back -- and puts and takes.

Stepping back a little bit, if we look at on a common basis, is it fair to say that the incremental profit as we go forward, if we could adjust for mix and that sort of thing, is that incremental profitability improving as we go forward?

That is the game plan, right? That is really what we are trying to do is pick that up.

And we had a good solid quarter here, and we are trying to project that forward to make sure that the things that went well stay in the pipeline, Gregory. We do have -- the last caller indicated we do have some mix going forward on some of the new development programs; and that can be somewhat of a drag.

And then the real unknown is what happens on the military budget. So some of these things have been moving fast and some have been extremely slow with regards to follow-on orders.

So our goal is to stay and continue to improve the profitability as we go forward. We have a number initiatives in our operating performance to improve profitability as well as manage our working capital. So I think that we would like to say we are in a position where we can stabilize things going forward (technical difficulty)

Okay, thank you. Sounds good.

At this time I will now turn the presentation over to Tony Reardon for final remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining the call today, and we look forward to talking to you in the next quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the presentation for today's conference. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.