CACI International Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 27, 2023

Key Takeaways

  • In Q3, CACI grew revenue by 10% year-over-year (all organic) with expertise revenue up 13%, technology up 7%, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 11%, and a trailing 12-month book-to-bill of 1.4.
  • As a result of strong YTD performance, management raised its fiscal 2023 revenue growth guidance to approximately 7.5%–9% and lifted earnings and adjusted EPS outlook.
  • CACI won its largest contract ever—an Enterprise IT as a Service (ITAS) award with the U.S. Air Force (upheld by GAO)—and rolled out the Army’s IPPS-A PeopleSoft system, while its bid pipeline stands at $7.2B under evaluation and $18.7B to submit.
  • Q3 operating cash flow was $56M (free cash flow $41M), despite a $222M cash headwind from extraordinary tax items, and CACI has deployed $295M of its $750M share repurchase program, leaving net debt at 2.5× LTM EBITDA.
  • Management highlighted continued favorable government budget trends and strong demand in defense modernization, cloud migration, photonics for space communications, and electromagnetic spectrum capabilities, positioning ongoing investments for growth.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
CACI International Q3 2023
00:00 / 00:00

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CACI International Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to Dan Lechburg, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for CACI International. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Well, thank you, and

Speaker 2

good morning, everyone. I'm Dan Leckburg, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for CACI International. Thank you for joining us this morning. We are providing presentation slides, so let's move to Slide number 2. There will be statements in this call that do not address historical Facts and as such constitute forward looking statements under current law.

Speaker 2

These statements reflect our views as of today are subject to important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from anticipated. Those factors are listed at the bottom of last night's press release and are described in the company's SEC filings. Our Safe Harbor statement is included on this exhibit and should be incorporated as part of any transcript of this call. I would also like to point out that our presentation will include discussion of non GAAP financial measures. These should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute Let's turn to Slide 3, please.

Speaker 2

To open our discussion this morning, here's John Mengucci, President and Chief Executive Officer of CACI International. John?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our Q3 fiscal year 'twenty three results. With me this morning is Jeff McLaughlin, our Chief Financial Officer. Slide 4, please. Last night, we released our 3rd quarter results and I'm very pleased with our performance.

Speaker 1

We grew revenue by 10%, all of which is organic, with growth in both expertise and technology. Profitability was strong with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 11% and cash flow was solid. Our trailing 12 months book to bill of 1.4 times remains very healthy. As a result of our strong year to date performance, we are raising our fiscal 2023 revenue and earnings guidance And Jeff will provide additional financial details shortly. Let's go to Slide 5 please.

Speaker 1

Turning to the external environment, Market and demand trends remain very favorable to CACI. Government fiscal year 2023 budgets showed healthy growth We continue to see positive funding trends. In addition, the President's GFY 2024 budget Request calls for further growth in defense, which is just the starting point as Congress begins the budget process. While budget indications are positive, we will continue to monitor the process and debt ceiling negotiations. We see continued growth in key areas of focus for CACI, driven by the heightened global threat environment, bipartisan support for national security and the need for modernization.

Speaker 1

From a capability perspective, we see continued government demand in several important areas for CACI, including broad modernization of both applications and networks and accelerating demand for cloud migration The space domain with photonics and situational awareness and electromagnetic spectrum including software defined signals intelligence and electronic warfare and their convergence with cyber. CACI's industry leadership and commitment to invest ahead of need position us extremely well to deliver innovation to our customers and value to our shareholders. Slide 6 please. We continue to successfully execute our strategy of building differentiated capabilities rooted in software and deep domain expertise. Just as important, we remain focused on exceptional execution.

Speaker 1

The combination of these two factors Enable CCI to not only win new work in the marketplace, but also retain, expand and extend that work over time. Let me give you some examples. First, our Enterprise IT as a Service or ITAS award with the United States Air Force is the largest contract award in our company's history. This award demonstrates CACI's leading position in broad IT modernization. While the award has been under protest, I am happy to say that our win was recently upheld by the GAL.

Speaker 1

We are ready to get to work I look forward to beginning this important program for the Air Force in the near future. 2nd, I want to highlight the Army's Integrated Personnel and Pay System or IPPS A. IPPS A is the largest PeopleSoft implementation in the federal government and arguably the most complex PeopleSoft implementation At scale of the world, serving more than 1,000,000 soldiers, we are excited to have rolled out the latest version of the system earlier this year. For the first time, the Army has a single system for managing more than 1,000,000 soldiers across the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard. That is software development at scale and we look forward to working with our customer to provide additional functionality and enhancements to further support our soldiers.

Speaker 1

This performance is yet another example of CACI's industry development for both enterprise and mission customers. In the space domain, we continue to see strong demand for our photonics technology from both government and prime customers. We also continue to invest in and advance this critical technology and as a result continue to achieve important performance and interoperability milestones. CECI's photonics technology enables secure space based communications networks using more powerful efficient technology It transmits more data faster. We are currently under contract to deliver optical communications terminals for the FDA under TRONCH 0 and TRONCH 1 for both the transport and tracking layers.

Speaker 1

And we continue to provide our Photonics technology to a wide range of additional classified programs at multiple orbital altitudes. Finally, we continue to demonstrate leadership In the electromagnetic spectrum, an increasingly important area of focus for national security, particularly in the Pacific and European theaters. CACI is one of the largest providers of sensing systems across all domains land, air, sea, space and cyber. As we've discussed before, one of our key differentiators is a strategy focused on software defined technology. This allows us to update capabilities in In our latest example of this capability, we recently executed the 1st over the air software upgrade of an operational system on a Navy ship at sea.

Speaker 1

Rather than waiting for the ship to return to port, we deployed an over the horizon update to enhance capabilities while keeping the asset on mission. This software enabled speed and agility is critical to the context of near peer competition. In summary, we delivered strong results and I remain confident in our long term prospects. We are successfully executing our strategy, We're making the right investments, hiring and retaining top talent, winning new work, delivering with excellence, Leveraging our financial strength to drive free cash flow per share and additional shareholder value. On top of all that, Well, we are effectively managing our capital structure to allow for flexible and opportunistic capital deployment and taking advantage of all available value creating initiatives like the tax method change we recently affected.

Speaker 1

As a result of our performance to date and our strong position, we are raising our fiscal year 2023 revenue and earnings guidance. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

Speaker 3

Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 7. To echo John's sentiment, I'm very pleased with our 3rd quarter results. We generated revenue of $1,700,000,000 in the quarter, representing year over year growth of 10%, all of which is organic.

Speaker 3

Expertise revenue grew 13% and Technology revenue grew 7%, both reflecting the ramp up of new awards as well as the expansion of existing work. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 11% in the quarter And it's 10.6% on a year to date basis, which is consistent with our full year guidance. As we previously discussed, we expected margin in the 3rd quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share were $4.92 up 6% from a year ago, The strong operating performance more than offsetting higher interest expense and a higher tax rate. Slide 8, please. 3rd quarter operating cash flow excluding our accounts receivable purchase facility was $56,000,000 This primarily reflects higher working capital as a result of our strong revenue growth in the quarter.

Speaker 3

Free cash flow was $41,000,000 As it relates to cash flow, we've had several extraordinary tax items that have influenced cash flow In fiscal years 2020 through 2023, we thought it might be helpful to lay them all out in one place, Make it easier for you to normalize our reported free cash flow as some years have enjoyed a tailwind while others experienced a headwind. Each of these items has been previously disclosed. We have them here only to aid your analysis. For example, as we have previously In fiscal 2023, between the CARES Act, the tax method change and Section 174, We expect to have a $222,000,000 cash headwind. This year will be the largest cumulative headwind experienced for these three items.

Speaker 3

Slide 9, please. You will recall last quarter, we announced our Board had authorized a $750,000,000 Share repurchase program. We deployed an initial $250,000,000 of that authorization As an accelerated share repurchase on January 30, we expect that ASR to be complete by August. As part of that authorization, we also initiated an open market repurchase program. As of the end of the Q3, we have repurchased an additional 45,000 in the open market at an average price of about $2.83 When we discussed the ASR, we noted that This remaining $500,000,000 authorization provided us with the ability to be even more flexible and opportunistic, Our stated strategy for some time.

Speaker 3

This additional flexibility is key to our commitment to drive shareholder value on deploying capital based on business and market dynamics over time, and that is exactly what we are doing. We ended the quarter with net debt to trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA of 2.5 times. This leverage Reflects the impact of the $250,000,000 ASR as well as the open market share repurchases. The healthy long term cash flow characteristics of our business, our modest leverage and our access to capital Continue to provide significant optionality to deploy capital in support of future share growth and shareholder value. Slide 10, please.

Speaker 3

As a result of this strong execution, we are raising our fiscal We now expect fiscal 2023 revenue growth to be in the range of approximately 7.5% to 9%. I'll remind you that two points of our expected growth in fiscal 2023 From acquired revenue with the balance being organic growth, we continue to expect our full year adjusted EBITDA margin to reflect our higher revenue outlook as well as our diluted share count guidance of 23,500,000 shares. We continue to expect our interest expense to be in the range of $80,000,000 to $85,000,000 Let me remind you, interest expense this year is up $20,000,000 compared to our initial expectations, primarily due to the rate increases we've seen over the last few quarters. I'm very pleased that the underlying strength of our business puts us in a position to offset that additional interest Expense and raised the low end of our adjusted net income guidance. I'll also mention that during the Q3, we entered into $500,000,000 of additional floating to fixed interest rate swap agreements to hedge an additional portion of our floating rate debt.

Speaker 3

With these interest rate swaps in place, interest rates on approximately 2 thirds of our debt are effectively fixed, helping to further insulate us from rate volatility. We are updating our fiscal year 'twenty three free Cash flow guidance to reflect the delay of a $40,000,000 refund related to the tax method change we've previously discussed. The refund was expected to be received this fiscal year, but has been delayed due to IRS timing. We now expect to receive the refund in fiscal 2024. Slide 11, please.

Speaker 3

Turning to our forward indicators, CACI's prospects continue to be strong. Our trailing 12 months book to bill of 1.4 times reflects strong performance in the marketplace and 3rd quarter backlog of 25,300,000,000 grew 8% from a year ago. For fiscal 2023, we now expect virtually all of our revenue Come from existing programs with minimal recompete and new business remaining. Our pipeline metrics are also very healthy.

Speaker 1

We have

Speaker 3

$7,200,000,000 of submitted bids under evaluation, approximately 65% of which are for new business to CACI. And we expect to submit another $18,700,000,000 over the next two quarters with over 80% of that for new business. So in summary, we're seeing the successful execution of our strategy manifest in our strong results. Our performance enables us to raise fiscal 'twenty three revenue, adjusted net income and adjusted EPS guidance, And we remain confident in our ability to continue to drive long term growth, increase free cash flow per share to generate shareholder value. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to John.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Jeff. So let's go to Slide 12, please. In closing, CACI delivered another quarter of strong financial results, 10% revenue growth, 11% adjusted EBITDA margin and solid cash flow. We're well positioned for continued performance with a strong track record of awards and a healthy pipeline of additional opportunities. Our performance is not by accident.

Speaker 1

We have a strategy focused on differentiation, innovation, operational excellence and flexible capital deployment. Our objectives in executing that strategy are to drive long term growth, Margin expansion, strong cash flow and free cash flow per share and ultimately customer and shareholder value. Jess said it very well. We're pleased to see the successful execution of our strategy manifest in our results. It's also important to remember that CECI's success is driven by our employees' talent, Innovation and commitment to our customers' missions and to each other.

Speaker 1

I'm immensely proud To lead such a capable and diverse group of people, it's your dedication, your good character and your innovative spirit It's truly foundational to our success. Thank you all. And to our customers and to our shareholders, thank you for your continued support and confidence in us. With that, Emily, let's open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We ask that you allow yourself one question and one follow-up to allow everyone the opportunity to ask a question today. Our first question comes from the line of Bert Soudin with Stifel. Please go ahead, Bert.

Speaker 4

Hey Bert. Sorry, Mike. There you are. Hey. Hey, good morning.

Speaker 4

Good morning, Bert. Just my first question, organic hey, good morning. Organic growth inflected to 10% in fiscal 3Q and looks to be on track to grow around 6% in the 4th quarter, I guess depending on where you fall within that range you gave. Can you just highlight what's driven that inflection? Has it primarily been on contract growth just as outlays have rebounded and hiring these?

Speaker 4

Or has it been more a function of the new contract you highlighted when you guys were going through your prepared remarks?

Speaker 1

Yes, Bert, thanks. It's a little of both. We put our FY 'twenty three plan together last August. It is playing out as we expected during our Q2 call. Jeff mentioned that I think on the margin side at 10.2 and 10.4 the 1st couple of quarters.

Speaker 1

He begged everybody. Nobody panicked, because this is the way the year is going to play out. That's what drove our confidence in ensuring we would finish the year at the mid to high end Of the 10s on our margin numbers, as for the revenue mix, it's really a combination of both. Over the last few years, We've really been focused on our contract growth. When you win some of these large programs, pretty much the 1st year of revenue is 100% in sight.

Speaker 1

They really have to go grow capabilities across the company and sort of take current capabilities to more and more Customers out there and our line leaders have done just a fantastic job there. As for some of the new programs, It's really spread across both expertise and across tech. One of the things about good news for us is both are growing. I often get asked, Technology is growing at 10 and expertise is growing at 7. You must be happy with the tech and I often answer, I'm actually glad when they're both growing.

Speaker 1

So the fact that enterprise May have grown larger than our technology business is actually positive news for us. So I've always said, As we look at growth, just don't fixate on 1 quarter. Things are going to move around quarter to quarter. That's why we focus On the outlook for the year in the longer term, we're really glad that we've gotten to this point to close our Q3 And are very, very happy that we're able to raise both top and bottom line guidance.

Speaker 4

Yes. Thanks for that, John. Maybe to follow-up to that point, you guys have had some notable wins recently across expertise in the enterprise tech side With a few multi $1,000,000,000 wins, so it seems like that part of the business is sort of evolving at least as good or better than you expected. Can you walk us through how to think about the Mission Tech sales side of the business? Because I feel like that's the part that ebbs and flows more quarter to quarter.

Speaker 4

You noted in your prepared remarks that the optics part of the business has seen some success with both primes and government customers. Can you just walk us through sort of how we should think about the next few Quarters as it pertains to some of your businesses across EW, SIGINT, Optics, a variety of the Mission Tech and Hardware business? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes, Bert, thanks. Terrific question. So on our Mission Tech side, I'll actually relate it back to the Q3 that we just Finished, right. So expertise outpaced technology on the revenue side, but still at the margins that we expected. It doesn't take a lot of mission tech.

Speaker 1

Although you won't see that in the revenue side, it really has a pronounced effect on our margins, and we continue to make progress. What's very different in our historical government services business is not just selling the expertise piece. The technology rate of orders is very, very different. It rarely hits backlog. We'll get an award for X number of units.

Speaker 1

And then before that quarter is done, we have usually shipped. Like we've also seen on the product side is Eventually everything does come back. We talked about some funding issues with our investors during 2nd Q3 last year. That funding has all picked up. It has allowed us to make more product deliveries thus support our margin.

Speaker 1

You asked about SA Photonics and where we're going in the optics world. And I could not be more pleased with their performance overall. We're very confident. I continue to gain confidence every quarter that we're going to realize the strategic value that we And just remember, the way to look at this is we're in the very early innings of optical comps. We are seeing strong demand.

Speaker 1

We've got great relationships and contracts with our government and our industry satellite primes. We are doing a great job of the transition and the connection, as you remember, to our heritage LGS Photonics business. So that's going well. We're expanding our production facilities down in Orlando, and we're still in the investment phase. So I would tell you, you should look for growth At the end of 'twenty four and into 'twenty five, based on the current schedules and on funding, from a technology side, we've done an We're looking at bandwidth from 1 to 100, 100 gig.

Speaker 1

We've got decades of development experience. We continually get pulled into many CRAD efforts, but we can expand what we're doing And during the quarter, we've also secured contracts for both LiDAR and comms applications in the air domain. So we're sort of already looking at Capability that the airborne layer is going to require as it comes to optical comms. So you should continue to look for Revenue and margin, margin growth in this space, as well as what we do in our ID Tech, our Archon Acquisitions, we get more towards the end of 'twenty four and as we continue on to up 'twenty five. Thanks for that question, Bert.

Speaker 4

Very helpful. Thank you, John.

Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Spingarn with Melius Research. Please go ahead, Robert.

Speaker 5

Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Ronny. John, I want to follow-up on that growth question, the revenue growth question. And you talked about that's both, I guess a function of demand and supply, supply being outlays moving faster and so on. How do you see that trending from here?

Speaker 5

And separately, what have you mentioned the debt ceiling fight. Has Customer behavior adjusted for that, I would it's a tough question to ask in a quarter we had such good revenue growth, But wanted to see if you could talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 1

Yes, sure. So it's always going to be a function of A bunch of outlays and what does that for me budget looks like and we're sort of I hate to use this term again, but we're in the early to mid innings Putting together our FY 2024 plan. We've got I think the government has a lot of work to do To get us to a clear 2024 budget, there's a lot of talk of, is that going to be a full year CR? What is the debt Sealing an impact and I don't have the best crystal ball, but I would tell you is I like the hand we play. I like the capabilities that we have Created ahead of customer needs.

Speaker 1

And yes, there are times where funding doesn't totally line up with that, but if all is not lost Because we're in the right areas of very healthy, healthy spending trends. And if I talk about the budget, on one side, There's legitimate concerns about the government's deficit and our debt situation. But on the other side, I mean, there remains significant bipartisan Support. For National Security, we've got a war going on in Europe. We got near peer threats like China, who in some ways has surpassed us.

Speaker 1

Cypher is that greatly equalizer. A decade ago, we were at war in Afghanistan where we sort of own the skies The only electromagnetic spectrum, that's not going to be the case in the next flight. And we're going to have to rely heavily on space And that domain is now contested. So at a macro level, I'd like the capabilities we have. We've been working this for a number of years.

Speaker 1

So then when we break that down into the Mission Tech side, from the Mastodon LGS acquisitions and what we had Internal to CACI, we're seeing demand for those products pick up. Some of our counter UAS systems, We've got some testing going on in Europe, looking at enhancing what we do in the counter UAS domain and Really worked through our federal government, Bill de Plant and his team as to how we may be able to help in the Ukraine So that's a positive trend here. Again, we're the long term company. We're not going to look quarter to quarter, Long term over a number of quarters, a number of years, I like where the funding is showing up. We've really expanded Our relevance to those areas, we've got terrific relationships working with large OEM primes Who are building those exclusive platforms be it space or be it airborne or be it land that we find our products on.

Speaker 1

If I look at the long term growth plan, I really like how we're positioned. And when we get to the August time frame, we'll be talking about 2024. But we've also got some really nice large programs that we've won as well.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then just on the Supply side, on your ability to staff up, these recent intelligence leaks, the documents that were leaked, Is that going to slow down the approval process for security clearances? And can that and if so,

Speaker 1

How significant could this be? Yes. I mean, look, we've talked for a long time, I've been in this market, which is a long time Around the ability to get not only our folks cleared, but our government folks' folks cleared it. I think that's going to continue to be an issue. There is no perfect answer there.

Speaker 1

At the end of the day, we're all assessing whether somebody has the right At this aptitude and the right what the right the good stuff that helps people make the right decisions there. More to come on that. I know that folks in the House and in the Senate have been talking about how do we all Better plan for that. But under the categories of things that we can control, I like what we're doing. We've been doing on hiring and retaining our talent.

Speaker 1

Look, the demand remains high. And Your point, Rob, we've got to get through that clearance with it as well. But we've got our attrition that's The lowest of in a number of recent years, definitely lower than what it was as we entered COVID. We are still filling a lot of our open recs through Our referral program, about 40% of our hires come to us through referrals. 1 in 4 of our openings is filled internally.

Speaker 1

So for those folks who are looking to come to a Company not for a job, but to build a career that there's a lot of places that they can move around. So from a funding, from a budget, from the clearance process, CRs, we're a 61 year old company now. We've been Operating in that environment for a while. And I really, really am excited by both the expertise and the technology hand that we have, As well as some of these large recent awards and really looking for continued long term growth and even more shareholder value. So thanks Rob.

Speaker 2

Thanks for all the

Speaker 1

color John. Appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Matt Aiters with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 1

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Brian. I wonder if you could talk about kind of the longer term Good morning. I wonder if

Speaker 6

you could talk about kind of the longer term view of margins. I mean, if you go back a few years ago when you guys started First talking about kind of the technology versus expertise, you were kind of a high-9s or 10% business and you're now you're kind of Hi, Ted. Is there a lot more room to go? Could you get to kind of like 11%, 12% margin or does it sort of get harder to improve from here?

Speaker 1

Yes, Matt, thanks. It really comes down to mix, frankly. I love the fact that we're talking with analysts and our shareholders about what else can we do to continue to grow margins. You're absolutely right. About 6 years back to where we are today, we're up about a little north of 200 bps.

Speaker 1

And while at the same time, we restructure how we go after the market. We've added an Higher parts of our business in the Mission Tech area. So it really it's really the mix of business we have And it's the volumes that we can achieve in our Mission Tech Business. And frankly, change is hard, change is hard for our customers. We're that option that is very much focused on and you got to remember 6, 7 years back, we had pretty bright budgets And we were a nation at war.

Speaker 1

We were looking for that day when budgets would be tighter, frankly. And with tightness and with spending constraints comes what are new ways we can look at the technology that we need out there. So how do we do software defined devices? How do we collapse 5 devices into 1? How do we do over the year upgrades, which I talked about during My prepared remarks, if we end up in a conflict in the Indo Paycom region, it's a long haul to assure To do a hard work hard up, right, to change the capabilities on ships.

Speaker 1

The fact that we can do that via software and software is this company's super power, That will drive margins. Some of the work we've done with our Ivy Tech acquisition And our product line, some of that we expect relatively strong growth. But again, that's an area where a customer has to change how they buy end item devices. So long term, we're very well And along the way, our mix of programs continues to drive margins. And it won't be every quarter.

Speaker 1

It may or may not be every year, but if I look at the trend line from 6 years back to where we sit in FY 2023 north of a 200 bps mile While we've been building new parts and new capabilities, I think there is continued shots. As for our number, Matt, I really shy away of can it be 12, can it be 15, because it really is that mix. But we're doing everything That we should be doing as a responsible public company management team to make sure we make the right investments at the right time To make that probability of success even higher, we see like anybody reach for.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks. That's helpful. I guess maybe one for Jeff. Can you talk about thanks for laying out on the cash flow impact.

Speaker 6

Can you Talk about kind of those moving pieces that go into 2024, what that looks like? What does that 222 number look like next year?

Speaker 3

Sure. For 2024, obviously, we'll have the $40,000,000 related to The CARES Act refund that we expected this year and moved out, the CARES Act activities at this point are finished. The R and D tax credit starts getting much smaller, steps way down. No, I think we're in probably low double digits or so next year. It starts getting quite small.

Speaker 3

The big impact was this year.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tobey Sommer with Chirrus Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Thank you. I was wondering if you could tell us what the hiring and retention looks like. It's sort of A different angle on the revenue growth that you're able to achieve in terms of filling open positions, not just Is it in the cleared categories?

Speaker 1

Yes, Toby. Toby, thanks. Look, Hi, everybody, teeny, teeny talent. We're doing a terrific, terrific job. You all have heard me say in the past, It doesn't do any good to win large programs in expertise side.

Speaker 1

If we're either bidding them at a rate where I can't find the people or if I'm having trouble finding them, no investor Love sharing a great awards number and then not being able to convert over that. Very proud to happen to say we're not that type of company. We actually spent an awful lot of time making certain that we are still staying true to that theory of You know, bid less and win more and less, we win larger items. Perfect example of that Hiring connected to winning large programs is our ITAS award. Extremely pleased that award was recently reaffirmed by GAO For the 2nd time, all the stop works have been lifted.

Speaker 1

Government has been very, very clear that there's nothing that's going to stop progress on this job. That job is just about fully staffed and we just had our kickoff meetings earlier this week with Djeet Gray And her outstanding leadership team, we're moving forward. We're looking at how we start the program off work on ops con. And then clearly areas where we could quicken the pace of we are detecting where the Air Force is going to go And all their base wide network. So, there is a great connection between the jobs that we have won, these larger jobs making sure that we can staff them.

Speaker 1

From a cost of labor, you don't have to look too deep to look at some of the High-tech companies, those in the technology sector with a large number of layoffs. It's been years since we've had layoffs here. So that provides yet another source of ready to go labor. We are tracking the market. We're looking at some of those recent commercial layoffs.

Speaker 1

It may remove a little froth. What we've seen recently with people with certain kind of deep technology skills, but folks love doing the mission that we do and they love we go about doing it? We're going to bid responsibly. We're going to win large programs, especially in the expertise area that we can Fully staffed because the alternative to that is our customer loses. And you don't get the ability to be a 61 year old company If you consistently let customers down, so where that company is going to win these large jobs, make sure that us and our partners can come out of the gate fully staffed.

Speaker 1

And again, back to some of the other questions, I'd love what that goes to our long term growth prospects.

Speaker 7

Thank you very much. In terms of the Photonics business, would the is if you got a bunch of massive orders In an hour and we're ramping up to production. Are there any short term Negative financial implications that we should be aware of, so we can understand what the arc of this may be over the next few years?

Speaker 1

Yes. I mean, when we executed that acquisition, we were very transparent to talk about we're buying that business Very early on in their cycle, right? And the thesis to that acquisition was, let's take what we purchased with LGS on the Large, extremely reliable bespoke kind of solutions market. And then here's that say Photonics, Who could use some assistance on the algorithm piece, but also they had phenomenal early stage successes at building Satellite based optics at scale. So, I'll reiterate, we are in the investment phase still, And when we look at our capital deployment strategy and how we fill gas, you talk about investment, acquisitions, partnerships and then share buybacks.

Speaker 1

This is one that's going to continue to take a larger share of our CapEx spend to make certain that we've got our evidence right, that we've Gone through the producibility model correctly. I mentioned we're looking to move a lot of that production to Orlando, Which is not only a cost move, but it's a consolidation move to make sure that we're building all of our optics in the same place. So yes, there is a curve still through FY 2024, although I'm not trying to guide you all here yet. But there will be more on the investment case than there will be on the profitability case throughout 2024. And then as we get into 2025, We'll see revenue meet up with profitability sort of that chocolate and peanut butter game that really gives us a 5 to 10 year Strength in what we're going to do in the satellite based optical comps.

Speaker 1

So hopefully that gives you some additional color. Thank you. Thanks,

Speaker 8

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. So first, I'm going to ask a follow-up question to Rob, Question about the debt ceiling. It's probably the quarter is too early. But as you think about the risk of, Let's say, it's a year long term solution.

Speaker 8

But on the other side, you have all this multi $1,000,000,000 win. How are you thinking about Flow for the next 12 months.

Speaker 1

Yes. So, yes, there's a lot of bunch of parts moving Around. And we've got one large new win here and We're looking at finally securing the 2nd large win. Look, as for specific guidance, We're going to provide that when we get more towards August. But to your point, Mariana, obviously, we have some nice awards.

Speaker 1

We had Icast reaffirmed. We're waiting on a large Intel award. It's still under protest. Look into that for that to work there hopefully by the middle of this quarter. We got trailing 12 months booked to build a 1.4.

Speaker 1

Some of that's going to take some time to ramp. We've got some nice budget growth. What we have to go by now is the FY 2024 presence budget. I look at the budgets for SBA, for other satellite based work, For IT modernization, for cloud, for a lot of the great things that the intelligence community does, Making certain we have the right analysis of some of the intel, I like Our opportunities to continue driving growth into 2024 and then when SA Photonics And our Aerocon Solutions pick up and more into 2025 beyond. We're going to continue to monitor the budget process.

Speaker 1

We're going to continue to monitor the debt ceiling negotiations. At the end of the day, based on the size company we are And where we play, we've got a great portfolio of expertise in technology, where expertise informs technology and technology makes expertise more Effective and more outcomes based. At the end of the day, we're looking at how well are the things that CACI Has world class capabilities in and how well are those funded. So it immediately becomes less of what the overall defense budget is, But in these 4 or 5 or 6 specific areas, how well are those being funded? And I can tell you with an exclamation point, Everything that we're doing today and those things that we're going to drive growth in the future year to year are very well funded as we look at

Speaker 8

Thank you. And my follow-up is, could you please provide some color on the pipeline of submitted bids? You mentioned how much of So some new businesses for SACI, but please describe if you have like any multibillion dollar opportunities there Or how much of those new businesses are taking away opportunities versus new opportunities?

Speaker 1

Yes, sure. Jeff shared some of our pipeline specific earlier. We've got a we have a great Set of proposals that are being generated now, there was some talk. We had a 0.6 book to bill in the Q3. I'll remind you All again, awards are lumpy.

Speaker 1

We've always said that. We never took pride in a 2 times book to bill each in the first and the second quarter. The number I'm watching is 1.4 times. Historically, maybe the last 7 to 10 years, always above 1, 1.3, which is clearly enough to be driving growth. We're looking to have some really nice A bid be submitted.

Speaker 1

What's really important is that long term strategy a bit less and win more Drive the duration of contracts in backlog greater and greater each and every year gives you all gives our investors a really much more Clear, transparent picture of what you can look for growth as we go forward.

Speaker 3

Yes. Mariana, I would I'd go back to my prepared remarks to point out that we have about over 7,000,000,000 Dollars of bids under submittal or under review right now, about 2 thirds of which are new. We have nearly $19,000,000,000 that we will submit in the next two quarters. And to John's comments about Bidding less and winning more, bidding fewer and winning more. I would add that one of the things that we do keep track of Watch closely is the length of the awards that we're winning, which over the last couple of years Has increased from about 4.5 years on average to 6.5.

Speaker 3

So we're bidding fewer things, We're winning bigger things and we're winning longer things.

Operator

The next question comes from Scott Forbes with Jefferies. Please go ahead, Scott.

Speaker 9

Hey, good morning. Just a follow-up on Matt's question and appreciate that mix is the real driver of kind of margin improvement, but We talk a lot about the differential between technology and expertise margins, but can you provide some color into how you've seen margins trend within just The expertise portfolio and how much room there is to drive it in there excluding the kind of mix shift towards technology?

Speaker 1

Yes, sure. Thanks. We've historically said that on average, I'm going to stress the word average, right? On average, Technology margins are about 300 bps greater than our expertise. And the tough thing when we're looking at a long term growth is, Hey, in any one quarter, a lot of other things happened.

Speaker 1

Cost plus revenue that people sometimes associate to lower margin versus Firm fixed price. We've got some fantastic expertise work that are cost plus, that are more at a firm fixed price margins because Of the extreme expertise, somebody needs an admission expertise quadrant of our business that you're not going to find those People just anywhere. It really gets back to Rob's earlier comment around talent. So We try to give you a few different looks at this. One is what's the mix of our revenue.

Speaker 1

So that's step 1, right? But If my margins in technology are 300 bps higher, then over time revenue numbers from technology aren't going to be as high to drive a much higher margin. On the expertise side, we're not bidding jobs at a loss. We're not bidding expertise jobs that we can't in relatively quick time generate revenue from. And if we look at jobs like ITAS, that's enterprise technology job.

Speaker 1

That is really making sure we're re architecting networks. So it's not the old style services batch flip kind of job. This is what we're drawing on From across the company, software skilled talent is only working on the ItaS job. So long and the short of it, Scott is, this quadrant and this expertise versus tech deserve to sort of guide, But in any one quarter, we could do $40,000,000 more of expertise work that had a higher margin to it, And also bring some of our technology deliveries up. So you're going to see revenue growth as you saw in the Q3, which also going to see us holding margin.

Speaker 1

So I wish I had the perfect modeling formula for you, but just remember that on the expertise side, margins can go from something like Or to something like 15. So just when those things cash in. That's helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

Operator

Our next question comes from Seth Wiseman with JPMorgan. Please go ahead, Seth.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning. This is Rocco on for Seth.

Speaker 1

Hey, Rocco. Good morning.

Speaker 5

What drove the approximately $135,000,000 increase in accounts receivables this quarter? And when are you expecting to see that unwind?

Speaker 3

It's driven largely singly by the volume Increase. There is some amount of variability, I know you know, in general around accounts receivable, but Largely, it's driven by the accelerating volume that we're seeing in the business. It ought to stabilize to a more normal level Over the next quarter or 2, even though it will continue to grow from its historical levels.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you. Then on capital deployment, how does the M and A pipeline look and how are you thinking about M and A versus

Speaker 3

Yes. When we were talking about the flexible and opportunistic, this is really at the core of that. And being able to rapidly shift as we see things that are interesting to us, to acquisition Or other investments from share repurchases is really that. We see the market has been, you will know, a little there's been a little bit It has not afforded us a great number of things that were of interest over the last year or so. We see that Starting to change a little bit.

Speaker 3

We're seeing some things on the horizon that may be of more interest. And I think over the next quarter or 2, we may Find some targets that we find of interest, but we'll continue to be ready to toggle back and forth Relative to capital deployment, toggle back and forth as some of those are more interesting.

Speaker 1

Yes, Rafael, I'd also add, Flexible and opportunistic, truly is flexible and opportunistic. Whether we're doing M and A or direct sharing This is shareholder value. The only delta there is timing, right? Time wise is we're doing M and As to find capability, customer relationships to provide longer term growth That will long term provide shareholder value. But as Jeff mentioned, as we find times in the in our M and A cycle that 1, there aren't properties there else.

Speaker 1

2, we've got the capabilities we believe we need, and that will potentially cause an even harder shift More towards different capital deployment options. We're going to be focused on some internal investment. Frankly, as we go into 2024 is some of the questions as Mike Answers alluded to earlier around our recon and around SAO atomics to make sure we've got the right build outs later. But at the end of the day, we evaluate all options based on the current dynamics. All options are always on the Table, we've repaid down debt.

Speaker 1

We've gotten leverage down to a relatively low level. I really like the way we've managed cash inside the business, Manage our balance sheet because things always turn around, if the M and A market changes and we think we need more capabilities or Customer relationships then, it is a core company. It's a core competency for us that we understand how to do M and A, how we exploit and extend value And make sure that we're making the right investment choices. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Great.

Operator

Thanks. Our next question comes from Jan Frans Engelbrecht with Baird. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning,

Speaker 10

John, Jeff and Dan. Sorry. I have one for Peter this morning. Thank you. So just you may have alluded This is a bit earlier, but just wanted to sort of get a better feel how you guys are thinking about sort of fixed price versus cost plus Sort of moving forward, as you start your planning for 2024 and sort of almost close to the 30% mix Of your revenue?

Speaker 10

And just sort of how DCSA and the new airports contract might sort of change that as you look towards 2024? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes, I'll start. If I look at our revenue mix trend towards more cost plus over Sometimes driven by firm fixed price and the like. There's no particular trend. The last couple of quarters, you might recall, we saw stronger growth in fixed price. So I hate to use the word lumpy again, but it is Lumpy in some ways it's almost non deterministic.

Speaker 1

But we're ramping new work That happens to be cost plus. We've got material purchases. We have to do wonders different types of contracts That actually comes in at slightly lower margin. But when we look at the mix, we are going to come out of the year with We've greatly expanded revenue guide, holding margins between mid and high It also matters what kind of work that we're doing. As I mentioned earlier, margins on Cost Plus can run the gambit.

Speaker 1

We've got a lot of time material contracts. We can get cost out of those. Whatever we're not spending On the cost side of that, that immediately falls to the bottom line. Programs like DCSA, What that really did was just we were looking in 2024 and 2025 to try more volume. We've gone from So on 3 providers of that service to 2.

Speaker 1

So that would be an indicator of potentially some additional revenue that we Generate from that program, but we got a lot of programs in end. So it's just constantly moving mix. And our job is to give you a guide That really covers what those different cases can look like.

Speaker 3

Yes, many programs are also a mix of contract types and they Can often change over time. So as we're in different phases of a program where we're buying equipment, where we're Ramping things up where we're defining next phases, doing different things, different activities, Different contract types will be appropriate. We obviously like to do fixed price whenever we're able to do it in a way It gives us an opportunity to financially capitalize on it and also give our customers some price certainty. In many ways, it's easier for them, if we take some of that risk. So that can be a mutually beneficial thing.

Speaker 3

But many programs have multiple dimensions, and they'll change around over time. It's hard to It's a little nuance. It's hard to draw a macro conclusion about it.

Speaker 10

Perfect. Thanks for the detail there. And just a quick follow-up, sort of you mentioned the Intel award. So just sort of going with your sort of your bid win, But less win more mantra and sort of is there any areas that we should like look out for any sort of maybe not the size of the Air Force award, but sort of large, Large type awards in 2024 and maybe just areas?

Speaker 1

Yes. We really shy away from Specifics in there, but some additional color in the spirit of the way you asked it. There is a sizable cyber related IC in terms of the award that we're still waiting for that to be decided upon. That is a that's one of those jobs that we worked on over a number of years to make certain that we believe we could bring better And more long standing extending capabilities to that extremely important customer. So it was a competitive award.

Speaker 1

We're able to It's quite incumbent, bringing in more capabilities versus the lowest rates. It really makes certain that we could supply the outcome That's what we're looking for. That's a pretty strong mission expertise job for us. You should look for more of the same. We've got Some great capabilities, customers who are wanting to take more things to the cloud.

Speaker 1

Today in the intelligence, intelligence community, We moved more apps to the cloud than next 5 companies combined. We have outstanding partnership relationships with AWS And with Microsoft Azure, so I like the hand we have in the enterprise tech area. I like the hand in the mission expertise area. And then we'll be looking for some results to some larger VisionTech awards that we have put bids in on. So again, it's really to the extent possible using the full extent of those 4 quadrants and making certain that we've got that Balance right, because winning low margin expertise jobs that we had trouble staffing Well, we've got to use our balance sheet to help staff it.

Speaker 1

Those aren't good long term moves for us. Those solve a single quarter issue, We're not that single quarter company. We have shareholders looking for long term profitable predictable growth. We're trying to do that by being as transparent as we can. Jeff mentioned earlier, just the number of years that our program sits in our backlog is a positive indicator That we're able to better predict what the out years are and you're able to predict along with us.

Speaker 1

We may not see that growth eye to eye to eye, of course, But being transparent is the first step. And so as you see us build our book of business, as you see us continue to claw in into margins, I really like the opportunities we have in all four of those quadrants. And again, expertise informs tech and tech informs or makes expertise More available for our customers. So we like them both. They both play an important role

Operator

Thank you everyone for your questions. Those are all the questions we have. So I will now turn the call back to John Mengucci for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Well, thanks, Emily, and thank you for your help on today's call. We'd like to thank everyone who dialed in or listened to the webcast for their participation. We know many of you will have follow-up questions and Jeff McLaughlin and Dan Letberg and George Price are available after today's call. So please stay healthy and all my best to you and your families. This does conclude our call.

Speaker 1

Thank you and have a great day.

Operator

Thank you everyone for joining us today. The call is now concluded and you may now disconnect your lines.

Powered by Quartr