Earnings Labs

RTX Corporation (RTX)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 26, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Raytheon Q4 2016 Earnings Conference Call, hosted by Mr. Todd Ernst, Vice President of Investor Relations. . I'd like to advise all parties, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. And now I'd like to hand over to Todd.

Todd Ernst - Raytheon Co.

Management

Thanks, Steve. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today on our fourth quarter conference call. The results that we announced this morning and the audio feed of this call and the slides that we'll reference are available on our website at raytheon.com. Following this morning's call, an archive of both the audio replay and a printable version of the slides will be available in the Investor Relations section of our website. With me today are Tom Kennedy, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Toby O'Brien, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll start with some brief remarks by Tom and Toby, and then move on to questions. Before I turn the call over to Tom, I'd like to caution you regarding our forward-looking statements. Any matters discussed today that are not historical facts, particularly comments regarding the company's future plans, objectives, and expected performance constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on a wide range of assumptions that the company believes are reasonable, but are subject to a range of uncertainties and risks that are summarized at the end of our earnings release and are discussed in detail in our SEC filings. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom. Tom?

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Thank you, Todd. Good morning everyone. We had another great year in 2016, as we continue to execute our growth strategy and delivered solid program performance. Let me start by touching on some of our financial highlights. Our bookings were up over 10% year over year and reached a new company record of $27.8 billion. Our total backlog was up 6%, a key metric to consider as you think about our future growth. Sales increased 3.5% for the year driven by both domestic and international. I would also add that this is the company's best sales growth rate since 2009. EPS exceeded our expectations for the quarter and the year, and cash flow was much better than we had expected. This allowed us to make a significant discretionary pension contribution in the fourth quarter, while retaining continued flexibility for our balanced capital deployment strategy. Toby will review additional details about the quarter and 2017 guidance in a few minutes. In 2016, demand from our global customers was strong throughout the year. The main drivers continue to be the three key areas that we've mentioned on prior calls: number one, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism; number two, deterrence; and number three, the need for our customers to respond to increasingly sophisticated and rapidly evolving threats. Our diversified and resilient portfolio of advanced solutions positions us well to help our global customers address threats in these areas. Further, we continue to invest in developing new and updating existing technologies to ensure we remain well aligned with the future requirements of our domestic and international customers. As I mentioned, our bookings were up 10% during 2016. The key driver behind this was primarily growth within our domestic business. Domestic bookings were broad based and increased 18% over 2015 levels, which drove a domestic book-to-bill ratio of…

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Thanks, Tom. I have a few opening remarks, starting with the fourth quarter and full-year results, then I'll discuss our outlook for 2017. After that, we'll open up the call for questions. During my remarks, I'll be referring to the web slides that we issued earlier this morning which are posted on our website. Okay. Would everyone please moved to page three. We are pleased with the solid performance the team delivered in both the fourth quarter and the full year, with bookings, EPS, and operating cash flow all better than our expectations. We had strong bookings in the fourth quarter at $7.6 billion, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.21. And for the year, we had record bookings of $27.8 billion, resulting in a 6% growth to our year-end 2016 backlog. This sets the stage for continued growth in 2017, which I'll discuss in more detail in just a few minutes. Sales were $6.2 billion in the quarter, down slightly from last year. As we pointed out on our third quarter conference call, the fourth quarter of 2016 had four fewer workdays than the comparable period in 2015 which had an impact to sales of approximately $100 million per day. For the year, sales were up 3.5%, ending at $24.1 billion. Our EPS from continuing operations was $1.84 for the quarter and $7.44 for the full year, which I will give a little more color on in a few minutes. We also generated strong operating cash flow of $1.1 billion for the quarter and $2.9 billion for the year, which included a $500 million pre-tax discretionary pension contribution that was not in our prior guidance. Additionally, during the quarter the company repurchased 700,000 shares of common stock for $100 million, bringing the full-year 2016 repurchases to 6.9 million shares…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your first question comes from the line of George Shapiro from Shapiro Research. Please go ahead.

George D. Shapiro - Shapiro Research LLC

Analyst · Shapiro Research. Please go ahead

Yes. Good morning.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning, George.

George D. Shapiro - Shapiro Research LLC

Analyst · Shapiro Research. Please go ahead

Toby, I want to pursue a little bit the same thing I had last quarter. If I look at your bookings, they're $3.77 billion above sales. Yet if I look at total backlog, it's only up $2.2 billion. So, why shouldn't I conclude that either some of these bookings haven't made it into backlog or some have been cancelled, which would explain the continued miss in the IDS revenues?

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yeah. So first I can tell you anything that we reported as a booking has made it into our backlog, so that's part one. Regarding the rest of the question, as I mentioned in my comments, we're pleased with the backlog growth, up 6% over 2015. We saw a 3% increase at the end of 2015 as well. What is happening or what you're seeing, and we've talked about this before, is the effect of backlog adjustments. We did see $300 million of backlog adjustments in this quarter. The majority of these or most of these are the results of cost underruns on domestic cost type programs. From time to time we also see some smaller impacts related to scope changes and currency fluctuations. And if you look at it from a total year point of view, as you did, that difference or that gap that you're trying to bridge is all related to the backlog adjustments. I can also tell you none of it relates to cancellations including any international orders. So we don't have a concern there. The sales miss, just to kind of play towards the rest of your question, the sales miss at IDS had nothing to do with anything that was canceled. It's purely timing. Nothing went away. Some of the larger orders, like the Qatar EWR that was mentioned earlier, that just moved from the fourth quarter into here over the award expected over the next couple months, and it's nothing more than that.

George D. Shapiro - Shapiro Research LLC

Analyst · Shapiro Research. Please go ahead

Yes, but still, Toby, if I look at IDS revenue guidance for this year, it's actually lower than the revenue guidance you had for IDS in 2016. So it's not like you are making up on these deferrals. There's something that's missing there.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

So you got to keep in mind, right, when a program moves to the right, the whole program moves, right. And so just use the EWR as an example, right, we'd expected that award here in at the end of, back at the end of 2016. Would have had a few months worth of revenue recorded in 2016. And then in 2017 you would have been into make it up months three through 15 on the program. Now we're only going to be recording months one through 10, let's say, or one through nine. So it's just that everything is shifting to the right. Regarding IDS, we are showing, if you look at the range of the revenue guidance for 2017, somewhere between a 3% to 7% growth or up in the mid to single digits. It is driven by international as we continue to ramp up on some of the larger awards, the international radar awards and Patriot programs, as well as Qatar EWR. And we do have some programs that, as planned, would be ramping down, but we feel good about the mid single digit growth for IDS. And again, nothing has gone away or been lost. It's just a matter of timing.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Jason Gursky from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Jason Gursky - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Jason Gursky from Citigroup. Please go ahead

Yeah, good morning everyone.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning, Jason.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning.

Jason Gursky - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Jason Gursky from Citigroup. Please go ahead

Tom, I was wondering if you could just spend a few minutes talking a little bit about Forcepoint and the dynamics going on there. Looks like sales growth going into 2017 is maybe decelerating a little bit, maybe a bit behind your long-term growth rate for the business. And you just mentioned a $25 million investment that you want to make in the business for long-term growth. So, just some updated thoughts on Forcepoint, both for the near term and the long-term story there. Thanks, guys.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Well, let me just start off. I'll start it off and I'll hand it off to Toby for some additional color. Forcepoint in our mind is meeting our expectations. In fact, I was just at their sales kickoff. We have restructured that business after the acquisitions. We have a solid strategy in place for the business. We have brought in a new CEO last year, Matt Moynahan, along with a strong CFO for that business. And so I believe we're off to a great start in 2017. One of the key elements that we were working on in 2016 was the transfer from mostly I would call it a small to medium enterprise type customer base, to a large enterprise, a very large enterprise customer base. And we had some significant uptick in being able to achieve bookings and sales with large enterprises and very large enterprises last year. And that looks like that's continuing into 2017. So it's following our strategy there to essentially take Forcepoint to the next level relative to its market area. The other element is we've also improved several of its products and solution sets in the marketplace. As you probably know, cyber threat is not getting less. It's getting more. And we've developed some new products, especially relative to behavioral analytics, that we believe will be very unique to the marketplace, but also something that can help sustain businesses in terms of their attacks against the whole cyber threat area. I'll -- then I'll turn it over to Toby. We are making investment next year. One of the things, the struggles that we had is the business has gone from – to about $250 million a year revenue, and we ended this 2016 at about close to $600 million in revenue. So we're doing some infrastructure upgrades to be able to support that size of a business.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yeah, so, Jason, and just on the, translate a little bit what Tom said from the results for the year end and looking ahead. So, the sales for the fourth quarter and there for the year, they were a little bit below our expectations. The good news is that the business hit our expectations from a bookings point of view, and they just had some mix issues, right, where it flowed through and resulted in lower profit within the quarter based upon fewer perpetual contracts and more subscription contracts, okay. So it was just a mix issue where the year ended up. Looking forward to 2017, low double digit top-line growth, 10% to 11% margin. The $25 million investment that Tom talked about is about 300, 350 basis points impact on margin. So normalized for that, maybe closer to 14%. That said, looking forward on a longer-term basis, we continue to expect double digit growth going forward. We believe the investment in the business in 2017 sets us up well for continued double digit growth and margins. So, I think we're still on track. Recall we made this investment from the longer-term, right, about looking to the future and a growth perspective. And as Tom mentioned, in a couple years, this is becoming a $600 million plus cyber security business, and we're pleased with the performance and the outlook for the business.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Cai von Rumohr of Cowen & Company. Please go ahead. Cai von Rumohr - Cowen & Co. LLC: Yes. Thank you very much. So, to get back to George's question, so your booking guidance of $25 billion to $26 billion, if I recall in the third quarter, I think you said you expected bookings in 2017 to at least equal sales, if I'm not mistaken. And now you've had a slip of $1 billion of Qatar in, and it looks like the book-to-bill is slightly positive. And that's before any of these backlog adjustments. So A, is there any slippage of some business you expected in 2017 that's moved out to the right, and B, should we look for the backlog adjustment to be a negative, therefore suggesting that backlog may be relatively stagnant over the year?

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yeah, Cai, so keep in mind, notwithstanding the early warning radar that moved into 2017, we did come in nearly $1 billion higher than the high end of our booking outlook for 2016, okay. And that resulted in the strong 1.16 book-to-bill. We said think of 2017 in roughly 1 to 1.05 book-to-bill. When you look at the two years together, obviously the simple average there, about 1.08. Very strong. Will we have some backlog adjustments in 2017? I'm sure we will. We don't anticipate they'd be at the level that they were here that we saw in 2016. And net-net we'd expect to see backlog growth in 2017.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Seth Seifman from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Seth M. Seifman - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Seth Seifman from JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Thanks very much and good morning.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning, Seth.

Seth M. Seifman - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Seth Seifman from JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Morning. I wonder if you guys could talk a little bit and quantify the increase in the CapEx that you are expecting for 2017, and then talk about the trajectory in the out years.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yeah, so we ended 2016 around $625 million in CapEx and software spending. As we talked about, it is going to go up in 2017. I think the way to think of it is in a range of maybe $650 million to $695 million for both capital and software combined. We're increasing our spending as the business grows with investments in our infrastructure and high technology production facilities, as Tom mentioned in his opening remarks. We're also continuing to invest in demonstration capabilities and factory automation, again to position us for both growth and productivity improvements. We are seeing some of the results of that, those improvements from a productivity point of view in our factory automation. And we strongly believe we're making investments in the right places that will yield future benefit. Looking beyond 2017, to the other part of your question, I would expect the expenditure level to be in line with where we are in 2017.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Carter Copeland from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Carter Copeland - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Carter Copeland from Barclays. Please go ahead

Hey, Good morning gentlemen.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning Carter.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Morning.

Carter Copeland - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Carter Copeland from Barclays. Please go ahead

And go Falcons, huh? Maybe not.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Hey, hey, hey.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Hey.

Carter Copeland - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Carter Copeland from Barclays. Please go ahead

I guess we'll see. I had a couple questions. Toby, first on the upside in the cash and where that came from. You highlighted a couple hundred million over the two-year period. I don't know if you could tell us what the elements were there that drove that. And then the second one, there's clearly been some discussion around border adjustment for tax and export sales. And I don't know if you had a view on how that would impact international defense revenues, FMS versus DCS. Any views you have there or color you could share with us would be helpful? Thanks.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yes, so on the cash, what I said is if you take a look at 2016 and 2017 combined, prior to the discretionary, we're about $400 million better than what we had guided for 2016. And then the indications that we gave for 2017 back on the October call, that $400 million is all driven, primarily driven, by the timing of receipts and collections. Relative to 2016, a big chunk of it was related to advances that we received earlier than expected. And in 2017, think of it just as typical receipts on programs. So from us this is a real strong point here. As we closed out 2016 and going to 2017, we were able to beat in 2016, and it wasn't at the expense of 2017. We backfilled that $300 million plus added another $100 million, really driven by the performances of the business. So we're really pleased with that and it helps reinforce our focus on cash flow and the strong balance sheet.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

So Carter, I'll jump in on the tax. Obviously we've been following this very closely. Unfortunately right now, there's not been a lot of specifics laid out in terms of how the new administration is going to approach the tax reform. I can tell you that 31% of our business is international and therefore export. So the question is how will that be looked at. Because as part of that, approximately 19% of that is direct commercial sale, which is a pure export, but then about 12% of that is FMS. So we're really trying to understand how the new administration is going to look at what the definition of export is. In terms of any imports, that's less than 5% of our total costs. So in any case, if there is some type of tax effort or reform put out that has an advantage relative to exports, we'll more than likely get a significant tailwind from that.

Operator

Operator

So next question is from the line of Robert Spingarn from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Robert M. Spingarn - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: Tom, I wanted to go back to George's question a little bit. The book to bill, I think Toby, you just said 1.16, 1.15. The sales growth is 3% to 5% for this year. We're in an environment where we've got a consumables shortfall overseas. I guess readiness is the theme of the new administration. Is there scope to think of your guidance as somewhat conservative for this year, or do these factors really contribute next year? Could we see an acceleration of growth next year?

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yeah Robert, I think it's a great question. And just make sure that you understand that our guidance, essentially assuming what we know about the fiscal year 2017 budget today, we did not put any windage on this relative to anything that the new administration is going to do relative to readiness in 2017. I think the picture right now is a little cloudy relative to how much of changes will occur in the 2017 budget. So what we've done is we've tried to base our guidance on what we know for sure, and that is essentially that a budget that has been worked in Congress to date. And so, if you think that's conservative, then that's conservative.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

I think, Tom, the other thing I would add just from our, the outlook we gave for the bookings, keep in mind, as we always have, our bookings are factored. Okay, so we try to take that into account when we give the guidance as well. And then regarding going back to George's question and around the backlog adjustments, one thing I will point out, some of those do come back in the form of other new work, maybe not on the same program but other programs as well. So it's not always necessarily a one-for-one decrease to the backlog.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Stallard from Vertical Research. Please go ahead.

Robert Stallard - Vertical Research Partners, LLC

Analyst · Robert Stallard from Vertical Research. Please go ahead

Thanks so much. Good morning.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning, Rob.

Robert Stallard - Vertical Research Partners, LLC

Analyst · Robert Stallard from Vertical Research. Please go ahead

Tom, I was wondering if you could give us an update on what you are seeing in Europe. It does seem like some of the defense spending trends there are improving, and how long it might take for some of this to flow through to you.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yes, so I think one of them is we are seeing several NATO countries I would say getting closer to the 2% of their GDP in terms of investments in defense. And so that obviously is healthy for us. We are seeing a significant interest in, I call it, the deterrence element of our three buckets sometimes I talk about. And really that is to be able to have systems that can deter a major threat from encroaching their borders. And so we are seeing that in Poland. We are obviously working through a major Patriot effort there. Another European country is moving forward with a Patriot buy, and so we are obviously following that very closely. There is also a replenishment on weapons for the NATO countries. And so we are actively involved in working with several countries in that area. So it's all the way from missile defense all the way into integrated air and missile defense also and then even down to weapons replenishment. So we're seeing it across all those three product areas.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Arment from Baird. Please go ahead.

Peter J. Arment - Baird Equity Research

Analyst · Peter Arment from Baird. Please go ahead

Yes. Thanks. Good morning, Tom, Toby.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Morning.

Peter J. Arment - Baird Equity Research

Analyst · Peter Arment from Baird. Please go ahead

Hey, Tom, this one's for you. You mentioned that the approval on the SM-6 for international customers. Have you been able to kind of quantify what the available market or the TAM is for that particular product?

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

I mean, over multiple years, it's in the billions.

Peter J. Arment - Baird Equity Research

Analyst · Peter Arment from Baird. Please go ahead

I mean, is there any expectation that you'd start to see some of that fall into this year or is that too soon?

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Well, we could potentially see some bookings, but we're not going to see significant revenue in 2017. That's going to start 2018 and out on the international. The domestic, we just received a major $250 million award just here in the last couple weeks from the United States Navy. So we're seeing obviously, the domestic side is significantly picking up. This is a system that just has come out of development here in the last year. It's already gone into production, and we're seeing demand signals in the international marketplace. The good news is we now have approval to sell into the international marketplace. So bottom line is, it's all upside moving forward on SM-6.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sam Pearlstein from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Samuel J. Pearlstein - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Sam Pearlstein from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Good morning.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning, Sam.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Hi, Sam.

Samuel J. Pearlstein - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Sam Pearlstein from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Wanted to talk a little bit about your cash flow and just how to think about the capital. And your guidance of 291 million to 293 million shares is certainly not a very big decrease from where you're ending the year. And so I'm trying to just understand: should we expect the pace of buyback to be materially different in 2017? Is it just a factor of the stock price being higher now versus a year ago? Just trying to think about how, if you've changed at all how you're thinking about the balance with your free cash.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yeah so, consistent with what we've talked about in the past, Sam, when we look at how we deploy our capital, we think of it from a balanced approach, and that hasn't changed. Share buyback is still a key component of that. Relative to your question on the cadence, I think the cadence is going to be, sitting here today, similar to what we saw in 2016. That said, the beauty of our balanced approach, it allows us to flex across the different elements of how we deploy capital, and we'll continue to evaluate that. We do see incremental value in our stock for all the reasons we've talked about in the past, relative to our international position where our technology investments are and how aligned they are for the future with the DoD. I mentioned earlier Forcepoint continues to be a long-term growth and value creation play, and that hasn't changed. So we'll continue to evaluate that. We said it before. We're going to be prudent in our allocation of capital. And if we think accelerating from what we did from a cadence point of view on the buyback in 2016 makes sense in 2017, we won't be afraid to make that change.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Hunter Keay from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Hunter K. Keay - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst · Hunter Keay from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead

Hey, thank you. Good morning, everybody.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning, Hunter.

Hunter K. Keay - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst · Hunter Keay from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead

Hi. So the initiative to reduce the footprint by about 10% from a few years ago: I was curious where you are on that. And I'm wondering if it's still needed given the improving outlook on budgets. And can you give us a sense for how many points of margin that was expected to add at sort of a segment margin level, or was it all fully baked? Thank you.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yeah, so when we embarked on the footprint reduction initiative several years ago, our focus was becoming more competitive, more efficient, and we have done that, right, along the way. We have reduced on a gross basis just about 8 million square feet. We reduced about 1.4 million gross in 2016. There are still some elements of that that are ongoing. Think of the reduction we have anticipated here in 2017 related to that of around 700,000 to 800,000 square feet. So we're still focused on that. And again, we're finding ways to do things more efficiently, be more cost competitive, and at the same time continue to work and improve our margins. I'll be honest. I don't remember what the exact bogie was for how the impact of that was going to flow through, but we have seen an improvement. Just as a reminder, we get the instant year improvement that we flow through to the bottom line, but then in subsequent years, we update our rates and we price that into our future contracts. But we're definitely on target with that and seeing the benefits we expected.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Howard Rubel from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Howard Alan Rubel - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Howard Rubel from Jefferies. Please go ahead

Thank you very much. I want to go back to some of the accomplishments you have had in capturing some development programs. Tom, could you update us on the status of AMDR and when you expect that to start being inserted into the fleet? And the same applies to Next Gen Jammer and associated opportunities there as well.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Okay, so I'll start with AMDR. AMDR is in test at the Pacific Test Range out in Hawaii. It's having great results there. Obviously there is a lot of demand signals from the operational Navy side to get that into use as soon as possible. But initially, it goes onto DDG-51s in line and production, and then it goes into back-fit into the older DDG-51s. So we see a transition into, starting a transition into production in the late 2018. There is also, we've already been turned on to long lead for the AMDR and long lead material. And we see that picking up, essentially the production transition in 2018 and beyond. On Next Generation Jammer, Next Generation Jammer has entered into the main EMD phase of that program. So that will also be transitioning into production in the 2020 type range. One other one you didn't mention, Howard, was we did win the Navy EASR program, which is a smaller radar than AMDR but essentially based on the AMDR architecture. So between AMDR and EASR, we have the majority of the radars that go on surface Navy ships. And as you know, one of the keys of the administration's efforts moving forward is to increase the number of ships, which then will drive the number of EASRs and AMDRs that are going to be required. So we have a lot of expectations for those two franchises to take off here in the next three to five years.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Pete Skibitski from Drexel Hamilton. Please go ahead.

Peter John Skibitski - Drexel Hamilton LLC

Analyst · Pete Skibitski from Drexel Hamilton. Please go ahead

Yeah, good morning guys. Nice cash flow year.

Anthony F. O'Brien - Raytheon Co.

Management

Thanks, Pete.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Thanks, Pete.

Peter John Skibitski - Drexel Hamilton LLC

Analyst · Pete Skibitski from Drexel Hamilton. Please go ahead

Hey Tom, I wanted to talk about missiles for a minute, because every time I turn around it seems like there's a new competitive missile opportunity out there, whether it's PB (54:32) with their lethality or Third Offset type stuff, or I've seen an Australian announcement for a $1 billion AMRAAM order. And now you're talking about this Tucson expansions, I was just trying to put it all together and ask you, is missiles looking like it's going to be ex-Forcepoint, is it going to be your growthiest segment now going out through the midterm, given all that's going on and the fact that you are expanding Tucson?

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Well, I think there is -- let me talk about the demand signals and how they're coming in. And I'll talk about them in terms of the three buckets again. One is the counterterrorism, counterinsurgency area there. So there is a heavy demand for precision weapons, munitions in that area to minimize collateral damage but yet be able to strike at the terrorists, in this case here, the ISIS. As you know, the new administration has also made I guess a statement here that they are going to go after ISIS. So we see a significant demand pull in terms of these precision munitions, obviously all coming out of missile company. The second bucket is the deterrence, and that gets into missile defense. And again, with the near pure threats, also with some rogue nations, that's driving significant demand signals there, not only in the United States but also with our international coalition partners. So that's where the other strong demand area is. And then in this third bucket is these future Third Offset strategy type systems, and that we're heavily involved in. We mentioned one brand new system called this HAWC, DARPA hypersonic weapons. So we're getting significant demand signals from each of those buckets and we're meeting those demand signals with the technology investments we made. And also now we are making investments in our factory to be able to expand, to be able to support the demand signals and the quantities that we're seeing come down the pike. And obviously you're seeing this in AMRAAMs, which is our air-to-air missiles. You're seeing that in all the precision air-to-ground weapons, and then also in our missile defense, which I mentioned the SM-6. So bottom line is you are absolutely correct. Missiles will be a leader in the business in terms of revenue and also new bookings here over the next several years.

Todd Ernst - Raytheon Co.

Management

Steve, we have time for one more question please.

Operator

Operator

That question comes from the line of Ron Epstein from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Ronald Jay Epstein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Please go ahead

Yes hey, good morning, guys.

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Good morning, Ron.

Ronald Jay Epstein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Please go ahead

In your prepared remarks, you mentioned you're going to see a 50% -- you saw a 50% increase in your CRAD spending in 2016. How do we think about that for 2017? And then how do we think about CRAD materializing into a procurement program?

Thomas A. Kennedy - Raytheon Co.

Management

Yes, let me take that on. Obviously, CRAD is important to us for several reasons. One obviously is that it develops new technology which makes us more competitive in the marketplace, but also gets us in up front working with customers. Since it is CRAD, since it is contracted, we are not just doing the IRAD on ourselves, building the field of dreams, we are working hand in glove with a customer, making sure that we're meeting their demand signals, we're meeting their needs, their capability needs. So in that case, it's very focused technology development to meet a customer's needs, with the customer involved. So that's why it's really important. And that CRAD technology then rolls to the next part, which will then turn into EMD programs, engineering, manufacturing, development programs, which then will lead into production programs. So that's why the CRAD is so important. It gives us essentially a leg up in terms of new competitions coming online to win those competitions, get into these EMD programs, and then transition them into production, creating new franchises.

Todd Ernst - Raytheon Co.

Management

Okay. Thank you for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking with you again on our first quarter conference call in April. Steve?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining and have a very good day.