Astronics Corporation
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 24 Feb 2021

[Operator:]

Greetings. Welcome to the Astronics Corporation Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now turn the conference over to your host, Debbie Pawlowski, Investor Relations for Astronics Corporation. You may begin.

[Debbie Pawlowski:]

Thanks, Shamali and good morning everyone. We certainly appreciate your time today and your interest in Astronics. Joining me on the call are Peter Gundermann, our Chairman, President and CEO and David Burney, our Chief Financial Officer. You should have a copy of the fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results that was released this morning. If not, you can find them on our website at astronics.com.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Thanks, Debbie and good morning everybody. Thank you for tuning in. Our rough agenda today will be to summarize our fourth quarter of 2020 and 2020 in review. We will talk about our financial status, including our bank arrangements. And we will turn our attention to a brief review of our outlook as we are in the early days here of 2021 and of course, Q&A at the end. I want to start with a premise though. And the premise is this we are very well aware that we are still being heavily affected by the COVID pandemic, but we are increasingly of the opinion that solid progress is being made, and line of sight is being established for recovery in our chosen markets and for our company. And we’re going to spend quite a bit of time on this call talking about kind of the green shoots that we are seeing and why we are increasingly confident that the worst is behind us. But first, let me remind everybody what our major goals are as a company as we worked our way through this pandemic for almost a year now. And they are, first and foremost, the protection of our employees and the safety of our workplace. A lot of credit goes to our employees who have done phenomenal things working through this period of time and under very unexpected and difficult circumstances. They have done a really good job. Our second objective is to keep meeting the requirements that our customers have placed on us. They have trusted us with some pretty important programs. And even in the difficult circumstances, our objective is to stay up to speed with those expectations. Because they are important for our future beyond this pandemic, which we hope at some point is a distant memory in the past. So as such, our third goal or requirement is to, as best we can, position the company for survival during the pandemic and, more importantly, success afterwards.

[David Burney:]

Thanks, Pete. Just I want to say a quick explanation of the fourth quarter and the full year tax expense is a little bit crazy if you look at it. Our GAAP net loss for the quarter was $20 million, and the key driver in that was a $14.1 million non-cash valuation allowance we’re required to record against our deferred tax assets. The interpretation of GAAP, when it comes to assessing the realizability of deferred tax assets, looks more to past results rather than future profit expectations. If a company has a cumulative tax loss for the last 3 years, the guidance we are required to abide by calls into question the future realizability of any deferred tax assets that are sitting on the balance sheet. And typically requires a valuation allowance to be placed against those deferred tax assets. Well, consideration may be given to the company’s forecast. The historical 3-year cumulative loss is typically weighted more heavily. So a company may be forecasting a profitable future. But because of the cumulative loss over the past 3 years, it’s generally required to record a reserve against its deferred tax assets. This has no impact on cash taxes. Once we return to a 3-year cumulative income, we’ll see a lower effective tax rate than what would otherwise be expected as that deferred tax asset reserve gets reversed.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Okay. So to wrap up, looking ahead to 2021, we are unfortunately still unable to provide any kind of quality guidance, especially for the second half of the year. We said in our release we expect the first half of 2021 to look a lot like the second half of 2020 with the observation that Q1 revenues are likely to be light at around $100 million. This implies a substantially stronger Q2 obviously and it’s more just the nature of how orders are timed than anything else. But in general, we expect the first half demand wise to look like the second half of 2021. The other first half wrinkle will be the earn-out potential that Dave talked about of what is today a $10.7 million value, which we are reviewing and the real issue again for the second half and for the year in total comes back to demand and it comes back to bookings. Bookings in the first half will drive shipments in the second half. So, we are paying very close attention to what is happening currently. And by the time we report again, which should be the beginning of May, we should have a good grip on how the first half is shaking out and what the second half is likely to hold for us as a company. I think that ends our prepared remarks. So , if you want to open up the question line, we will entertain those now.

[Operator:]

Sure. And our first question is from with Beach Point Capital. Please proceed with your question.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Hi, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Definitely holding in well there. Just wondering, can you talk a little bit about retrofit, whether you are seeing any increased activity there and what portion of sales that was pre-COVID in terms of commercial aerospace at least?

[Peter Gundermann:]

Sure. The retrofit, it’s a little hard to know the number with certainty. We obviously know what we ship to say in the airline as opposed to Boeing, but we have – some of our biggest customers, especially in the in-flight entertainment world provide both. So Panasonic traditionally has been a very large customer of ours. We ship to Panasonic. A fair amount of their product goes to say Boeing or Airbus for line fit, but it also goes to MROs for retrofit. And we don’t always know how that split plays out. But in general, the rule of thumb that we use is that of the 70% of our traditional panel business that went to commercial aircraft, roughly two-thirds was line fit and one-third was aftermarket. So, approximately 20% of our total, which is significant and most of our aftermarket sales are in-flight entertainment related, either electrical power for passengers or connectivity equipment or wireless access points or data loaders things like that. So, it’s dependent on airlines upgrading their IFE, in-flight entertainment, amenity for passengers, which is an interesting place to be as the industry crawls out of the pandemic. Unlike a lot of companies, our aftermarket initiatives are not closely linked to say, the number of landings or the number of flight hours or the number of flights or even the number of passengers. It’s really related to what kind of service the airlines want to offer their flying passengers. And so one of the questions that you haven’t necessarily asked, but it’s probably a reasonable thing on people’s mind is let’s say the industry recovers in the second half. Are we likely to see aftermarket sales increase ahead of that or along with it or maybe after it as the airlines repair their balance sheets? And the answer is we are kind of running an experiment here. We don’t really know. It’s been – last time this happened is almost 20 years ago when the industry went through this kind of shock and it was over in about 3 months. So we are running an experiment here. And the best guidance I can give is what I tried to do during my monologue, which is we are noticing increased activity and a lot of attention. There is – you don’t typically get surprised by an order – a significant aftermarket order by an airline. It’s typically a lot of back and forth in terms of configurations and different options and alternatives and even flight trials for new equipment, which the airline wants to get comfortable with before they buy it. And all that kind of back and forth has definitely been on the increase over the last 3 or 4 months, which gives us reason to believe that the airlines are anticipating increased traffic, at least domestically, in the narrow-body side. And we are in position to participate in that when they pull the triggers on those programs. So you asked a short question. You got a long answer. I hope I answered most of it.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Great. Thanks.

[Operator:]

And our next question is from Austin Moeller with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed with your question.

[Austin Moeller:]

Hi, Pete. This is Austin on for Ken.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Hi.

[Austin Moeller:]

Hi. So just to start, can you comment on what build rate you’re currently at now for the 737 MAX? And where you sort of expect that to grow to in the second half of the year?

[Peter Gundermann:]

We’re at approximately zero. We’ve been shut down for a while. So that’s an easy one. And again, we were delivering, I want to say, 30 ships a month a year plus ago when Boeing shut down production. They kept us running for a couple more months. So they accumulated some number of ships, maybe 40, 50, 60 shipsets. And we don’t know what – I don’t know specifically what they are building at now. I know they are starting very small, and they are – they plan to ramp up over the course of the year. And our expectation is that they will choose through that accumulated inventory near the middle of the year. So we’ll start delivering in the middle of the year for the second half of the year. And I don’t know the exact schedule, but they say they want to be running at around 30 ships a month at the beginning of 2022. So our hope is that they get there and that demand supports it.

[Austin Moeller:]

Okay, great. Yes. Just to switch gears here. Can you provide any updates on Astronics’ business jet work? And what the uptake looks like on the Collins contract?

[Peter Gundermann:]

Sure. Well, most of our GA or business jet business is line fit. So the best way to kind of predict that is to look at production expectations at the major manufacturers. I mean, Textron is obviously a big customer of ours, both at Cessna and Bell. Pilatus is a customer of ours. Honda is a customer, Bombardier, Gulfstream, Dassault, pretty much everybody. So collectively, if you look at those rates, you can see what we expect to happen with our line fit business jet work. The Collins program is a little bit unique. That’s more of an aftermarket program at this point. And it is to provide connectivity – satellite connectivity for larger business jets. This is something we’ve been working at and had a few swings out over the last few years, and we’re providing an antenna system. Our big contribution to Collins is providing an antenna system. And it’s a relatively new service or product that Collins is offering. We can’t really – we’re not involved in Collins field sales initiative. So it’s hard for us to estimate that. But the feedback we get is that the product is being very well received, and that they think there is a right market for it. So we did announce in the order that depending on demand could be consumed relatively quickly or it could stretch out for some period of time. Again, we don’t know exactly what Collins sales prospects are. But our indications and our hunches are that, that demand is going to be consumed relatively quickly. So we’re pretty optimistic about it. Those of whom following our company know that before the pandemic in the good old days, we have talked about three stragglers. Our antenna company was one of the stragglers. We did a lot of restructuring to fix it. We thought we were in really good shape coming into 2020 and lo and behold, it’s working out. So we are pretty excited about that.

[Austin Moeller:]

Great. Well, that’s definitely very optimistic and looks good for the business jet and antenna side of the business. If we think about defense now, how significant was the MQ-25 Stingray contract to revenues either in 2021 or 2022?

[Peter Gundermann:]

It’s not in and of itself a critical program, but let me say this. And I’m going to be a little bit cryptic. But we have been working on a – I call it a franchise for flight critical electrical power for smaller aircraft. We have been announcing various programs, the FARA and FLRAA program with Bell, the Cessna Denali, the Pilatus PC-24. And we’re developing a very capable, very intelligent system that we think is – has really significant advantages for customers that build small aircraft. While small aircraft is turning into a whole bunch of different things, it’s not only helicopters and jets, some turbo perhaps in the conventional sense, it’s also unmanned aircraft, like the one you’re asking about, and also the emerging world potentially of pilotless aircraft, electric aircraft, flying people around in commuter settings. And it’s – this is an emerging effort in the industry, certainly, but it’s one that we think our franchise might be very, very well adapted to. So that MQ-25 is an example. It’s a step in that direction. We’re not allowed at this point really to talk about value or shipset content or anything like that. But we think it’s an indication of where that business could go, and it’s an exciting future, not necessarily for 2021 although we are making progress every year. But when we look out, it’s one of the kind of big-blue ocean areas that we can focus on.

[Austin Moeller:]

Awesome. Yes, definitely a very interesting opportunity coming up either for unmanned systems or urban air mobility there. Just the last question for me what rate are you shipping at now in the 787 and do you expect to stay at the level of the 5 a month through 2021?

[Peter Gundermann:]

Yes. We’re – we don’t – most of our product on the 787 – I got to think about this. We have a little bit that goes direct to Boeing, but the majority of it goes through other companies, and most of those companies or most of that product is specific for various tail numbers. So it’s reasonable to think that we’re going to ship at basically Boeing’s planned production rate not faster and not slower. So their stated goal is to be somewhere in the 6 per month time frame or rate, and we expect to be there with them.

[Austin Moeller:]

Okay, great. Thanks so much for the color. Appreciate it.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Thank you.

[Debbie Pawlowski:]

[Operator:]

I am sorry. And our next question is from Doug Ryan from Colliers. Please proceed with your question.

[Doug Ryan:]

Thank you. So, Pete, can you talk a little bit on the transit side? I mean, you’ve got a couple good wins under your belt, New York and Atlanta. What – I mean maybe talk about the delivery of those contracts. So what does the pipeline look like? And have these two opened the door for some other opportunity?

[Peter Gundermann:]

Sure. Those are significant wins from our perspective. And they – from our perspective, demonstrate the potential that this initiative has for us. This is – as you know is relatively new. It’s something we – I think we won the New York City program called R211 about 1.5 years ago, and more recently now, the MARTA program. And we think it’s an exciting – another blue ocean, so to speak. Trains are becoming increasingly digital and increasingly integrated. And the applicability of some of our test technologies for the transit market we think is a really, really good fit compared to the state of the industry before. And basically, what you do is you look around the world, not only just the country, but the world at all the cities that run major transit systems. And that’s our universe of potential here. So we – our strategy is to get involved with various programs with various train manufacturers. There only are maybe 5 major ones in the world. Our New York City job is with Kawasaki in Japan, obviously, and our MARTA job is with Stadler. And we’re pursuing programs in other municipalities now, which may be won by one of those 2 companies, may be won by others, but we’re quickly establishing relationships with the major train companies. And our hope is to work with them on other opportunities on a global basis. How big will it get? How fast will it get there? We’re kind of making it up as we go along here, but we’re encouraged at the win rate that we’ve got so far, we haven’t lost a major one. And when we think there are a couple of others that will hopefully be able to sign up in the current year in 2021. So, again, a smaller part of our business, a newer part of our business, but a blue ocean for potential. So we are hopeful.

[Doug Ryan:]

Okay, thanks. So you mentioned kind of the straggler companies. Can you kind of provide an update? Obviously, it sounds like Armstrong, the antennas, has been scaled back in a good position. But how about the VVIP and it looks – I would assume the Armstrong under Telefonix is positioned nicely now, but how about the VVIP?

[Peter Gundermann:]

Yes, you got it right. Actually, all three of those companies – we’ve got a number of kind of restructuring of the way we run internally, including some facility consolidations and things like that, that have been going on in the background over the last year, 1.5 years. And all 3 of those companies report through what was Telefonix. We now call the organization, CSC. And by doing that, we’re able to share some resources. We are able to – be able to move people and effort from one project to the other. It’s helped our cost structure and helped our competency, frankly, significantly. So AeroSat, our old antenna company or our former antenna company, is on a good track with the program with Collins. We’ve, I guess, simultaneously improved the competency of the organization, but also downsized significantly. So it’s nowhere near as big a drain as it used to be. We still have aspirations and hopes that it’s going to get bigger and better. And we’ll see how those play out over the course of this year. And it’s kind of a similar story with Armstrong, which has been physically absorbed into our while Waukegan operation in Chicago. I guess, we have two facilities in Chicago, Waukegan and Lake Zurich. And Armstrong has been absorbed into those two as part of CSC. And our VVIP operation that you talk about is doing better also. Revenues were up substantially. I don’t have that in front of me exactly, but I want to say that we’re expecting them to almost be double in 2021, what they were in 2019. And part of that is the 737 MAX getting recertified and the market opening up a little bit. So if we weren’t talking about pandemic so much over the last three quarters, we maybe would have been talking more about how we stemmed the situation there with those three and kind of moved past it. It was a critical part of our 2020 plan that kind of got buried in the rubble of the pandemic.

[Doug Ryan:]

Great. Thank you.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

And we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Peter Gundermann for closing remarks.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Well, thank you much. No real closing remarks. I appreciate everybody’s attention. We look forward to talking to you in another...

[Debbie Pawlowski:]

Pete, sorry to interrupt, but it looks like Jon Tanwanteng – yes, it looks like Jon Tanwanteng got on. Jon, did you have a question?

[Operator:]

Give me one second. Jon, please proceed with your question.

[Jon Tanwanteng:]

Hi, Deb. Thank you squeezing me in. I think my – might it just didn’t register when I did it before. Pete, I was just wondering if you could tell us if – how orders have trended through January and February relative to Q4? I know you said you’ve seen a lot of quoting and other activity, but not necessarily translation. or did they pickup at all in aerospace or are they mostly flat with what you’ve seen so far?

[Peter Gundermann:]

Well, it’s early, of course, Jon. But I guess I would tell you we expect overall growth in bookings, and we’re on track to do that, and it’s weighting more towards aerospace. So yes, the aerospace bookings quarter-to-date first quarter are showing another step-up in demand. So if we can hold that rate, it should be a pretty good first quarter from an aerospace perspective, for sure. Test is a little lumpier. Test bumps around, as you know. So our fourth quarter test bookings were substantial. And we have potential for that again in the first quarter, but you never really know. It’s hard to predict sometimes. But aerospace is on a trend to do better in the first quarter than the fourth quarter, for sure. So we’ll hope that as we get through. We’re about halfway through. So a lot can happen between now and then.

[Jon Tanwanteng:]

Great. Thanks for that. And just to be clear. That $100 million in revenue, expecting, does that include that semiconductor earn-out that Dave was talking about?

[Peter Gundermann:]

No. That will be recorded in other income, I believe, right, Dave?

[David Burney:]

Yes.

[Jon Tanwanteng:]

Okay, got it. And then just a quick one, any impact from the 777 incident that happened a couple of days ago? I know it was an older plane, so I don’t think it will, but if there is anything to the planes that are out there or perhaps the 777X, any fallout or read through would be appreciated.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Yes, nothing that we’re aware of, Jon. That’s a pretty proven engine. So it’s a little bit of a blip from our perspective. And it’s apparently not a common engine on the 777. So in a worst-case scenario, it’s not going to affect the fleet that much. And I guess from an industry perspective, if it has to happen, now is not a bad time for it to happen because there is a lot of extra 777s floating around to inspect. So I don’t expect it would affect the 777X at all. And I don’t think it’s going to affect international travel at all either at this point.

[Jon Tanwanteng:]

Okay, great. Thank you very much, guys.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Sure. Anymore, Deb?

[Debbie Pawlowski:]

No, that’s it.

[Peter Gundermann:]

Okay. Well, thanks everybody for tuning in. We look forward to talking to you after the first quarter again and have a good day.

[Operator:]

And this concludes today’s conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.