John C. Plant
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.
So one of the things I noted from this quarter was in some of the other aerospace companies that have reported that they had some, I'll say, high single digit or maybe low double-digit reductions and drawdowns in the OE business for commercial aerospace. And one of the things I thought was particularly good for Howmet was that despite us facing the same customers and the same, I'll say, inventory reductions, our underlying growth was sufficient that our commercial aerospace business was still in positive growth territory despite that. And then when you layer in the additional business of spares, et cetera, then we produced what I think was pretty solid growth for the quarter, which was, again, a higher growth rate than we had in the first quarter. So we've been powering through some of that aerospace destocking, which has been occurring. And I can't be certain exactly where I'll say the likes of Boeing is on it. I read that they're going to maintain a healthy level of inventory of parts to guarantee their build. And I'm sure that they will because they need to achieve that smoothness of build. But in the way we've guided forward, we still layer in there the -- some destocking as we go into the third quarter, while still producing positive growth in our commercial aerospace OE business with the spares and the defense and all that sort of thing. And in aggregate, we expect a higher growth. In fact, I think from our guide, you can see that we've picked up the growth rate to maybe 10%, 11% from what was 9% in the second quarter. So that's, again, a signal of that. But obviously, with the absolute numbers, reflecting the, let's say, the European vacations that occur. So solid year-on-year growth, if anything, a slight acceleration in the second half, starting with the third quarter.