Ducommun Incorporated (DCO) Earnings Call Transcript

Good day, and welcome to the Ducommun Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Suman Mookerji, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Ducommun's 2026 Second Quarter Conference Call. With me today is Steve Oswald, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. I'm going to discuss certain limitations to any forward-looking statements regarding future events, projections or performance that we may make during the prepared remarks or the Q&A session that follows. Certain statements today that are not historical stack including any statements as to the company's progress and value creation opportunity for shareholders under our Vision 2027 sub game plan for investors, beliefs about the company's Vision 2032 strategic plan, potential destocking headwinds and their impact on the company's business for the remainder of 2026, expectations related to the U.S. Department Awards, long-term framework agreements for key missile programs with defense primes, our share of potential orders from those primes. The increase in production on many of those missile programs and their impact on the growth of our defense business, estimated synergies to be realized under the company's facility consolidation project and the outlook for the company's revenue and commercial Aerospace and Defense businesses for the full year 2026 are forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are, therefore, perspective. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. In addition, estimates of future operating results are based on the company's current business, which is subject to change. Particular risks facing common include, amongst others, the cyclicality of our end-use markets, the level of U.S. government defense spending, our customers may experience changes in production rates or delays in the launch and certification of new products, timing of orders from our customers, which are subject to cancellation modification or rescheduling, our ability to obtain additional financing and service existing debt to fund capital expenditures and meet our working capital needs legal and regulatory risks, including pending litigation matters generally and as well as any potential losses arising from third-party subrogation claims related to the garments performance under fire that may become material. The cost of expansion, consolidation and acquisitions, competition, economic and geopolitical developments, including supply chain issues, our ability to successfully implement restructuring, realignment and cost reduction activities that could diversely affect our ability to achieve our strategic objectives. International trade restrictions and our ability to obtain necessary U.S. government approvals for proposed sales to certain foreign customers, the impact of tariffs and elevated interest rates risks associated with the prolonged partial or total U.S. federal government shutdown, the ability to attract and retain key personnel and avoid disruptions, the ability to adequately protect and enforce intellectual property rights pandemics, disasters, natural or otherwise and risk of cybersecurity attacks. Please refer to our annual report on Form 10-KA quarterly report on Form 10-Q and other reports filed from time to time with the SEC as well as the press release issued today for a detailed discussion of the risks. Our forward-looking statements are subject to those risks. Statements made during this call are only as of the time made, and we do not intend to update any statements made in this presentation, except if and as required by regulatory authorities. This call also includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our filings with the SEC for a reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures referenced on this call. We filed our Q2 2026 quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the SEC today. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Oswald for a review of the operating results. Steve?

Okay. Thank you, Suman, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today for our second quarter conference call. Today, and as usual, I'll give an update of the current situation at the company, after which soil review our financials in detail. Let me start off again on this quarterly call with Ducommun's Vision 2027 game plan for investors. As we continue to make great progress in our fourth year of the plan heading into the final year of the vision starting this January. The strategy and vision were developed out of the COVID pandemic over the summer and fall of 2022 unanimously approved by the common Board in November 2022 and then presented the following month in New York to investors where we had excellent feedback. Since that time, the comments manages in executing the strategy by increasing the revenue percentage of engineered product content, which is at 23% over the past year and up from 15% in 2022. And consolidating our rooftop footprint in contract manufacturing, continuing our focused acquisition program, executing the offloading strategy with defense primes in high-growth segments, driving value-added pricing and expanding content on key commercial aerospace platforms. All of us here as well as my fellow board members continue to have a high level of conviction of the Vision 2027 strategy and financial goals and believe the market catalyst ahead presenting a unique value creation opportunity for our shareholders. The Q2 2026 results show again that the strategy initiatives are working with gross and adjusted EBITDA margins continuing to stay on track to meet and exceed our Vision 2027 goals along with revenues and the level of engineered products and aftermarket at the company. For Q2, I'm very happy to report that revenues reached a new quarterly record of $224 million, 12% growth over last year, our fifth consecutive quarter of over $200 million in revenue and our 25th consecutive quarter with year-over-year revenue growth. We had strong growth across all our end markets, with Commercial Aerospace, in particular, showing continued strength this year with 16% year-over-year growth a very positive sign. We saw production and deliveries continue to ramp, driven by higher OEM production rates and a gradual easing of the destocking impact. In addition, we benefited from new aftermarket content that drove incremental retrofit revenues on the 737 Max. We still expect some destocking to remain as a headwind through the end of this year, but the situation is improving. Military and Space revenues grew 7% with continued strength in our missile portfolio and fixed-wing aircraft, partially offset by temporary weakness in our radar, space and naval revenues. During the quarter, we also pulled ahead some production activity and associated revenues from the second half to a level of production at our plants ahead of higher delivery commitments in the second half of this year. Another major highlight in Q2 was the company's remaining performance obligations continued growth, reaching a record $1.16 billion, which is over $250 million higher than prior year and $85 million higher than just last quarter. This represents a book-to-bill ratio of 1.4x in the quarter and 1.3x over the last 12 months. We added more than a quarter's worth of revenue to our backlog in the last year, which is fantastic. Our Defense business RPO grew $197 million year-over-year, and Commercial Aerospace grew $54 million. We closed on $310 million of bookings in Q2 and have closed on $1.1 billion in the past 12 months. This is great work for our business development team, and it still does not include our share of potential orders from defense primes under the 7-year missile framework agreements, which are still being negotiated by RTX and the government but also happy to see it is not completed as of last month for the PAC-3 and at Lockheed and L3 Iris. We continue to have discussions with the defense primes to support them on these major agreements and are well positioned as the incumbent supplier of many of the programs, which is great news for DCO and shareholders. Production on many of these missile programs such as the Tomahawk, PAC-3 and Standard Missile 3 and 6 are expected to grow several fold. And this will be a big driver of growth for the DCO defense business over the next few years. Our performance centers are prepared for this increase in production with most capacity already in place, and we will hit the ground running once the orders begin to flow. Gross margin grew by $9.9 million in the second quarter to 28%, a 160 basis point improvement from 26.4% last year in Q2. We continue to see the benefits of our Vision 2027 strategy and gross margin expansion due to DCO's engineered product portfolio with aftermarket, strategic value pricing initiatives, restructuring actions and productivity improvements reading through to the P&L. Our cost saving expectations of $13 million annually from our facility consolidation program has almost been mostly realized at this time. For adjusted operating income margin in Q2, the team delivered 11.9% and above the prior year of 10.2%. This was supported by growth in adjusted operating income margins in both our operating segments. Adjusted EBITDA continues to improve towards our Vision 2027 goal of 18% and 2027 from 13% in 2022. DCO achieved 17.1% in the quarter or $38.4 million, up $6.7 million from Q2 2025. We're also in great shape for 18% in 2027. GAAP EPS was $1.31 per diluted share in Q2 2026 versus $0.84 for Q2 2025. With the adjustments, diluted EPS was $1.18 a share in Q2 versus $0.90 in the prior year quarter. A higher GAAP and adjusted diluted EPS during the quarter was driven by higher operating income. GAAP net income and EPS also benefited from a onetime clawback of executive compensation as a result of the restatement published earlier this year. As I mentioned earlier, we closed on over $1.1 billion in bookings over the past 12 months, a trailing 12-month book-to-bill of 1.3x. With increased defense spending and positive momentum in commercial aerospace, we have strong tailwinds in both our primary end markets. On the outlook for the second half of 2026, we expect to see continued growth from both our defense and commercial aerospace businesses, but at more muted levels versus the first half. We reiterate our previous guidance of mid- to high single revenue growth for the full year and that holds. As I mentioned earlier, we pulled some forward production-related revenue recognition into the first half to level load our facilities and to support high levels of delivery commitments in the second half. This is expected to unwind in the second half, resulting in low to mid-single-digit growth in Q3 and Q4 and keeping our full year expectations unchanged. Now let me provide some additional color on our markets, products and programs. Beginning with our military and space sector, we saw revenues of $124 million compared to $116 million in Q2 2025. This represents 7% growth and was driven by another quarter of strong performance in our missile franchise that was up significantly. We also had nice growth in fixed wing aircraft, which was offset by year-over-year temporary declines in RADAR, naval and space platforms and this was due to timing of orders. I want to briefly expand on our missile business. DCO's missile business grew 68% and in Q2 and is now up 29% over the past 12 months. I mentioned before that RTX, our largest customer and Lockheed are expected to significantly increase production on many programs, including the PAC-3, SM-3, SM-6, Tomahawk, FAD, RAN, and we are in discussions on multiple opportunities. DCO is well positioned in all these programs and in great shape with capacity of our operations that fully support the required ramp-up. These is a key supply in these programs and as the orders for missile replenish will begin to work their way from announcing to firm orders to cover laser focus on capturing as much of this content as we can. This is an exceptional time to be operating in this segment. We're not only fortunate but also excited for the opportunity to drive much higher lows of shareholder value from this growth. Within our commercial aerospace operations, second quarter revenue increased 16% year-over-year to $89 million, with strong growth in production and deliveries on single-aisle platforms from both Boeing and Airbus. Our 737 MAX platform also benefited from an aftermarket retrofit order. This is an incremental content of engineered products for us on the 737 MAX and the retrofit demand is expected to sustain for the next few years an opportunity for line fit revenues as well in the future. This growth in our large commercial aerospace business helped offset declines in our business jet and commercial rotorcraft business during the quarter. We continue to be optimistic on the commercial aerospace outlook. Boeing just last week announced our continued to make progress on increasing the 737 MAX builds from 42 to 47, and the new production line Ebert is now up and running. It was also great to see the MAX 7 recently certified after more than 6 years met more than a 6-year delay. The MAX 10 is next will be another big lift for our second largest customer, BA. We see the impact of internal external destocking coming to an end in the next couple of quarters with a glide path for growth going into 2027. We continue to monitor closely the supply chain challenges at Airbus with engines and note they're expecting rate increases in 2027 as well. In summary, the outlook for the next few years is the best I've seen since starting to come, and the future is very exciting for the company and its shareholders. We like the balance of defense and commercial aerospace business that we have as well and are strongly positioned to take advantage of the overall industry talent. With that, I'll let Suman review our financials in detail. Suman?

Thank you, Steve. As a reminder, please see the company's 10-Q and Q2 earnings release for a further description of information mentioned on today's call. As Steve discussed, our second quarter results reflect another strong quarter of revenue with continued recovery in commercial aerospace, along with growth in our military end markets. Gross margins and EBITDA margins both continued to show improvement on a year-over-year basis and the synergies from our facility consolidation projects completed last year are now at the expected run rate. These actions, along with our strategic pricing initiatives drove continued margin expansion in Q2 and keeps us on pace to achieve our Vision 2027 goal of 18% adjusted EBITDA percentage of sales. Now turning to our second quarter results. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $224.5 million versus $200.8 million for the second quarter of 2025. The year-over-year increase of 12% reflects strong growth in commercial aerospace of 16%, driven by growth on single-aisle platforms, including the 737 MAX and A320 as well as growth on wide-body platforms. The strength in the commercial aerospace business was supported by higher production and deliveries for OEM customers and aftermarket retrofit work on the MAX. We continue to see destocking in our commercial aerospace business and expect it to be largely caught up by the end of 2026. Our Defense business grew 7% year-over-year, with continued strength in missiles and fixed-wing platforms, partially offset by temporary declines in radar, naval and space platforms. The growth in our missile franchise was broad-based with strength in several different programs, including PAC-3, SM-6, Mir, Tomahawk and the Naval Strike Missile. As Steve mentioned earlier, our missile business grew by 68% during the quarter and 29% over the past 12 months. And with that, our missiles, radar and electronic warfare programs combined now represent approximately 35% of our LTM defense revenues and more than 20% of total DCO revenue. It's a strong franchise with great platforms to drive significant upside for Ducommun in 2027 and beyond as we see an uptick in OEM production activity on the various missile platforms. Overall, Q2 was a very strong revenue quarter for us, but did also benefit from sample forward of production and related revenue from the second half as we look to level load activity in anticipation of higher deliveries in Q3 and Q4. We posted total gross profit of $62.9 million or 28% of revenue for the quarter versus $53 million or 26.4% of revenue in the prior year period. The record gross margin was driven by realization of our planned synergies from the facility consolidation program, which are now at their full run rate, along with the benefit of higher manufacturing volume. Operating income for the second quarter was $28.3 million or 12.6% of revenue compared to operating income of $17.7 million or 8.8% of revenue in the prior year period. The year-over-year increase of $10.6 million was primarily due to higher gross profit and flat SG&A with the latter benefiting from the onetime compensation clawback. Adjusted operating income was $26.7 million or 11.9% of revenue this quarter compared to $20.6 million or 10.2% of revenue in the comparable period last year. The adjusted operating income excluded the onetime benefit of compensation clawback and was up 170 basis points versus prior year. The company reported net income for the second quarter of $20.4 million or $1.31 per diluted share compared to $12.8 million or $0.84 per diluted share a year ago. On an adjusted basis, the company reported net income of $18.4 million or $1.18 per diluted share compared to adjusted net income of $13.6 million or $0.90 in Q2 2025. The higher net income and adjusted net income during the quarter were driven by the higher adjusted operating income. Now let me turn to our segment results. Our Structural Systems segment posted revenue of $93 million in the second quarter of 2026 versus $91 million last year. The year-over-year change reflected $4 million higher revenue in our commercial aerospace business driven by single-aisle platforms, including the MAX and the A320 as well as wide-body platforms. The military and space business within this segment was down $2 million on a year-over-year basis with temporary weakness in military rotorcraft, partially offset by growth in missiles. Structural Systems operating income for the quarter was $12.8 million or 13.7% of revenue compared to $9.3 million or 10.2% of revenue for the prior year quarter. Excluding restructuring charges and other adjustments in both years, the segment operating margin was 15.7% in Q2 2026 versus 12.8% in Q2 2025. The increase in year-over-year margin was driven by savings from the facility consolidation program and higher manufacturing volume. Our Electronic Systems segment posted revenue of $131 million in the second quarter of 2026 versus $110 million in the prior year period, an increase of 20%. The year-over-year change reflected $10 million in higher revenues in military and space applications, driven by strong growth in missiles and military fixed-wing aircraft, partially offset by temporary weakness in our radar and space business. Commercial Aerospace in the quarter grew $8 million, driven by growth in Boeing platforms. Our industrial business also grew $3.8 million during Q2 due to timing of production orders. Electronic Systems operating income for the second quarter was $25.5 million or 19.4% of revenue versus $20.5 million or 18.6% of revenue in the prior year period. Excluding restructuring charges and other adjustments in both years, the segment operating margin was 19.7% in Q2 2026 versus 19.1% in Q2 2025. The year-over-year increase was driven by higher manufacturing volume. Turning to liquidity and capital resources. In Q2 2026, we generated $33.5 million in cash flow from operating activities compared to $22.4 million in Q2 of last year. Our strong cash generation was driven by higher net income partially offset by higher working capital during the quarter. Year-to-date cash flow from operating activities was $44.8 million, and year-to-date free cash flow was $38.3 million representing free cash flow conversion against adjusted net income of 127%. In Q4 of last year, the company amended its credit agreement, which now includes a $200 million term loan and a $450 million revolver. This new $650 million facility lowers our cost of capital and gives us incremental capacity to execute on our acquisition strategy. As of the end of the second quarter, we had available liquidity of $410 million, comprising of the unutilized portion of our revolver and cash on hand. Interest expense in Q2 was $3.5 million compared to $3 million in Q2 of 2025. The year-over-year increase in interest cost was primarily due to higher debt balances offset by lower interest rates on our debt due to more favorable terms in our new credit agreement. Also, as a reminder, in November 2021, we had put in place an interest rate hedge that went into effect for a 7-year period starting January 24 and pegs the 1-month term for 170 basis points for $150 million of our debt. The hedge is still in place and will continue to drive significant interest cost savings in '26 and beyond. To conclude the financial overview, I would like to say that the second quarter results continue to affirm that our Vision 2027 strategy is working and that we are well positioned to achieve our Vision 2027 goals. I'll now turn it back to Steve for his closing remarks. Steve?

Okay. Thanks, Suman. In closing, Q2 was another record quarter for DCO. I could not be happier. We ended the first half as well with record revenue and EBITDA margins are seeing strong tailwinds across our primary end markets. It was also our fifth consecutive quarter of revenue over $200 million. Gross margin and adjusted EBITDA margins were at 28% and 17.1%, respectively. Wonderful news, and I'll track to meet our Vision 2027 goals. In addition, the company's engineered product revenues over the past 12 months was 23% and in excellent shape as we drive higher OEM and aftermarket products through the P&L. As everyone knows, driving this percentage as high as possible as our #1 strategic focus with 100% commitment. Finally, I look forward to sharing the next chapter of Ducommun, California's oldest company still operating today when we unveil our Vision 2032 on September 17 at our Investor Day in New York. We cannot be more positive about the future of DCO over the next 6 years. And are excited to share the strategy and game plan with all of you next month. With that, now let's go to questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of John Godyn with Citi.

I wanted to just hone in on a couple of things from the prepared remarks and then maybe ask a bigger picture one. But in the prepared remarks, the missile growth number, I think I heard 68%. That was a very large acceleration from last quarter. I would love -- obviously, there's a theme there, but I would love a little bit more color on kind of whatever you're willing to share on the large inflection there? And then separately, you mentioned a large retrofit order, which I thought was very interesting and perhaps offering a little bit more color there would be useful as well.

Sure. Great. Great to be with you. Thank you for the question or the questions. I'll handle the first one. Yes, we're thrilled with the 68%. A lot of it is PAC-3. So a great job by our team, our whole group that supports the PAC-3, Lockheed in general, is on this replenishment even though these are -- is this order was not for the 7 years, obviously, 7-year was just done last month in July. There are very focused on PAC-3. We are a major supplier for cards for the PAC-3 and so that was a big part of the 68%. And Suman, you want to handle the other one.

Yes. And John, just to make sure the second part outside of the missile growth, it's at the Carson Yes, the cost is the retrofit. Yes. So that really is a great win for us with engineered products. So Carsten is an engineered product business we own the design IP in the revenues that come out of that performance center, and they were able to design a switch, which is going to be retrofitted on the MAX, and that was a big win. And eventually, we expect that will also be part of the line fit and will drive recurring revenue for us. But even prior to that, the retrofit order -- it's a large fleet out there. And is going to drive revenue for us for the next few years, just the retrofit alone. So it's a big win, and that helped with the MAX.

Absolutely. John, that's a home run for us. That retrofit.

Excellent. Excellent. And maybe if we just take a step back, and I'm sure we're going to hear more at the Investor Day, but just taking a step back on the margin outlook. I think sometimes the pushback that we hear from investors is on contract manufacturing exposure and the margins that, that kind of generates. I think you've demonstrated that you're able to generate higher-than-normal margins on contract manufacturing. And Steve, maybe there's something to kind of dig in there a little bit and just shed some light on how your contract manufacturing is a little bit different, maybe a little bit more specialized and how it's generating that margin profile.

Yes, it's a great question. And I think I'm happy to have this answer is that contract manufacturing is a challenging business. But if you find the right niches, you can make good money and have some pricing power, and that's a good example is our titanium business. We do super plastic forming and hot forming of titanium in the structures, which is a contract manufacturing build-to-print business. And there's only a few folks that do that in the entire world. And outside of Telus, which Airbus has -- even though they're a customer, they also have their own internal titanium operation, we're the largest. And there's very, very few that can do the work we do. So that's 1 example. The other example I'll give you is our Droplet facility, which makes harnesses all types of ruggedized harnesses, all types of applications for high heat for pressure for all types of environments and very few people can do that, too. So when you look into common and contract manufacturing, you can't look at us as we're just doing like machining with 5 and 6 axis machines, and there's 100 companies that can do that worldwide, okay? You really got to think about our CM business is just really things that are really hard to make, and there's a few people doing it in the world.

And that will come from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley Securities.

So we know you're embedded on these large traditional prime missile and munition programs. But what are you doing to address all the opportunities coming with affordable mass and emerging new primes such as like Andro?

Yes. Well, first of all, great question again. We are engaged. We're engaged with AeroVironment, we're engagement Anderol obviously, somewhat as well with Kratos. So we are absolutely on top of this as far as trying to find areas where we can drive value. Do I see us drone. I'm not sure, okay? But I do see us being able to provide value in different areas, such as composites, possibly antennas, those type of things. So we are actively quoting actively engaged. We have high levels of relationship now with their management, and we continue to move forward. So we're right on top of it, Mike.

All right. And then just for 1 follow-up question. We know you've been super patient on M&A, I mean, super successful as well and patient in recent years that do not do anything that is -- do you have a get tempted to look at larger more transformational deals? And related, any other updates on the existing pipeline?

Mike, you're a great straight man. Okay. Look forward to talking to you in September. Well, that's good news for you. I do mean that, but that's a jump in real quick.

Yes. No, we continue to remain active in the market in terms of looking at opportunities. We've beefed up the team. And so we are absolutely looking at a number of things that we're going to do -- we're going to pull the trigger when we think the opportunity is right, and there is -- we have the ability to create value for our shareholders. So we stay tuned. And I think you asked another good question, which, as Steve said, we'll be better positioned to answer.