Leidos Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, Bert.

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Bert. I did say that, and I do believe in a merit-based strategy process. I mentioned that in my prepared remarks because what we are doing in 2024 as we undertake this year of deep strategic thinking is analyzing all the business cases and the sub-business cases for where the best use of capital is to draw a superior top line and bottom line growth for Leidos.

And so as a result, we're able to put some seed corn in areas that are emerging in this year, even though the strategy process is not done. And yes, in fact, the investments we made in our managed healthcare business is absolutely paying dividends now, and that is the reason that business under Leidos' leadership has been so well positioned to respond to the increased demands that have come our way.

So we're very excited about the strategy process we've got underway. We're very excited about the ideas that are emerging from that strategy process. And we're seeing great benefit of past decisions we made through last year about where to invest, how to invest, and which businesses to position for future growth.

Chris, did you want to add anything to that?

Bert, I just -- obviously, the Health and Civil organization has been a standout, and we do see that momentum continuing. And to Tom's point, it's been a multiyear investment strategy that's positioned us to be where we are and to deliver excellent results for our veterans and be rewarded for that. But there are other parts of the portfolio we're very excited about, too.

And so I wouldn't limit our thinking and our investments to solely focused on Health and Civil. And at the same time, some of the Health and Civil organization results have benefited from investments we've made in things like AI and other capabilities at the center that apply broadly. So you'll see those strategies continue, and you'll see us continue to accelerate those investments as the year unfolds.

Well, thanks, Bert. Yes. And yes, the fun thing about capitalism is many people look at the same market and decide to prosecute it in different ways.

We're aware that our competitors are looking at selling AI labor and think it's a market unto itself. That's not how we see the world. We see the world as difficult customer challenges, and we see ourselves as solution providers into that space. We see trusted mission AI as a huge key enabler to unlocking superior value for our customers and the solutions we bring forward.

So we're going to continue to avoid breaking AI out as a specific target. But in the spirit of your questions, I can share with you some antidotal evidence. For instance, while we've been investing in AI, the deployment of that has enabled us to improve quality on about $1 billion of those health exams.

In other words, some of the throughput we've been able to have in our clinics is the direct result of the efficiency that the AI tools we have embedded in our solutions unlocks. We've been able to put AI in our SCS Airport Security Business by linking things together there. We've been able to put AI in our unmanned systems, command and control systems that will enable us to help unmanned systems quickly speak to each other and aggregate their effects.

So we're going to continue to see trusted mission AI as not an end but a means to serving customer missions. And I hope that differentiation is something that you can join us on the 12th of June to understand even more.

Yeah, Jasper, thanks for that, right. Obviously, we're very pleased with the start to the year. And as in our prepared remarks, we indicated it wasn't just the Health and Civil business. It was really all of our teams got out of the gate strong.

And so now our full-year outlook has been updated to mid- to high 11%. We think that's an area that, obviously, we're ahead of that in Q1, but that will be strong performance across the business as the year unfolds. And you think about some parts of the portfolio, for example, commercial, international, and defense systems, both of which had good first quarters, but aren't yet where we expect that they will be on a margin performance basis.

So there's uplift there over the course of this year and into the future. And for Health and Civil, sustained this level of performance through Q2 is what we indicated, and we'll have to see how the competitive process plays out on the recompetes in Q3, Q4, but there is the potential for that business to continue this momentum, certainly through the back half of this year and into '25.

And just pivoting off of that a little bit, I want to give a shout-out to the team for how they've embraced this whole concept of promises made, promises kept culture. So while we have a standout first quarter performance in our health business, they are not the only business committed to continuing to perform through the year.

So we're very confident in our ability to hit the current range, and we're very excited about the degrees of freedom that gives us to invest differentially in our future and really propel our next growth strategy to great heights. Thanks. That makes sense. And then you mentioned the improvement in managed health programs for the Health and Civil segment this quarter. I guess just curious what the trends were on the legacy civil side of the segment as part of the growth in margins you demonstrated in the first quarter.

Yeah. The Civil part of the portfolio has some excellent programs in there. And as Leidos and the team are bringing that all together, it's more about the energy and the synergies that we see across those businesses on personnel and software capabilities, that can be extended to both sides of the equation. I wouldn't say there's any particular standouts in the civil portfolio. It was a solid first quarter out of the gate.

So we're looking forward to building on that momentum as the year unfolds, especially -- and as we look at our FAA business and where that can extend capabilities to certain international customers, etc, as a particular area of interest for us.

But I can't that question not go without a little bit of a foot stomp on the great performance we're having in the Health side of the business. We are continuing to invest in innovation there. And some of the innovations that Bert asked us about before that were built during the COVID crisis puts us in this position to do exams better for the VBA and some of the results that are behind the financial results are that Leidos investments have allowed us to increase the total number of veterans served by 27% in 2023.

And as Chris mentioned in his comments, the volume is even increasing now in 2024. More than just that, we're able to serve our rural veterans better by 33%, and we're able to serve our homebound veterans by over 55%. So the investments we've made in technology and capability to take the clinics to the veterans are serving our veterans in ways that are enabling us to then unlock volume and unlock financial results. We're very excited not only about the whole of Leidos' portfolio but this part of the portfolio in particular.

Thanks, Jasper.

Yeah. So the PACT Act volumes are racing forward. We're in a unique position to liquidate that volume on behalf of the Veterans Administration and feel very good about that. But as Chris mentioned in his comments, that puts pressure on reaching the contract ceiling value for the Veterans Administration, and they may have to -- and they will have to recompete that contract early. However, we've got a great position for that recompete.

We feel very confident in the technology, the capabilities, and the team we have assembled to continue to serve veterans in this nation. And so while, as Chris said in his comments, we've provisioned for some slight moderation in profitability in the second half of the year just because of the competitive dynamics and are being unsure of exactly how the Veterans Administration is going to put that RFP out. We feel very good that that's a business we're in. That's a business we can continue to grow in a business that we can continue to serve our nation and its veterans very robustly. Chris?

Yeah, Sheila, I'd just add, I mean, we have invested. We'll continue to invest in increasing our ability to drive throughput and drive excellent service for the veterans. We've gotten the strongest signal yet from the customer that the volume of activity should remain elevated, and we see that continuing into 2025. And it's not just the number of cases, it's the complexity of those cases.

So we believe, still in the early innings of where this thing can play out, and we're going to continue to invest accordingly to make sure veterans are well served with great experiences. I would say that even our first quarter results, which were quite strong. It wasn't aided by incentive fees as part of that, too.

So there's still some opportunities to drive that performance higher over time. So I really like how we're positioned in that business right now.

Yeah. So I mean, a couple of things we're tracking, and Cindy, leading that business is all over this with her team. But as we said in our remarks, we're actually pleased with the way we performed out of the gates in the first quarter. We're ahead of pace.

There are some specific things we're focused on to drive margins higher over time, one of which we just completed at the end of last year, getting Dynetics fully integrated into the Leidos set of systems, whether that's financial, HR, etc, and our rate structure. And so there's a lot more collaboration, resource sharing, efficiencies that are unlocked as part of that.

So that's very exciting program execution. It's a strength of Leidos, and it's an area that we've seen improvements in talent upgrades and process upgrades, and that's an area that we can identify mile markers along the rest of this year that will drive our program performance higher and our profitability higher as the year unfolds.

And then finally, transitioning into next phase of key programs. We know sometimes on developmental programs the early phases are not the most profitable, lessons are learned, and those are applied into the next round of bidding. And I think the team has incorporated those and we feel good about the bids we've been putting out and are well-positioned to win to keep growing that business.

Yeah. And just to foot stomp that a little bit, Sheila, I mentioned in -- as I footstomped an earlier comment about all the businesses keeping up with their commitments to Chris and I for their full-year performance in the promises made, promises kept at modus operandi. And I'm very happy to report that Cindy is amongst them undeterred by a less robust start to the year than perhaps we might have hoped for, but very committed to the full-year results, and she and her team are committed to meeting or exceeding those.

Hey, good morning.

Hey, Rocco.

Yeah, Rocco, I'll start and Tom can fit in. Obviously, national security and digital, excellent program execution is what we expect from that team because they've consistently delivered it. And sometimes you're not able to anticipate that you'll knock it out of the park on award fees the way they have continued to do so, but I wouldn't bet against them.

So we'll continue to see program execution as a strength there. And as it relates to health, yes, when we -- Health and Civil, when we started the year, we signaled there in the mid-teens was a reasonable expectation for the year. We've exceeded that. We'll continue to exceed that level through Q2.

And I think even in the second half of the year, there's the possibility and potential it could be better than that, and we'll be able to give you some better color on that as we get closer to the recompete process.

Yeah. I would just say that my whole promises made, promises kept culture, never uninvites overperformance. And so overperformance is welcomed. Overperformed is understood as a goal. We all look to achieve and I have every confidence, Roy and his team are going to work to overperform both in this year and in the future. We haven't talked about it yet, but our business development pipeline is very exciting and very robust.

And nowhere is it more robust and more exciting than in Roy's business, in our national security and digital space. So he and Steve are working very hard to make sure we are positioned to win in the marketplace in the future, not only to deliver results now but to deliver results for the next 5 years.

Well, hypersonics is one of several areas that we're focused on in our Defense Systems business. And yes, we are very excited about the capabilities we've proven in our hypersonics programs. And in fact, this week, we're having very robust conversations with customers around where they want to go and how they want to take that technology forward. Obviously, it's a -- it's a wicked hard problem, but we've got our wicked smart people working to solve them with and for the customers.

But that's not the only one. We've obviously got a lot of expectations with regard to if pick Enduring Shield. That program is progressing well through the Army test program this year and we're very hopeful for an LRIP decision at the end of this year. And wide field of view Tranche 2, while we were disappointed that the prime for our payload wasn't selected, we're working several avenues to maintain our prowess in that market and serve our nation in their understanding of what's happening from a -- from a threat standpoint.

So our defense business isn't only hypersonics, but hypersonics is one of those areas and we're very excited about the suite of capabilities we're currently focused on, necking down to and prosecuting effectively.

Yeah. Thanks for that, Matt. We are very, very proud of Vicki and her team and the swift actions they've taken through last year and since last year. They're engaged they're excited about the opportunities they see. And I'm very happy that they're not looking at that world through rose-colored glasses. They are being positively inclined pragmatists, looking at the market for what it is and looking at how we prosecute that market in the Leidos way to the best degree possible.

We did exit certain geographies, as we talked about last year, and we continued to refine the products we're offering into the marketplace because we decided those have become commoditized and they weren't a great place for Leidos to perform. But while it's still early innings, we're very excited about the business. We're spending a lot of time on the strategy for how and where we grow that business into the future. And we expect that to be a part of our conversation as the strategy unfolds through the year and into next. Chris, anything you'd like to add?

Matt and I would just add, I mean, we're excited about getting our Charleston facility up and running. And the teams have been doing a good job there. Actually, the leadership team will be down there next week to lay eyes on it ourselves.

So we're looking forward to seeing that. There's a variety of products. I won't get into specifics about which ones we're pulling out of the portfolio. But clearly, we're focused on where we have technical differentiation, leadership positions, people screening has been a strength of that business for a long time. You can imagine that will be something we can stick with and double down on.

We have an excellent suite of port and borders and equipment, but there are some pockets of the check baggage -- checkpoint baggage, etc, that we just have to continue to evaluate where we're positioned and make those changes accordingly.

Yes, Matt, that's still our budget, and there's a little bit of reserve in there. And we ask the teams to be smart and disciplined even when we allocate them approvals. But you'll see a few things ramp up. We've got our San Diego facility that we're going to be proud of to get a brand-new facility for a lot of our classified work out in San Diego completed this summer, and the teams are also looking for interesting ways that we can get in front of the customer on unmanned capabilities, demos, test beds, etc. So we expect that to ramp up a little bit, but we'll continue to manage that tightly. Chris?

First mentioned San Diego a little bit. I'll just put stop the great job the team is doing there. We're building a facility that will be world-class in terms of security and up to the latest standards of our nation. And so we'll have facilities on the West Coast that are as good as any and better than most. And we're very excited about the conversations and the opportunities that will unlock for us with our customers and the opportunity, therefore, to serve them at the highest classification levels.

Hey morning, Noah.

Well, no, we're not in the point where we're guiding to 2025 and beyond. But I remember last year, when we were wrapping up the year, we were talking about us being high 10s business and people were chastising me for suggesting we might be over 11.

Now we're proving we can be over 11% and very eager to see what the full potential of this business is. That's not a commitment to maintain margins at a certain level. We're going to make smart decisions. We're not going to get locked into certain preconceived notions of where we want to go, but better is always good. and we want to bank those genes and expand and exploit other areas to grow the business. So as we've guided this year, high 11s is our commitment to you in 2024. And as we prosecute 2025, we'll be very eager to see if we can meet or better that. Chris, anything?

Well, mid- to high 11s. Tom, I just want to make sure the team doesn't run away from us here on their models. But no, your points are well made. I think that we have lines of business that haven't reached their full potential, and we're driving them in that direction.

And capitalizing on the gains we made. We're going to continue to invest to stay ahead of demand. So those are things that we'll have to evaluate where those opportunities are Noah. But clearly, you can see this business has a lot of potential, and we're going to continue to unlock it.

Thanks for that. And yes, we've put the right team in place to execute the vision for us being a growing business profitably, focused on profitable growth. And so the pipeline is being refined to go after aggressively the right business, not all business. You remember one of my sayings, not all business is good business. And for Leidos people understand that message and our priming the pump of the pipeline accordingly. We've got a healthy backlog, as you rightly call out.

I'm not a big fan of these quarterly book-to-bill ratios because they are a fool's mission. The right thing to do is focus on a healthy backlog, profitable growth. And we're not embarrassed by the backlog we've got. It's up 4% year-over-year. And we're looking to improve that as the year goes on. We've got a huge pipeline of opportunities in front of us. All businesses have robust pipelines of good growth.

And yes, in the latter half of this year, there are a significant number of new and takeaway businesses that we're hoping to brag about on future calls. But we've got to wait and see on those things.

Sure. Thanks.

Yeah, Cai, this is Chris. Again, the team has done great work, and we're proud to serve our veterans, and it's been volumes that the customer didn't see coming when the original contracts were put in place. So the ceiling is structured differently. It's based upon an exam volume, and they've actually had to issue a justification authorization to extend that once already to give them time to run this competitive process.

We believe that process should play out over the next couple of quarters and culminate by the end of the government fiscal year if things stay on track, that's the timeline we're working towards. Obviously, it's not entirely within our control. But our expectation is we'd have that new contractual vehicle in place beginning of our fourth quarter.

Obviously, Cai, you'll appreciate the fact that our nation can afford the gap is a critical capability for those who have served us. And so we are very appreciative that the Veterans Administration is working with alacrity around the whole of the system and how they keep serving our veterans adequately.

And we're very much in dialogue with them to make sure that we're positioned to make sure our veterans continue to be served.

I think the long and short answer to that, Cai, is no, we don't yet. They're still working through that themselves. But we feel very confident in the investments we've made and the facilitation that we've done, the technology we've deployed the team we've assembled that we're in a very good place to compete and continue to serve our nation and the Veterans Administration.

Exactly what the rules are and what the incentives are in the next RFP will be known in time. But whatever the customer decides to do, we'll adjust accordingly and continue to work to make an adequate return on our investment and adequately serve our nation's veterans.

So we're not deterred by this. We're actually excited. The fact is we are making robust profits here because we're serving our veterans so effectively. We're doing exactly what the Veterans Administration has incentivized us to do. And so it's a good news story. And the veterans who get served, the quality health care they get coming into a Leidos QTC Clinic is better than any. And the customer service and the customer reputation we have is best-in-class. So we're very excited about it and very eager to continue to serve our nation in this way.

Yeah, good.

Rob, what we're looking at with AI, and I mentioned it in my prepared remarks, is really becoming that conduit from commercial best practices and Gen AI technologies into the government space. You'll appreciate as well as anybody the fact that the government space and the government systems have a whole bunch of idiosyncrasies and complications that people like Leidos and Leidos in particular, know very well.

So the two examples I cited in my prepared remarks of Sourcegraph and MoveWorks are two examples of best-in-class commercial capabilities that we're being able to use to generate outsized productive results for our customers. What that does is it does cut down work in the customer ecosystem but it allows the people to go do more value-added work than just the trite, routine, repetitive or deeply analytical things that then we team with a human. We're very focused on integrating those solutions into our trusted mission AI solutions.

And then we're very keen that we don't deploy AI and forget. We are very focused on our AI solutions being in partnership with the human being, never alone and unafraid. Chris, anything you'd like to add?

Rob, it's a good question. It's a good insight. I think we take the view that you've got to play the long game here. I mean if we were worried about maximizing the dollar on the current book of cost-plus contracts, I think that'd be a little bit shortsighted.

So recognizing that, to Tom's point, we can deliver more mission outcome with the same budget and then set ourselves up to be incrementally more competitive on future opportunities. That's what's going to play well with our customers, and that's what's going to keep them coming back to Leidos. So we see this perpetuating our growth momentum as we continue to invest in this capability.

Yeah, Rob, on inflation. I get where you're going with that. And I mean there's -- I'd say there's pockets of that, but there's not a pervasive opportunity or concern in our current backlog. I mean a lot of it as we priced our backlog on multiyear jobs, even if it's fixed price, we built in some inflationary expectation.

Some of that, for a period of time, inflation ran hot. But the teams have flexibility on how they execute for those outcomes. And so we're also motivated to drive efficiencies in our process. And each new bid that we're moving forward with, we're evaluating them on their own merits and looking for opportunities to make sure they can generate an attractive return for our shareholders. So feel good about our backlog and feel good about our pipeline and where that helps support our margin objectives over time.

Operator, it looks like we only have time for one more question.

Thank you, Jason. Yeah, it was a somber sobering affair. For those of you who haven't picked up the magazine that they published at the beginning, the title of the conference was lose-lose question mark. So that gives you a sense of the tone earlier this year. And I don't think that that has become any more joyful.

They are all to a one, increasing defense budgets robustly. So there is certainly top-line growth happening in Europe. But more importantly than that, my personal hypothesis is that we're going to see defense expenditures globally, morphed from hardware to more system solutions and effectors.

I beg your pardon for those words, but systems, integrated solutions, and effectors, not so much the platform that launches the product, but the actual effector for defense. And so Leidos is particularly well positioned to serve that market, not only because we've got a robust presence in Europe already anchored in the U.K. but throughout Europe.

But also because as I look at that shift in spend, not only the increase in top-line but the shift to product services and solutions and effectors from products to solutions, services, and effectors. I see Leidos in the unique opportunity to help our customers prosecute those needs. I mentioned in AUKUS, what AUKUS Pillar 2 is all about, seamless information sharing, AI, autonomy, advanced cyber, hypersonics, electronic warfare. And I mentioned -- I mean this reads like a catalog of Leidos capabilities and strengths.

So I think we are uniquely positioned. The fact that the U.S. is talking about lowering the ITAR hurdles between the U.S. and the U.K. as a part of all of this allows us to position ourselves even more forcefully to serve our U.K. customers in ways we have been inhibited from doing before. And I think that gives us a launching off point to talk to the Baltics around undersea capabilities to talk to all about integrated air defense capabilities talk to all about electronic warfare capabilities.

It just gives us the launching point to have much more robust conversations than we've been able to have before. And again, our Commercial and International segments now all aligned to have all those customer touch points aggregated into one place, so we can more jointly connect them and prosecute them with a whole of Leidos approach.

I just really think is an exciting time for Leidos. So early days. They're still doing a little stormin and normin about those budgets and how they're going to do it. But we are not going to be haughty and say it's all got to be us. We also are humble partners in these things. So we're working to find out who we might want to partner with in Europe to prosecute these even better and work with national champions as a result. So it's a very exciting opportunity, but early days yet.

Yeah. So we're doing reasonably well in defending the work we have, our recompetes and on-contract growth is good, and we are very happy with our performance there. The retooling in our business capture and growth areas is all about going after the big game and making sure we put ourselves in a position to robustly prosecute new opportunities for Leidos.

I feel very good about the team we've got. I've got very -- the pipeline is actually stopped with those kind of takeaway opportunities, and there's many that are well over a billion. So we're seeing ample opportunities for Leidos to differentiate itself and competition, and we're seeing ample customer uptake on the kind of things that Leidos does best. Chris, anything you'd like to add?

Yeah, Jason, just quickly, I mean, I'd say that certainly, best value or decisions are the trend we continue to see. And I'm not seeing any Crazy Ivans and the competitive set is pretty well known and understood. We pay a lot of attention to that. Oftentimes, it just comes down to are you writing a compelling proposal, getting clarity of what your solution is, and do you have the unparalleled customer understanding that you need to really hit the mark on the things that they're looking for that might not have jumped out in the RFI.

So we think we're doing that well. We think we're focused on adding talent and depth in our account management structure to continue to do that well, and we like where we're positioned.

Thank you, operator, for your assistance on this morning's call, and thank you all for your time this morning and your interest in Leidos. We look forward to updating you again soon. Have a great day.