Christopher Kubasik
Management
Yes, good question. Well, first of all, the 1.5 of buybacks is directly tied into the free cash flow guide. If the R&D matter gets resolved, that formally increase the free cash flow guide and bring up the buyback to $2 billion, just to be clear on that one. Yes, there's absolutely an appetite for M&A. We have a new leader in our strategy and M&A organization. And we've got a process where we've been looking strategically as to where we might want to make acquisitions. My -- you said big, it's always hard to quantify these adjectives. I mean, having come from L3, I'm probably not a huge fan of lots of little $50 million, $70 million, $100 million deals. It just causes a lot of challenges with integration and such. I think the multibillion, $5 billion and beyond, there aren't many targets, and that's a lot. So I'd say $0.5 billion, $1 billion, $1.5 billion type size to probably call those medium kind of makes sense. So as you know, there are a whole lot of opportunities out there, but we're in discussions proactively and reactively. Nothing on the horizon or foreseeable. I mean, if we make an acquisition in 2022, that would be great. If we don't, we don't. It's not like burning platform, but we're running a disciplined process. We initially started by looking at things strategically. Followed by operationally, if we were to buy it, what are we going to do? How are we going to integrate it? How do we keep the workforce? Do we move people to keep them separate? What are the synergies? I think with the big merger we just did, we have a lot of talent and skills in figuring out revenue and cost synergies. And then financially, working with Michelle, we'll figure out the hurdle rates and the cash returns and the more traditional piece. But that would be the order that goes in. I'll just comment. I think a lot of people have been asking about some of the recent news surrounding Aerojet Rocketdyne, and that decision's impact on the industry. And I know there's different commentary out there, but I'm not familiar with the details of that decision or the rationale, but it seemed to be specific to vertical integration. So relative to what we're thinking about, I don't expect any opposition or hurdles if and when we get to the point where we need to have approvals. And that's something we would consider and evaluate before moving forward. But I think it's business as usual from my perspective, for L3Harris relative to our portfolio, and the things we might consider down the road.