Kratos Defense and Security Solutions Inc (KTOS) 2024 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Kratos Defense & Security Solutions first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host, Marie Mendoza, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Kratos Defense & Security Solutions. First Quarter 2024 conference call. With me today is Eric DeMarco, Kratos' President and Chief Executive Officer, and Deanna Lund, Kratos' Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, the substance of today's call, I'd like everyone to please take note of the Safe Harbor's paragraph that is included at the end of today's press release. This paragraph emphasizes the major uncertainties and risks inherent in the forward-looking statements we will make this afternoon. Please keep these uncertainties and risks in mind as we discuss future strategic initiatives, potential market opportunities, operational outlook, financial guidance, and other forward-looking statements during today's call.

Today's call will also include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures as that term is defined in Regulation G. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in compliance with GAAP. Accordingly, at the end of today's press release, we have provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the company's financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. With that I will now turn the call over to Eric DeMarco.

Thank you, Marie. Good afternoon. Kratos' positioning as a leading defense technology products and software company focused on obtaining and supporting programs of record organic growth and execution as reflected in our Q1 results. As a public company that reports every three months. Kratos' team's execution is visible to all of our stakeholders and includes industry-leading organic growth, LTM annual positive operating cash flow generation, increased profitability while also making significant internally-funded investments in large and growing market areas where Kratos is the industry leader.

Accelerating organic growth areas for Kratos include our unmanned jet drone systems, jet engines for drones, missiles, loitering munitions, and high performance systems and microwave electronics for air defense, missile radar and satellite systems. Kratos' strategy of partnering with large traditional system integrators with Kratos bringing differentiating value, including existing capabilities and a lower cost is also accelerating, including in the drone hypersonic propulsion system, solid rocket motor, and the C5ISR areas.

For the first quarter, every Kratos business unit exceeded its revenue or profit forecast or both. We ended Q1 with a backlog of over $1.2 billion, an opportunity pipeline of approximately $11 billion. And with the 2024 US defense budget and the supplemental bill now approved, we have increased confidence in our 2024 financial forecast, which we affirm today and also as we now look towards 2025.

Of particular note, Kratos' unmanned systems business Q1 organic growth was 21.8% with bookings of $81 million for a book-to-bill ratio of 1.4 times to 1 times, and we are forecasting approximate 20% growth for unmanned systems this year, driven by the current geopolitical threat environment.

Kratos' unmanned systems, Q1 book-to-bill ratio of 1.4 times on top of an approximate Q1 22% growth rate is reflective of the demand we are seeing for Kratos' affordable, high-performance jet drone aircraft systems, including certain programs and customers, we are unable to publicly disclose, but which performance is reflected in our financials.

There was a generational recapitalization of strategic weapon systems occurring as a result of the increasing global threat environment including China, Russia, Iran, and its proxies, and also North Korea. And we believe that Kratos is uniquely positioned to address the related demand, including with our ready to go now in production systems across the portfolio.

Priority areas of this recapitalization for the US and its allies, which priorities are routinely reported on in the press include air defense systems, drones, loitering munitions missiles and engines for these systems, radar, counter-UAS space and satellite systems, strategic deterrence, rocket hypersonic, missile defense target and training systems.

Recent notable items for Kratos include the successful static fire test of Kratos' Zeus, two solid rocket motor SRM, with the previous successful static fire test of the Kratos Zeus Suite 1 SRM, we have placed the initial order for nine combined Zeus wanted to zoom to SRMs with our partner Aerojet to address expected initial customer demand for these affordable systems with the first Zeus customer funded mission now scheduled for later this year.

Additionally, Kratos' Erinyes Hypersonic flyer is now complete with the first customer funded flight now also scheduled for later this year, which system will include Kratos' integrated multistate solid rocket stack. Kratos is one of the very few entities that have a substantially vertically integrated hypersonic system and BMD target mission system, including the rocket motors through the front end payload or the flyer. Kratos' Zeus SRMs in our aerospace and Dark Fury Hypersonic flyers are recent example of Kratos delivering actual systems not hoped for some day products or PowerPoints, and with Kratos being first to market.

With relevant systems that the customer wants related to Kratos' hypersonic and ballistic missile defense business, we are planning to make significant investments in facilities, machinery, equipment, integration assets, rocket, and other systems and assets as we position for execution of existing and expecting demand for Kratos' rocket BMD, SRM, and hypersonic systems. We expect Kratos' Rocket Systems business, including Kratos Zeus, [Oreol, A-Rav,] Erinyes, Dark Fury, and our other systems be a key future year growth contributor for Kratos.

And our Israeli-based microwave electronics business, which significantly outperformed in Q1 and which business is also accelerating. We have received new and increased follow-on orders to existing programs and contracts, including as related to missile radar and air defense systems, including Iron Dome, Iron Sting, Lightning, Aero, Barack, and others. Kratos' Microwave Electronics business is also supporting satellite space system and C5ISR programs including Kratos' just recently receiving the initial design order from a new space company for Kratos' products on their satellites.

In Kratos' Microwave Electronics business, we are making investments in both new and existing facilities, including space, qualified facilities, plant and equipment. In order to successfully execute on the many new and expanded programs we have already received, and additional programs we expect to receive. Kratos turbine technologies and our engine business has also been accelerating and significantly outperformed in Q1 with programs and initiatives, including small jet engines for drones, missiles and loitering munitions engines for hypersonic and supersonic systems and engine and propulsion systems for space and certain classified Ariol systems.

KTTs Spartan Development Group is under customer funded contract for a new propulsion system for a classified aircraft and also a separate new Sparton Group propulsion system has now been integrated into a customer's classified drone system and is preparing for initial flight. Both of these new system programs are important contributors to KTT and are expected to grow as these new program systems evolve, we will make we will be making investments in our engine businesses, including for low cost manufacturing facility, infrastructure systems and assets, including as related to loitering munition and missile system production contracts where we are designed in certain of which we expect to receive this year now that the funding bills have been approved.

We also continue to be on schedule and on budget under a customer-funded contract where we are integrating Kratos' jet engines into certain grid Kratos' high performance jet drones. Kratos' C5ISR business is also positioned for future growth with programs of record and contracts, including Sentinel Patriot IBCS, If kick and during shield, shore Rad and other missile radar, air defense and counter-UAS programs of record. Global demand for air defense, radar and strategic systems is providing a catalyst for C5ISR growth, and I encourage you to take a look at the size, opportunity, and quantities related to certain of these programs Kratos supports.

Kratos' unique, one-of-a-kind owned and operated global space domain awareness or SDA system is an incredibly important Kratos' asset with its data and information being of increasing value to our customers, including as a result of the significant number of additional spacecraft being deployed. Data sales to customers from Kratos' SDA, similar to Kratos' has opened space software and license sales are certain of the highest margin in our company and can be contributors to Kratos exceeding or profit forecasts based on mix.

Representative of the progress Kratos' open space virtualized ground system continues to make. Kratos recently demonstrated a fully virtualized Satcom ground system for the United States Army Futures Command over SESs O3b MEO Constellation. And we also successfully demonstrated fully virtualized Satcom over Leo for the United States Army, we continue to make significant investments in our first to market open space, virtual C2 and TT&C software product family, and also at the expansion of our global SDA system.

Kratos' unmanned systems business highlights we can discuss include Kratos' Valkyrie flying with two F-35 aircraft successfully demonstrating the ability to deliver an integrated electronic attack capability during a live fire test event at Eglin Air Force Base with the United States Marine Corps as part of the penetrating affordable autonomous collaborative killer portfolio or PACP program during the PACP program, Mission Kratos' Valkyrie, advanced EA payload autonomously detected identified and geo located multiple tactically relevant targets of interest, transmitted emitter target track coordinates to collaborative assets and successfully presented non kinetic electronic attack effects multiple emitters.

The recent M3 effects reported for the Marines MQ-58A Valkyrie means multi mission in the US military wide aircraft designation system with the use of ammo rather than X, indicating a platform intended or in planning for operational use transitioning from the X or experimental.

Kratos' ghost works recently had successful ground tests on a new system Valkyrie variant and we are planning on initial flights in the next few months, pending availability of a specific range asset and necessary clearances. We are currently in customer discussions and we expect to receive our most important Valkyrie related contract award either late this year or early next year.

As a result of the Valkyrie progress and the expectations we have, we are making the internal investment required to accelerate the completion of the current Valent serial production, including multiple variants totaling 24 systems. And we have now begun working with our in-place qualified supply chain and vendor base on pricing out the next Valkyrie production lot beyond the current 24 as most of the 24 are now sold, customer committed or which we believe we have clear customer opportunity line of sight. We have recently been informed that we should be receiving a Kratos Athena drone system related contract award in the next few months.

And additionally, since our last report to you, Kratos' Apollo drone system had a successful customer funded demonstration flight with a special payload. Recent world events have generated renewed customer interest in Kratos' Apollo, Athena and other creative tactical drone systems. As I've mentioned previously, for customer competitive or security related reasons we are unable to discuss certain programs, contracts, or initiatives Kratos is involved with, and we will let the financial results provide the progress as reflected in Q1 and our Unmanned Systems business.

We are in the planning process to expand our tactical drone production and other facilities to address the increase in expected demand. So overall, we're focused on execution of our record backlog, an $11 billion opportunity pipeline, including certain large new program awards we expect to receive over the next few quarters that we are preparing for.

Accordingly, we have no significant acquisitions contemplated, potentially only small, Kratos' business, consistent tuck-ins. Virtually every opportunity or initiative we executed our recent equity raise for has either successfully closed or progressed with continued progress expected over the coming months. As I have discussed today, Kratos will be investing in plant facilities, equipment systems, capital assets and other areas in order to successfully execute on programs we have now received or that we expect to receive.

Additionally, we believe that the equity weight raise was instrumental and creative just recently being successfully down selected as the winner on a large new opportunity, which we are currently in negotiations and diligence internally called Prometheus.

Next several months Kratos' base case forecasted growth areas include air defense, turbine technologies engines, missile radar and CUAS systems, drones, C5ISR, microwave electronics and training systems. Potential future catalysts and potential upsides to Kratos' base case forecast include tactical drones, BMD rocket hypersonic systems and jet engines and propulsion systems. Deanna?

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon. As we have included a detailed summary of the first quarter financial performance as well as the initial second quarter and affirmation of the full year 2024 financial guidance in the press release we published earlier today, I will focus on the highlights of my remarks today. Revenues for the first quarter were $277.2 million, exceeding our estimated range of $240 million to $260 million, which includes higher than expected performance and deliberate across most of our businesses, with notable strength in our turbine technologies and microwave products businesses.

All business units generated organic revenue growth over last year's first quarter, resulting in a 19.5% consolidated organic revenue growth rate, including the impact of the share of the million technical services or STS acquisition on a pro forma basis as if acquired at the beginning of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2024 was $26 million, exceeding our estimated range of $16 million to $18 million, reflecting the additional revenues as well as a more favorable mix of higher-margin revenues with notable strength in our turbine technologies and microwave products businesses, as well as higher-margin software and data related content from our satellite business.

Positive cash flow from operations generated was 700,000, which includes the impact of working capital requirements related to increases in inventory balances and prepaid assets related to supplier required deposits and prepayments for materials and equipment. Free cash flow used from operations was $15.9 million after funding capital expenditures of $16.6 million. As we planned, we are making investments to expand and build out certain of our manufacturing and production facilities at our microwave products, rocket system, and hypersonic businesses to meet anticipated customer orders and requirements and investing in related new machinery, equipment, and systems.

We are also continuing to manufacture the two production lots of Valkyries prior to contract award. We also utilized $45 million of the proceeds from the equity offering to pay down all amounts outstanding on our revolving line of credit. Consolidated DSOs or days sales outstanding continued to improve from 109 days in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 107 days in the first quarter of 2024, reflecting the timing of customer milestone payments.

Our contract mix for the first quarter of 2024 was 68%, fixed price, 26% cost-plus and 6%, time and materials. Revenues generated from contracts with the US federal government during the first quarter of 24 were approximately 69%, which includes revenue generated from contracts with the DoD, non-DoD, federal government agencies, and FMS contract. In the first quarter of 2024, we generated 12% of revenues from commercial customers and 19% from foreign customers.

An operational priority remains the hiring and retention of skilled technical labor across the company with total Kratos' headcount of 3,986 at the end of the first quarter of 24 as compared to 3,932 employees at the end of 2023.

And moving on to financial guidance, our initial second quarter 2024 financial guidance we provided today includes our current forecasted business mix and expected delivery schedules and our assumptions related to the potential impact of the continued operating challenge related to our obtaining and retaining qualified technical personnel and the related increased cost for those employees across our entire labor base. Our guidance also includes our assumptions related to the continued impact of supply chain disruptions, inflation and related expected cost and price increases.

Our second quarter and full year 2024 guidance reflects the impact of certain performance and deliveries made in the first quarter of 2024, certain of which had originally been estimated to be executed or delivered in the second quarter of 2024. Eric?

Thank you, Deanna.

I will turn it over now to the moderator for questions.

(Operator Instructions). Peter Arment, Baird.

Yes, good evening, Eric and Deanna. Nice results. Eric, maybe just to start at a high level, just when we think about you had really strong 20% organic growth here in the first quarter. And if we think about your guidance of approximately 10% growth on the top line for the year, how do we think about that, just given you that would be growth would be kind of down ticking to the high single digits when we think about budgets have passed, supplemental has been passed and just kind of the demand signals that you're seeing for across the board in your businesses.

Would you consider your top line conservative or just how you frame it?

Our backlog in the near term opportunities, 2024, we've got 2020 site on it. We've got it. The CRA went six months. As you know, the government contracting offices have got to get 12 months' worth of money under contract and obligated in six months, and we're being cautious here. We are just kind of cautious. We've got it in front of us with the government. And I'm not putting anything on and they got a lot of work to do. They've got to get this under contract out of all of us.

Yes, that's fair. And then just regarding your the engine opportunities for both turbine & TDI both have significant opportunities. How do you -- how are you kind of expecting kind of the timeline to go on some of these businesses in terms of you're making a lot of investments and just sort of thinking about how those scale up?

Unless something totally unexpected happens this year, KTT and TDI, they are going to continue to meet or exceed our expectations. The programs that we've won across both portfolios are very, very impressive. That does not include where we expect in the second half of this year to begin receiving additional production programs for engines, for missiles, drones, and our look-ordering munitions.

The funding's there, the customers are there. I'm tying to getting things under contract and getting them out, not just direct to us but also we're working with the prime. We expect for the next several years our engine businesses to be some of the strongest growers in the company, and it ties directly into the drone platforms, the missile platforms, and the loitering munition platforms that are coming down the pike there, and they're in the public there, in the press today. And we have them with our budgets.

Perfect. And just lastly, any update you can give us on kind of positioning around for CCA for increment to -- I know that something that is tracking for later this year or maybe early next year, depending on what happens on sort of timing, but any update you can give us there, that'd be helpful there. Thanks.

Yes, the Air Force obviously announced the CCA program, is going to be up to 2,000 drums. The secretary announced last week or the week before last that Inc. one, which was just awarded, which was not in any of our forecasts, was not contemplated in any of our numbers, was for 100 planes. We're focused on the other 1,900, which we believe a significant number of which are right in our sweet spot based on type of performance. So that's how we're looking at this period.

Perfect. Thanks, Eric. Appreciate it.

Michael Ciarmoli with Truist Securities.

Hey, good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Nice results. Eric, maybe just to continue on Peter's question there on CCA, and you actually said there was news about replicator, the Switchblade 600 provide you guys opportunity, I think in the past you've kind of married that platform with Airwolf. Any color there?

Mike, I can't comment directly on what was announced recently. I can say that we have launched the AeroVironment drones off of our drones, which give them extended range, that I give them extended capability and broad replicator kinds of sort of similar to the CCAs. This successful award was called Tranche 1, and it was focused on Class I and Class II UAVs. The second tranche is coming, the third tranches coming, both of which either can be in the air system for the propulsion system, we're hoping to be involved. So this is rolling out very similar to how we've been led to expect it would by the government.

Got it. And then you guys talked about a lot of investments, new existing facilities really across multiple lines of business. No change to the CapEx. You obviously did the raise. You've got a significant amount of cash on the balance sheet. Is everything contemplated in the CapEx spend? Is any one of these investments in a certain capability consuming substantially more? Can you maybe you give us even directionally size rank order, how much investments kind of in each capability?

Yes. So let's go, let's go down the list. The known ones that we're going to be that we've begun, that we're going to be beginning, we're standing up two engine manufacturing lines, including the new plant. And this is for two different types of engine. And it's specifically related to tactical systems, whether it be a drone, a loitering munition or powered munitions.

Okay. We are six months out from hitting a milestone on a much larger engine. We're already under contract that if things go according to plan, then we will have to stand up a third facility for this engine, which is a much larger engine for a manned aircraft.

Right. Okay. So that's first. On the hypersonic side, we have Zeus 2, be successful on the static fire. We are, as we speak, building out the integration center for the solid rocket motors and the front end flyers, ours, Erinyes and Dark Fury and also other, and also other people's.

Okay. That is happening. That will be accelerating. But one of the biggest ones, Michael, is our Israeli-based microwave electronics business. Everything is at a record high. Backlogs are at a record high, pipeline at a record high, revenues that are everything, and it's only beginning. And we all know why and I've listed some of the systems we're on.

And so we got two. I can talk about two facilities. We're standing up, okay. That one's a brand-new one for something. And another one is an expansion of an existing one for existing systems, it's possible. But by this time next year, we may have to stand up another one. And this is for the demand of the microwave electronics that are going on the various weapons systems. It is real. But again, these are all done under contract.

The next one is about growth. Yes, two things. As I said, we're having to pull to the left now based on a certain specific customer. Hopefully, we're going to get this done where we're going to have to deliver these out sooner than we anticipated and base based on successes we continue to have with us with other customers, that's why we've begun. We haven't ordered yet have not made the orders yet, but we've begun going to the supply chain for the next lot of planes, which depending on how things work out will be 12 to 24 months.

So again, those are all I'm going to call either done or 2020, probably the biggest one is Prometheus, which in the equity raise I walk people through, but it was not done that we were on a football game. We weren't quite in the red zone yet. We've been down-selected, we've won we are in the red zone and hopefully this will get done and be contracted by the end of this year. This could be the largest opportunity or this is an area that we're in already. This brings the backlog, it's not a build it and they will come, but all it will require a significant investment for this potential game-changing opportunity. Those are the primary items, Mike.

Got it. That's helpful. Just the last one. On Valkyrie, everything sounds like it's progressing. Obviously, you mentioned the supply chain, but I think in your comments, you said maybe the order is sliding into 25. Seems like a little bit of a disconnect there. I mean all this NPL, but not getting the big orders, how do you get comfortable with all this investment, but not having the order in hand yet still self-funding?

All right. So Mike, we have two customers, for two separate orders, two separate potential orders. All right. It looks up. I'm trying to be cautious. I think we're going to get at least one of them this calendar year than the other one in the first half of next year. I'm going to be cautious and say first half of first quarter -- excuse me, first quarter of next year just to be cautious. But we're again, unless something changes geopolitically, we're confident we're going to be moving ahead here and if timing works out, Mike, the way I think it's going to work out. We're not going to have to pull the trigger on the additional ones until we get one of those eight, which you can understand, means that hopefully it's close.

Perfect. Thanks a lot, guys. I'll jump back in the queue.

Ken Herbert, RBC Capital Markets.

Hey, good afternoon, Eric and Deanna. Hey. I wanted to ask you on it's been a couple of quarters now that you've more publicly talked about the shift from, I'm trying to more of a merchant supplier and it clearly sounds like you're getting some traction in a number of these areas. How would you sort of characterize your success in this relative to your plans? And as you think about these new opportunities, what maybe what percent would you think about as a merchant supplier or sub-contractor relative to sort of ongoing dependence to win things as a prime?

As I talked about a little bit on the last call, Ken, we sit back and we look at probability of win and the required Kratos investment to win it. And there are certain areas that are our sweet spot that are not other sweet spots, certain companies of which talked about in the past two weeks, for example. Our sweet spot in the drone area are low cost, reusable disposable or treatable drones. That's our sweet spot. We expect to win those programs.

Certain companies in the past week with a publicly they discuss that, that's not their sweet spot. Their sweet spot is exquisite. So there would be an area where it might make sense for a partnership one way or the other where the probability of win together is higher on one, if not on the other. There's an example, okay. On the air defense area, our primary partners in air defense systems, CUAS systems, missile systems, radar systems, I'll call them the big three. That's Raytheon's, Northrop, and Lockheed.

They are our true partners and they're great to work with and in no particular order patriotism, a significant Kratos program. That's Raytheon's integrated battle command system is a very significant program, that's Northrop and multiple CUAS systems, Lockheed Martin, right. Epic, enduring shield, more partnered with Dynetics and each one of those it made all the sense in the world to partner with the -- these are outstanding legacy traditional prime system integrators where we win and we can support all of them and help them execute their mission for the customer. That's how we're looking at it. And we're trying to pick our spots with the highest probability of win.

That's helpful. And as a market, the incremental sort of next production lot on the Valkyrie, can you talk at all about for the second 2024, how do your assumptions around pricing or real pricing that you might achieve on that have evolved or maybe changed or improved since some of the early production log or the initial production runs?

Yes. So I'm talking generally now because it depends on the version for the increment and the capability of the aircraft. So on the learning curves now, depending on quantity so, for example, we submitted a ROM for a few dozen to a customer at $4 million each for a certain variance. There's another variant that's flying today. It's about $5.5 million or $6 million each. And then there is a third one. We haven't talked about it much. I'm not going to get into it a lot here. Hopefully by the end of the year, I'm going to be able to talk about it. It's closer to $10 million and it's a beast. So it depends on quantities, variant, and the customer we're working with.

Perfect. Thank you.

Yes.

Mike Crawford, B. Riley Securities.

Can you just run through, please some of the top opportunities, including converting Valkyries from CapEx to revenue per second fleet revenue recognition where you would generate revenue and operating earnings kind of ahead of we've guided?

So opportunities that are not in the base case.

Yes.

Okay. Some tactical drones is number one. We have no production of tactical drones in the base case. It's still on our RDT and SNT, that's number one. Number two, it's the engine production runs. We have very little if anything in there for these engine production runs we're hoping to receive. And number three, Zeus and the hypersonic flyers, we've included nothing because the systems were done, now they're done. The first flight of a system is coming up in the next several weeks. And the first flight of the other system Zeus related is later this year.

So now that these systems have worked and I believe once we do these initial flight, it's possible based on the backlog for certain types of assets that need to be flown. That could be an offer that is absolutely not in our plan, a fourth one. It's a program we're under contract for on a certain engine. It's one of the largest programs in our Engine Group. The customer has recently come to us and asked us for expanded scope for a different aspect of this engine to pull it into the left, okay.

If we can hire the people and that's a big challenge, Mike, if we can hire the people, that will absolutely give us opportunity to beat our numbers soundly. So those are four areas right off the top of my head. The biggest, Mike, the biggest item across the entire portfolio was people. If we could obtain and retain the people, we've got the backlog to exceed what we've got out there. But it's challenging, especially with the people that have security that need to have security clearances.

Okay. Thank you. And then just one final, previously you talked about space which has been for the past few years. What is your biggest and has been among, if not your fastest growing business, but this year was supposed to be kind of a year of consolidation was flat.

Yes, there was -- you were up nicely year over year in Q1. So I'm wondering if you're now expecting a little bit of growth there. And also if you could just tell us a little bit more about this new space customer, what you're doing for them with their satellite?

Yes. So let me take the second first because it's the easier one. So the second one first, as this is an established company, it's a very -- it's a larger, profitable company. I said new space, Mike, that may have thrown people. It's new to us, but it's not a new space company. So it's new to us. It's not a new space company. They're putting up a new constellation and they just selected us in the past couple, three weeks to be part of the microwave electronics system actually on the satellite.

This could be initially several tens of millions of dollars to us initially. And it's because over the past year and we've tried to lay this out, we've been successful on three or four other satellites with our microwave electronics satellite program. We're getting a reputation there.

Now this is why we expect one of the reasons we're expanding our space qualified facility. So this is brand-new work, new constellation, large company public company, and it looks very, very, very good for us.

So on the first part of your question, our space business, yes, as you as you mentioned last year, our Space business organic growth was like 13% or 15%. We did a little bit in Q1. But as I mentioned on last quarter's call, this is the business within Kratos that absolutely could be. And it is being most impacted by the continuing resolution, the delay and also, as you all may have seen, I knew this, but it's out there publicly now there's a reprioritization of certain space assets going on within the Air Force Space Command, the space sports, none of this is bad. It means things are going away, but it means decisions haven't been made yet they're probably not going to be made until things are moving to the right.

We factored all of this in to our guidance when we gave it for our space business. And so the other piece is, as you know, our open space, virtualized software, software-defined ground station is primary up. Best case scenario is for a software defined satellite, okay? Where software-defined satellites reconfigurable, reprogrammable, depending on the mission, the ground equipment upgrade versus the software you can reconfigure with it. That's why we win right there.

As you may have seen a number of the software-defined satellites, particularly in the commercial area, are being pushed to the right. I believe that Airbus actually came out and talked about it. There are very big customers. They're all in the world, but were directly related to Airbus on their satellite. That's moved to the right. We built those moved to the right of those launches of those software-defined satellites into our forecast.

And so those are the dynamics we're dealing with. There's a lot going on in the space area, but I'd leave you with this. The number of satellites that are going up and that are forecast to go up militarily national security and commercially is incredible. It's in the thousands tens of thousands, even with the optical links than the touchdown points where the touchdown point guy, and that's why we feel good overall about the business.

Great. Thank you, Eric.

Seth Seifman, JPMorgan.

Good evening. This is Rahul on for Seth.

Hi. Good evening.

I agree. How should we think about the growth trajectory at KGS for the rest of the year? Should we be thinking about sequential growth in the coming quarters? Or could it possibly take a step back?

In the annual guide we gave it's -- we haven't updated guidance from a quarterly perspective by segment. But the annual guidance we gave was roughly 20%, 25% for unmanned systems. And then that then implied of approximately 6% annual growth for KGS. So that has remained unchanged with the original annual guidance we gave.

Okay, great. And then can you provide more details about the Apollo and Athena drones and how they compare to Kratos' other offerings?

Yes, these are more on the disposable side than the attributable side, similar to virtually all of our other tactical drones, their legacy came from our target drones. But on one of them on Athena, I believe that either next quarter or by the end of the year, we're going to be able to actually talk about this platform. I'm hoping to if the customer will allow it. On Apollo, I doubt it because very candidly, I doubt it based on the application and what's happening there is one of the reasons two of the reasons, one of the reasons why our unmanned drone business is doing so well because of these derivatives of our target drones and what we expect them to continue to do going forward.

Great. Thank you, guys.

Joe Gomes, Noble Capital.

Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions.

Good evening.

So you talked about staffing and Deanna gave us some numbers and how much more staffing do you need to move forward or to get some of these potential business really good moving forward?

On particular, let me give you an example, Joe. On one particular KTT program, we could take 30 to 40 additional right now, on a time and material contract. That's one of the highest margin in the company and put them to work. I think rates 200 to 250 an hour that we've got another one in the engine area. It's just under 30 people we could put to work immediately, but let's go to the unmanned drone area. It's very challenging here because of what's going on in the industry not just with drones, overall aircraft, what's going on with aircraft.

We -- there is a program that we're about to get. I believe it's 30 people or 40 people right out of the chute, and it's going to be a challenge. And we're working that with the customer on potentially how to sequence them in and onboard them because obviously, we're a public company. We don't have the luxury of going. I wish we could do this.

We could go out and we could have 50 of these types of engineers on the bench, maybe an overhead until the program ramped up, which would impact our margins. But if we could do that, we could even further accelerate the growth rate. But it's a balancing act between quarterly profitability, quarterly execution, and onboarding these people for these programs.

Okay, thanks for that. And on the supply chain and your vendors, so a lot of potential growth here that you talked about, Eric, how confident are you in that they're going to be able to keep up with all this expected growth is going to be any type of bottlenecks there?

Great. That is a great question. So in Kratos, we call either to the directed vendor by the customer for the sole source one of a kind it only exists in the United States Kryptonite vendors, okay. The particular, the two areas for these, we're constantly on alert on the engines and the drones these are the two. Let me talk about both of them.

On the engine area, as if you recall, we have made and we're continuing to make a significant capital investment at Kratos' manufacturing center of excellence. So this is additive manufacturing, 3D printing, casting machining, primarily for engines. So we are doing everything we can, where we can to vertically integrate and get vertically.

And if we can't do it for everything, but to get vertically integrated to derisk as much as we can in front of these engine orders that we're getting, some that are coming. That's number one in the drone area. In addition to the autoclaves, there are certain other machines, tooling that are critical and there are certain vendors that are in the United States that are just overwhelmed right now because of CCA, because of five gas, because of end gas, I can go on and on.

So in certain of those areas we're actually bringing we're acquiring the machines, we're acquiring the tooling, we're bringing them in-house and we're getting up to speed. So we can transition or maybe not to do it primarily initially, but to have a backup plan. But we don't get in trouble because, as you know, what's the most important part of the system, it's the one you don't have when you're about to complete it and we're trying to stay on top of it, but it's challenging.

Great. Thanks for the answers there, guys.

Thank you, sir.

Josh Sullivan, The Benchmark Company.

So on the plan, KTT low-cost engine facility what do you see the volume capacity of that facility on an engine unit basis, maybe over that 12 months, 24 months? How you want to characterize it assuming you could hire, everybody wanted to, as you just mentioned, are we talking hundreds of thousands? What do you think?

Thousands per year.

And then on the partners for the KTT Spartan programs that you mentioned, are you partnering with traditional jet engine OEMs? Or are these airframe partners? Were you bringing a KTT complete engine?

Josh, is this partnering with small -- I didn't hear you quite?

So are you partnering with engine manufacturers with the KTT Sparton program or Airbus where you're bringing the engine?

Okay. On the vast majority of what we're doing in the engine area, as far as designing the engine developing the engine and manufacturing the engine we are doing it ourself. So we are the primary engine system provider to the airframer, and the airframer being the drone, the missile, the loitering munition, okay.

However, there is a certain area where we are we have a park, we are partnered, I can't get into it are under an NDA, but we're partnered on a certain class of engines that that both of us believe if we're successful on, this could be of a grand slam. So in what area we've got a partner, all the others were up we're doing it alone.

Got it. Thank you for the time.

Thank you.

At this point we're showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Eric DeMarco for any closing remarks.

Excellent. Thank you for joining us this afternoon, and we'll look forward to chatting with you when we report second quarter in August. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.