管理層發言
Thanks, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to AeroVironment's fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2024 earnings call. This is Jonah Teeter-Balin, Senior Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Before we begin, please note that certain information presented on this call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Further information on these risks and uncertainties is contained in the company's 10-K and other filings with the SEC, in particular in the Risk Factors and Forward-Looking Statement portions of such filings. Copies are available from the SEC on the AeroVironment website at www.avinc.com or from our Investor Relations team. This afternoon, we also filed a slide presentation with our earnings release and posted the presentation to the Investors section of our website under Events and Presentations.
The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, June 26, 2024. The company undertakes no obligation to make any revision to any forward-looking statements contained in our remarks today or to update them to reflect the events or circumstances occurring after this conference call. Joining me today from AeroVironment are Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Wahid Nawabi, and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Kevin McDonnell. We will now begin with remarks from Wahid Nawabi. Wahid?
Thank you, Jonah. Welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. I will start by summarizing our performance and recent achievements, after which Kevin will review our financial results in greater detail. I will then provide our expectations for fiscal year 2025. And finally, Kevin, Jonah and I will take your questions. I'm pleased to report strong results for the quarter and a record-breaking fiscal year for AeroVironment. Our key messages, which are included on Slide #3 of our earnings presentation are as follows: First, for the full fiscal year, revenue increased 33% to a record $717 million compared to $541 million last fiscal year. This is now our seventh consecutive year of top-line growth. Fourth quarter revenue rose to $197 million, a 6% increase from the same period last year and a new fourth quarter record. Third, our Loitering Munition Systems segment continues to accelerate with record full fiscal year revenues of nearly $200 million, a 60% increase compared to last fiscal year.
And fourth, given our strong execution, key program awards and growing pipeline of opportunities, we expect revenues between $790 million and $820 million, reflecting 10% to 15% top-line growth in fiscal year 2025. During this past fiscal year, global demand continued to surge for autonomous systems and AV responded accordingly. We invested across the organization to strengthen our team, expand our manufacturing capacity and enhance our solution offerings to meet the evolving needs of our customers. With these investments and our core strengths in innovation, capacity and experience, we continue to lead in this growing market. In the past year, we added three strong Directors to our Board with impressive defense and global policy expertise, whose counsel has been instrumental to our continued growth. We also added key leaders at our headquarters in the DC area to enhance customer engagement and help shape and define future requirements.
In addition, we made strides in expanding our manufacturing capacity, while level-loading production to improve operational efficiencies. Due to this hard work, we were able to grow revenue by more than 30%, while retaining very high levels of product quality, performance and profitability. With increasing orders in our pipeline, we plan to increase our production capacity even further in fiscal year 2025, while maintaining strong operational efficiencies. Finally, we leveraged the combat experience of our products, nine of which are currently serving in Ukraine, and our close relationship with our customers to implement important product upgrades. Our solutions portfolio is more resilient in contested environments, more autonomous, more effective and more interconnected than ever before. By utilizing our autonomy suite of solutions, including AVACORE, Kinesis, Autonomy Retrofit Kit, or ARK, and SPOTR-Edge, our customers can now utilize autonomous vehicles to sense, make sense and act on relevant information across the battle space.
We believe that AV is the best-positioned defense tech firm to meet our customers' needs. Our uncrewed solutions and loitering munitions are helping our customers achieve their vital missions today, tomorrow and into the future. We're proud of our accomplishments this year and we have even greater expectations for the years ahead.
Thank you, Wahid. Today, I'll be reviewing the highlights of our fourth quarter and full year fiscal FY '24 performance, during which I will occasionally refer to our press release and earnings presentation available on our website. As Wahid mentioned, we will now refer to the Unmanned Systems segment as the Uncrewed, or UxS, segment. FY '24 was a record year and the fourth quarter finished strong with our highest revenue quarter ever. We expect this business momentum to continue into FY '25. In terms of the full year, revenue totaled $716.7 million, an increase of 33% as compared to the $540.5 million for the fiscal year 2023. Our largest segment during the year was Uncrewed Systems, or UxS, which is a combination of our small UAS, which includes our Tomahawk acquisition, medium UAS and UGV businesses. UxS had revenue of $448 million in the year, up 30% from last year's $343.9 million. Puma demand remained strong, accounting for 62% of UxS revenue, but the segment also generated $61.5 million from our JUMP 20 product, along with contributions from our ground vehicles and Tomahawk products during the year.
Loitering Munition Systems, or LMS, recorded revenue of $192.6 million, a 60% increase compared to the $120.6 million last fiscal year. 62% of LMS revenue came from the Switchblade 600 products and services, while the remainder came primarily from the Switchblade 300 Block 20 products. Revenue from our MacCready Works segment came in at $76.1 million. This was flat compared to the $76 million from last fiscal year. MacCready Works growth was negatively impacted by the US government budget authorization delays.
Thanks, Kevin. With a strong fiscal year 2024 behind us, we're pleased to provide our guidance for fiscal year 2025 on Slide #7 as follows: we anticipate revenue between $790 million and $820 million; we forecast net income between $74 million to $83 million, or $2.61 to $2.92 per diluted share; non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of between $143 million and $153 million; and we expect R&D to be 12% to 13% of revenues. Our funded backlog at the end of fiscal year 2024 remained healthy at $400 million. As a result, visibility to the midpoint of our fiscal year 2025 revenue guidance range is at 55%. While this level of visibility is lower than recent years, it is important to note that our visibility reflects some uncertainty in the government contracting process. Many additional awards have been announced by our customers, but are not yet included in our backlog, including more than $300 million in orders for our LMS business alone.
We are confident in achieving our full-year guidance and we'll update our visibility accordingly in future quarters as these awards and other opportunities in our pipeline convert to orders and revenue. We expect first half revenue to represent almost 45% of the full fiscal year. Further, we expect Q1 revenue to account for approximately half of the first half revenues. We anticipate accelerating global demand for autonomous AI-enabled uncrewed solutions to drive continued growth across our business. Given our strong performance and execution, we remain confident that fiscal year 2025 will be yet another record-breaking fiscal year for AeroVironment.
分析師問答
Good evening.
Good evening, Greg.
Good evening, Greg.
You called out annual production capacity for LMS greater than $500 million, which is about 2.5 times or more than 2.5 times the fiscal year '24 sales. Can you maybe give a timeline given that you called out continued growth in LMS of kind of reaching that annual production capacity?
We are consistently increasing our production capacity and rates, nearly on a monthly basis, which keeps growing. In the fourth quarter, we achieved over $74 million in revenue, demonstrating a significant increase from Q3 to Q4. We anticipate this upward trend to persist. Our objective is always to remain ahead of our customers' capacity demands. Over the past three years, particularly during the COVID era and amid semiconductor shortages, we have successfully met our customers' needs. We are not far from reaching approximately half a billion dollars in production capacity, aligning with our customers' expectations and the demand signals we are observing, particularly with the orders we expect to receive in the upcoming quarters.
And then maybe just as a follow-up, if I look at the guidance, EBITDA margins are up about 60 bps at the midpoint in '25. You called out expect R&D to stay in the 12% to 13% range in fiscal year '25. But can you maybe talk about the drivers? How much of that is LMS mix? Do you expect margin expansion within LMS or just some of the moving pieces of the margin expansion?
Certainly. Greg, our margin for fiscal year '25 is expected to be strong, even with a significant shift in demand from our small UAS segment to our rapidly growing LMS business. Although LMS is seeing aggressive growth, we have successfully enhanced the margin profile within that segment. As we negotiate new contracts with the US Army and our international partners, we anticipate margin improvements throughout the year. Overall, we believe the market will continue to expand, with LMS being the fastest-growing part of our business. Given our capacity to scale and our balanced production at the factory, we expect to further enhance the margin profile of our LMS business. This should result in margins for the full year that are similar to those in 2024.
Our gross margin is showing slight improvement when adjusted for gross EBITDA.
That's right.
I'll leave it at that. Thanks.
Thank you, Greg.
Hey, thanks. Good afternoon, Wahid, Kevin and Jonah, nice results.
Thank you.
Hey, Wahid, you mentioned that $300 million, you kind of listed them all off, LASSO, Replicator, OPF-L, some of that was in the Ukraine, I think, Lithuania was also mentioned. So, you kind of just talked about that fourth quarter run rate. So, how do we think about that $300 million kind of rolling through LMS? Is it kind of like an 18-month period and then we're going to see additional orders from domestic customers? Just how do we think about how those contracts roll through?
Sure. So, Peter, we're working on several fronts. The primary reason for those orders to not be secured yet is the contracting capacity and timeline of our customers. The US government has been really challenged in terms of not having their budgets approved for almost half of their government fiscal year and now they're trying to contract all those with different suppliers, especially in our case because we are working on a multi-year contract that takes a little bit longer and especially since we're negotiating some of the key critical terms and conditions of that contract. So having said that, we expect pretty much all of those that $300 million worth of potential orders and even more than that to materialize or convert into contracts this fiscal year. We expect all of that and then some more. I was just trying to point out that our backlog at the end of the year was not as strong and the visibility was not as strong as last fiscal year, even though our full-year number is much higher now. But we see significant upside on the orders that are in the works that we believe we're going to convert into contracts in the next nine to 12 months.
And the timing of those contracts will kind of dictate our ability to recognize the revenue this year or next year.
That's right.
Understood. As a follow-up, Kevin, you mentioned the unbilled amount in your prepared remarks. It increased by about $95 million year-over-year. Does it continue to grow? You mentioned a new contract that may change the terms. How should we think about unbilled amounts moving forward, particularly in fiscal '25? Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, it will be a nice milestone when we get the new contracts. So, we'll be able to recognize or take progress payments for some of that revenue. But we're not expecting that in the near-term. So, you'll probably see some fluctuations in the unbilled in the near-term and then hopefully reach a point when we get the new contract that will start to come down as the older contracts go off and the new ones come on board. But I think overall for the year, we should kind of be about the same place that we are. We'll just bounce up and down a little bit.
You're welcome, Peter.
Yeah. Hi. Good morning or good afternoon, Wahid and Kevin.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
I wanted to follow up on the top-line outlook for next year. If we consider the numbers you've mentioned for the LMS segment, it indicates limited growth in the former UAS segment. How should we view the growth between these two segments for fiscal '25?
We anticipate that all our segments will experience growth not only this year but in the coming years as well. Each segment has promising growth trajectories and forecasts for multiple years, including fiscal year '25. Loitering Munitions is expected to be one of the fastest-growing areas due to several significant announcements and awards we have recently received, which will soon lead to contracts. The demand for our Uncrewed Systems business is largely dependent on contract timing. As you know, we have been included in the Ukraine assistance package, which presents a potential growth opportunity not yet reflected in our orders. Additionally, many of our international allies are increasing their inventories of our small UAS, particularly given the performance of our solutions in Ukraine. We expect this trend to continue as our pipeline expands. Overall, we project growth for our Uncrewed Systems, but the most significant growth will come from our Loitering Munitions business. The growth outlook may vary each quarter due to the timing of contracts that will be converted into actual revenues.
Thank you for your insights. There's been a lot of conversation lately about the changing competitive landscape. As we observe the potential sales volume from recent foreign military sales for companies like Anduril and others, they appear to be capturing market share quite rapidly. Wahid, could you discuss the competitive landscape and highlight the competitive strengths of AVAV specifically? Additionally, how should we consider your capacity to maintain or enhance market share as the market expands in relation to other companies?
Sure. So that's a great question, Ken, and I'm glad that you are addressing it or asking us that question, because we are very close and we follow these things very closely. First and foremost, the recent announcement that you saw for the FMS, it's just an authorization. It's actually not a contract yet. It is just an authorization by the State Department that they will allow these companies. And there is a lot more work to be done for those to actually convert into contracts and orders, number one. Number two, we know that Taiwan prefers and would like to acquire more of AV's solutions including Switchblade. Three, as I said before, this market is growing quite rapidly. So, it's very natural for a lot more competitors to show up, because it's going to attract more competition and the US military and our allies, by definition, are going to make sure that there's more than one player in the market.
Given all that, the track record that we have in terms of our win rate and the ability for us to deliver in volume with battle-proven test and battle-tested solutions is unmatched. A lot of people can talk about they can deliver solutions or they have solutions, but there's a huge difference between prototypes and announcements and actually delivering battle-tested solutions in volume. So, we like our odds of success. The market is going to continue to grow. We will probably see more competition in the space, but that's not new to us. We've been competing in this space for many years. And whenever competitors can't deliver on their promises, we stand ready to deliver, and that's been actually happening more than once in our history in the past. And so, there's no one who can deliver these things in volume in a timely manner as we do, especially given the time sensitivity of the conflicts that are brewing in the Indo-Pacific right now.
Great. Thanks, Wahid.
Wahid, Kevin and Jonah, good afternoon.
Hey, good afternoon.
I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the P550 aircraft you announced. Like, what is the vision for that aircraft? And I guess, how does it differentiate from the long endurance Puma or the JUMP 20?
Got it. Okay. The P550. So, P550 is our next-generation Group 1/Group 2 UAS that is purpose designed for the US Army's long-range reconnaissance program requirements. If you look at the requirements that the US Army has for the LRR program and you look at the performance specifications that we've so far published, a limited amount of those, for the P550, it's really directly related to the needs of our customer, the requirements that they have written. We believe that this is a fantastic capability. It actually enhances the missions of our JUMP 20 as well as the Pumas. Long-term, I expect in multiple years down the road that the P550 will be a stronger seller than our Puma. So, essentially it's our way of continuing our innovation and continuing to lead the market with disruptive category innovations that is going to keep us ahead of all of our competition. And so that's what P550 is all about. We're going to share a lot more about that tomorrow with our investors at our Investor Day Conference here in New York City. And we look forward to competing on the LRR as well as many other opportunities that are out there. The LRR opportunity was published recently and we've actually delivered our proposals, and we're looking forward to their decision in the near future.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I want to start first with maybe just talking a bit more about the Taiwanese FMS sale that was announced last week. So, if you think about the mix of that program vis-a-vis you and your competitor, I mean, how marketable do you think Switchblade can be in the Indo-Pacific, just given the limited range relative to competitors and the focus that there is on range in such a vast region as the Indo-Pacific? And are there any thoughts then within that context of maybe expanding up the range as you move further on the Switchblade product line?
Andre, so that's a great question again, and let me point out a couple of thoughts on that. Number one, those announcements were basically approvals, not yet orders. So, there's still a long way to go from there to actual orders being secured by both us and our competitors. Number two, the two solutions are actually not targeted for the same missions. They're quite different in terms of what type of missions they address, number two. Number three, Switchblade 600, as you saw, is the only loitering munitions that we know of that's publicly been announced as part of the Replicator program. And we all know from public information that the Replicator initiative within the US DoD is, by far, highly, highly focused to the INDOPACOM theatre, and the conflicts are brewing there. So, obviously, our customers know what they need most and they selected our solution. And the reason public announcement by our customer was that they are going to be procuring over 1000 Switchblade 600s for the Replicator as part of the US Army's contribution to that.
So, we let our record speak for itself. We've already delivered thousands of these systems. As I said, we will see more competitors in the space. We've been competing in the space for over a decade and we've delivered thousands and thousands of systems. And we're the only company that I know of who can deliver them in high volume in thousands at a high level of reliability and battle-proven quality today, and that's really critical to the INDOPACOM conflict. And so, we're very proud of that and we think that that's unmatched in the industry. Announcement could happen a lot and as you've seen from many announcements in the past that the end outcome seems to be somewhat different than the one the announcements ended up being in the beginning. And so, we look forward to competing and we'll keep you updated as this progresses through the process.
Perfect. That's really helpful color. Thank you.
Thank you, once again, for joining today's conference call and for your continued interest in AeroVironment. As a reminder, an archived version of this call, SEC filings and relevant news can be found under the Investors section of our website. We look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow at our 2024 Investor Day and wish you a good evening.
Thank you. Our first question comes from Greg Konrad with Jefferies. Your line is open. That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.