Terran Orbital Corporation (NYSE:LLAP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And just keeping up, we’re literally just trying to keep up now with the volume of inquiries that we’re getting. So we have a very high degree of confidence of not only filling the space that we have now with programs, but at some point, needing additional space will be growing so fast. And the pipeline today is twice the size of what we had before on the commercial front. I mean, the commercial side is also growing dramatically fast. I mean you think about every — in the press, every big company is launching whether it’s Internet of Things, 5G from space. Also it’s a crazy amounts of commercial opportunities around the world.

Scott Buck: Great. I appreciate that. Thanks for the time guys.

Operator: Thank you. We have our next question comes from Erik Rasmussen from Stifel. Erik, your line is now open.

Erik Rasmussen: Yeah, thanks for taking the question. So we saw you did reaffirm your guidance of over $250 million, but how should we think about the revenues layering in the second half? Any more color you can provide given we’re already in August?

Marc Bell: Yes. I mean — so the way it works with the Space Development Agencies Transfer Layer Tranche 1. We basically — it’s all back ended. So as we deliver buses, we get paid big chunks of money and that’s all Q4 and then Rivada PDR as well is a Q4 item. So it is a very, very heavy Q4.

Erik Rasmussen: So would you say that before — I think you were talking about Q4 being 4xof what Q1 was, but it sounds like that’s a much higher number? And could Q3 be higher than Q2? Or is everything really keep falling into Q4?

Marc Bell: Q4 is the bulk of it because that’s what we’re delivering. A lot of it depends on third-party suppliers like Astra for engine and InterFlight for our radios. If they — we could potentially speed up the delivery of all the buses into Q4, if our third-party suppliers could keep up with us. But right now, we’re still sticking to the original April 2024 time line, but it is possible, we are moving faster than we’ve ever moved before. And so it’s just a matter of having — like I said last quarter, we are trying very hard to vertically integrate and you control your supply chain, you control your destiny. And the two things not on my supply chain currently are radios and propulsion. And those are the two things that are slowing us down. But as far as Q3 goes, I’ll turn it over to Gary, if he want to add any more color.

Gary Hobart: No, I think that what we said about the fourth quarter still holds, generally speaking, you’ll see a ramp of the third quarter over the second and then a bigger fourth quarter is our expectation.

Erik Rasmussen: Okay. Great. And then maybe just on the margins —

Marc Bell: But we’re sticking with the $250 million number. If it ends up being more, that’s great. But we feel very comfortable with $250 million.

Erik Rasmussen: Great. And then maybe on margins, you expect to grow sequentially, but there’s obviously some variability within that on pace and size. But maybe help us understand the components of that variability. When do you see gross margins? Where do you see them settling for the year? And then maybe sort of any update you can share for next year?

Gary Hobart: Sure. As we said last quarter during Q&A, the bulk of what we’re expecting for the back half of this year will be in the mid to high teens. Going forward, we expect kind of mid-20% margins, and that’s just based on looking at what we have in our backlog and our expectation based on budgets in our backlog.