Hexcel Corp (HXL) September 2026 Conference Transcript

All right. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Kyle Winkloyak. I work on the U.S. Aerospace Defense and Airlines Equity Research Team with Sheila. We're very happy to have Tom Gentile here of Hexel Corporation, who served in the president and CEO role since May 2024 and as chairman of the board since December 2024. Prior to that, of course, spent time at Spirit Aerosystems as CEO. And prior to that, a series of president, CEO, COO roles across the GE enterprise, including capital, health care, and aviation services. He also holds a number of board seats and is very involved in the community across the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, RPM International, the Board of Governors for the Wings Club, and a number of other community actions, including the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Wichita State University's Business School Board, as well as the Aerospace Industries Association. So with that, Tom, I think a good starting point is obviously the first half of the year has been quite strong. You have several of the aerospace programs at pretty close to peak rates that were achieved back in 2019. margins have made a ton of headway over the past, you know, call it year and a half. So maybe when you think over, you know, the back half of this year and into 2027, where you're, you know, spending most of your time, where you're most excited about, and what are kind of the upside drivers as you think about the kind of forward years?

Well, when you look at the original equipment for commercial aerospace market, it's been a very choppy recovery post-pandemic. Production rates overall peaked in 2018 at 1,734 units overall, but for wide bodies, they peaked in 2019. And since then, there's been a big drop-off, and it hasn't recovered. So even in 2025, we were only 85% recovered in terms of total aircraft, and wide bodies were only 50% recovered. So, for example, in 2019, which was the peak for the A350, there was 112 units delivered. Last year, 2025, it was only 57. And so as a material supplier for mostly original equipment on the commercial side, it's been a choppy recovery. And as a result of the lower production, we had to mothball a lot of lines. So most recently, we had four of our 14 carbon fiber lines that were mothballed. As a result, we had a lot of fixed costs that wasn't being absorbed, and that impacted margins. What we've seen in the last year is production rates finally start to recover in a sustainable way that we can say is going to get to the targets that the OEMs have been forecasting. So, for example, Airbus has been saying they want to get to 12 aircraft per month on the A350 by 2028. We now see that happening. In fact, what I would say is that at the beginning of the year, we thought production rates were going up, so we said we were going to hire 400 people. We've already hired those 400 people. We were going to bring one of the four lines back up into production in the back half of this year in November. We did that in March. A line that we were going to bring up next year, we're pulling into November of this And a line that we had started before the pandemic and stopped building, we're going to bring that up in 2028. We're pulling that into 2027. So we're starting to see the production rates. In fact, as those production rates go up and we get more operating leverage, when the OEMs hit all of their targets, that's going to generate $500 million of incremental annual revenue for us. And then on top of that, we'll have $200 million more of defense. So that creates $700 million of growth over the next three or four years. So it's about a 10% growth rate for that time period. And that growth rate creates operating leverage for us, which drives margins and improves cash flow. So what we've said is, when we get to those levels of production, we have a path back to 18% margins, which is where we were pre-pandemic. We'll also grow into our capacity. We don't need to make capital investments for new capacity as those rates go up. So our capital expenditure is going to be less than $100 million for the next several years, five years or so. And that means that we'll generate a billion dollars of cash flow over the next four years, 26 through 29. So we're set up for a really good growth period as those production rates recover, particularly on the wide bodies. Another point I'll make about wide bodies is before the pandemic there was a need for a big replenishment cycle. That essentially got put on hold but if you look at the fleet today of the 5,000 or so wide bodies 40 percent of them are more than 20 years old and so this replenishment cycle that got delayed is going to be coming with a vengeance. So even when we get up to the high levels of production of 12 aircraft per month in 2028 we're likely to stay there for a very long time. And that's going to be great for for Hexel because our biggest program is the A350. We make the entire material system. It's four and a half to five million dollars per ship set. And we're going to get to 12 aircraft per month and stay there for a long time. And on top of that, Airbus has said they want to increase the rate even higher than 12. They want to expand the freighter, which is more material. And they're even considering a stretch version of the A350, the 2,000, which would be more material. So we feel like we're in a good position. And with no wide body on the slate for replacement in the next two decades, we feel very good about our position on the A350 and in wide bodies.

Great. That was very comprehensive. I guess maybe my first question would be the confidence in OEM rates. It sounds like you feel pretty good about 12 per month by 2028 on A350, maybe what has changed or what have your conversations with the airframers looked like, you know, 12 months ago versus today, and how has that confidence sort of built?

Confidence is building, and there have been challenges and obstacles. On the narrow-body aircraft, it's been engines, you know, particularly the GTF has been slow and not being delivered for new production, but even the LEAP has had some infant mortality issues and and created a time on wing. Those are getting sorted out. On the wide bodies, it's been more interiors, particularly seats. The seats, particularly the first-class seats, are highly customized because of the more premium travel that the airlines are seeing, and those all require certification. And with more stringent requirements and staff shortages at FAA and EASA, that has impacted seat deliveries and some interiors. The difference, though, is before there were some structural elements for the A350, for example, that were in short supply, like the center fuselage. You can't build an aircraft without a center fuselage. You can build it if a seat hasn't been delivered or if it's not certified. You can just park it and then put the seat in when it's ready and then deliver it. So that's been one of the factors. Now, what I would say is our confidence level has gone up on production for a number of reasons. One is we get the skyline for all the OEMs, which is their master schedule that looks two or three years in advance. In addition, on the Airbus side in particular, we do a bottoms-up survey of the top 20 or so locations that take material for the A350 or the A320, and we confirm what the demand is. But then we also have our firm purchase orders, and we get, in our case, five months firm purchase orders. So we already have purchase orders that are firm for the rest of the year, and that justifies our estimate, which was 80 units for this year, even maybe a little bit of upside to that. So our confidence level on the near-term production rates is quite high for those reasons.

That's great. And maybe on the kind of restart of some of the carbon fiber lines that you talked about that were mothballed over the pandemic and now are sort of bringing online, maybe what's either the capital costs or the OPEX that has to be put in place for those to restart? And maybe what is sort of the lead time between making that decision and when sort of first, you know, shipments come off those lines?

Well, first of all, CapEx is zero because we already made all that CapEx back in 2018, 2019. So that's really low. The OPEX, there is a little bit of cost. It's not material, but there's some cost. You have to hire people. And so those are some of the reasons why, when we said in the last earnings call, for example, that the back half of the year was going to be strong, we raised our guidance, but people pointed out that if they did the math, it looks like the margins in the second half of the year were going to be slightly lower than the first half. Well, the first half was great, right? We got lots of operating leverage. We got some pricing. The margins were good. What we said in the second half is we have the normal seasonal slowdown in August and December. We're bringing on these new lines, which takes a little bit of money, and then we're hiring more people. And so the combination of those three things does put a little pressure on the second half. But we feel that's a good investment because that's giving us more volume, more production, more operating leverage, which is going to drive higher margins and cash flow in 27 and 28.

Certainly. And maybe on that hiring point, because the 400 have already happened to date, whether that's something that will continue over the next couple quarters and years in terms of kind of getting those lines up to speed and maybe from a labor availability point, what kind of run-ins have you had with finding kind of the labor, retaining it, um, training people to, to become more proficient on, on these lines. Right.

Well, we, we said at the beginning of the year, we're going to hire 400. Uh, we've already hired those 400. We are going to hire some more people in the back half of the year. Interesting. Sheila and you guys at Jeffrey's wrote an article about all the new hiring and you had us at 77%, uh, which is probably accurate. We are hiring right now because the rates are going up. The hiring is a bit easier than it was in, say, 23, 24. People are available. We pay good wages. We have great benefits. Tom Kennedy from Raytheon used to call it noble jobs in aerospace, and I've always loved that term. I think it's absolutely true. So we are able to attract people, but it's about having enough lead time because it takes time to train people to get them on-the-job experience, and then you have to make sure you're giving them proper development an incentive so you retain them and keep attrition low. It's never easy, but we're having success with it at all of our plants around the world.

That's great. That's great. And then on that A350 discussion about potential stretch version, potential above 12 a month, what sort of implications would that have in terms of, obviously CapEx is sort of maintenance-based right now, but should that demand materialize, what does that look like and what kind of stage or those conversations right now for you guys?

We're capacitized for 13 aircraft per month. That's from pre-pandemic. And we got up to 12 pre-pandemic, or 10, actually. It was back then. So we have room. Now, since then, we've made a lot of improvements in productivity with Kaizen events and continuous improvement and digitization. So we can handle the freighter, which has more material, or the Dash 1000 mix, which has more material. If rates went up, if we did the 2000, that would require investment and capacity in the future, but that would be not until the early to mid-2030s. And one of the things I've said before is that it's about a three-year lead time to plan the plant, build it, and then qualify it for aerospace production. And so we would be in conversations with Airbus well in advance of any requirement for the new capacity in order to make sure it's in place.

Great. And then maybe at a program level, because A350 is so important to you, You know, how do you think about the gross margin kind of contribution of that program, you know, relative to the returning back to that high teens operating margin over time?

Well, it's a big program that we capacitized over a number of years. So what I would say is that as the rates go up, the margins get better and better. We get more operating leverage, and we see it go up. So now the program is profitable, and it's going to continue to get more profitable overall as the rates go up. We're so heavily levered toward production rates, and now that we're finally starting to see them get back to reasonable levels, we're seeing the operating leverage and the margins are going up. So one of the things I will say on margins is before the pandemic in 2019, that was the peak of our production. Our revenues were $2.35 billion. We got up to 18% margins. After the pandemic, when we had to mothball all those plants, we had all those fixed assets that weren't absorbing any of our overhead, and so the margins deteriorated. When we get up to the peak rates of production, we have a path back to the 18 percent at a higher level of revenue, but we have a path back to the 18 percent. And so that's one of the, I think, the manifestations of increased production rates is we get operating leverage and that drives margins, and we do have a path back to our high levels of margins from the pre-pandemic when we get to those production levels.

And maybe on kind of a shorter-term conversation that investors are a little more focused on around raw material, inflation, fuel, I know you guys have discussed probably ad nauseum some of the kind of hedging that you do and some of the COGS protections that you have in place. So maybe if you can address what you're seeing on the materials and labor cost, fuel, et cetera.

Well, first of all, I would say is one of the things that we did back when we first set up the A350 program and a lot of the programs with Airbus and Boeing is we set up a lot of back-to-back contracts with our suppliers. So our contract with Airbus goes to 2030, which is great. It's a long-term contract. We didn't anticipate the pandemic and all the inflation. But similarly, we have back-to-back contracts with most of our suppliers for resin and chemicals that also go through 2030. So it's a back-to-back natural hedge. And that's one way that we've been able to mitigate inflation as we go forward. Now, with regard to the oil prices going up because of the war that's going on, we saw oil prices spike today to over $100 a barrel. Now, carbon fiber, the major material that we use as our feedstock is something called acrylonitrile. And the way it works is you start with petroleum, then you go to propane, then the propylene, and then acrylonitrile. We hedge propylene, and we hedge it for eight quarters out. We hedge about 80% of our needs. So even though oil prices might be spiking right now, we're not seeing that because we have these long-term hedges in place. We've been very disciplined about it. It's 80%. If the prices go up higher than we expect, we have standard deviations that we measure. And if it passes through standard deviations, we might hedge more or less, depending on the direction. So we feel confident in our hedging program. Now, if oil prices stay elevated for more than two years, we'll see the impact of that on the back end. But it'll be properly measured and spread out over these eight quarters that we have the hedging program in place for.

Great. And then maybe the other kind of big piece in terms of that margin conversation is the pricing dynamic, particularly relevant on the Airbus contracts. But I think what you guys have done in recent history is talk more and more about kind of the rolling nature of your business. So maybe if you can just discuss how pricing works at the HECSL level.

So our contracts tend to be between five and seven years, which means that every year, 15 to 20 percent of our contracts come due. When the contracts come due, we obviously try to reset them to reflect the current market conditions. And we want to make sure that we're getting a fair return on the investments we've made and the value we bring. And we have been able to get price. It's very hard to change a material system once you have it in place because you have to certify the material system and qualify it. Then you have to certify the aircraft with that material. Then you have to get the equipment and certify that and then train the people. So it's not impossible. It's just very difficult and time-consuming, so it very rarely happens. So when prices come due, we want to make sure that we're partnering with our customers and reflecting in the price that we get, the investments that we've made, and the value that we bring. And we have been getting that. So that's it. Now, the Airbus contracts are unique. We have two Airbus contracts, and that represents about 40% of our revenue. They expire in 2030, at the end of 2030. Now, the big ones were signed back in 2008. Now, we were a small company. We won the position on the A350 for the entire material system. We had to capitalize a billion dollars of investment over the next several years. And so having that long-term contract really helped. we renewed it in 2016 and extended it to 2030. But again, we have back-to-back contracts with all the suppliers so that we're naturally hedged. Now, we didn't anticipate the pandemic and the hyperinflation. So that's put us behind a little bit. And what I've said is, even when we get back to the revenue levels that we were at in 2018 and 2019, say 2.35 billion, we'll only have margins at that point of 16%. So there's about 200 basis of headwind that we've incurred because of inflation that we haven't been able to offset yet with pricing and productivity. Now, by the time we get up to the full production targets that the OEMs have, the $700 million I mentioned, that's $2.6 billion. So 28-29, we'll be back to the 18%. Now, when we get to 2030 and we're negotiating with Airbus, again, we want to focus on getting a fair return on the investments that we've made. We want the pricing to reflect the value. At the same time, we want to be a strong partner for them. We want to make sure the A350 is a good program going forward. It's our biggest program. We want to make sure it's competitive. And, of course, we want to win more work on the next generation Airbus. So there's lots of different tradeoffs, but at the end of the day, we have a path back to the 18%. We'll continue to drive productivity and pricing as the opportunity arises. And because we have such a long growth trajectory in front of us, we feel very good about our position.

No, that's super helpful context. And I was going to go there next about NGSA and what kind of next gen content looks like, because there's obviously been a theme that composites penetration continues to evolve with each next generation. So maybe, you know, the timing of those Airbus contracts probably sync up pretty decently with when some of those supplier discussions are happening. So maybe if you can just talk about what the preliminary talks look like for you guys on NextGen today and how that competitive landscape, you know, is shaping up.

So first of all, in terms of aerospace-grade carbon fiber, there's only three companies that make aerospace-grade carbon fiber. Hexcel, Torre, and Tejen, the two Japanese companies. Only Torre and Hexcel are vertically integrated and do resin. So for carbon fiber composite, you need the carbon fiber and the resin, and you impregnate them. Now, Hexcel is the only U.S. company. Yeah. that does aerospace-grade carbon fiber. There's another company that does the resin, which is Science Co., but they tend to use R-Fiber or Taysian Fiber. Now, in the way the split is, Torade does the 787 material system for Boeing. Hexcel does the A350 program for Airbus, and that's the way it has laid out. The 787 and the A350 are about 50% carbon fiber composite by weight. If you look at the narrow bodies, the MAX and the A320, they are 15% carbon fiber by weight. And most of that is in the engine, say the fan blades, the fan case, or the nacelles. Now, the next generation narrow body, they're going to definitely have more carbon fiber composite. For one thing, the wing will be composite. Everybody is in complete agreement on that. In order to get the right architecture and reduce drag and increase lift, you need a carbon fiber wing. And that, by getting more range, you reduce fuel consumption. Now, going from a metallic wing to a fiber wing will take the content from 15% to 30%. Now, the question becomes the fuselage. Do you go to a carbon fiber fuselage? And there's still a little bit of debate on that. Personally, I think they will, because I think the lighter weight and the fact that you have less maintenance is also a factor. Now, it's not as big a factor as on a wide-body aircraft where your cycles are 8 to 10 hours. On a narrow-body aircraft, the cycles are one to three hours, so wait isn't as big of a deal. But I just think airlines have gotten used to the lightweight carbon fiber composite fuselage, especially now with fuel prices high. They like the extended range and the reduced fuel. And then the maintenance is something they're also getting used to. So along those lines, there has been a lot of work with both of the OEMs on the next generation aircraft, not in terms only of the carbon fiber development and the resin development, but also the production system. So in carbon fiber, we think of three different dimensions of strength. We think of tensile strength, which is how hard it is to pull apart. We think of modulus, which is how stiff it is. And we think of compression. We've been advancing all three of those. We're also looking at the resin system, which today takes as much as 12 hours to cure. How can we do that in three hours? How can we increase the layup speed? How can we reduce the amount of capital required? And so there's lots of decisions, not only on the exact formulation of the fiber and which mix of those dimensions that I mentioned they want for each part of the aircraft, but also do they want a prepreg or do they want a resin infusion system that's out of autoclave, doesn't require the heated pressurized oven, but can use a heated oven tool. And so these are all the different factors. One thing I would say is today the material system for the H-7 and the A350 tends to be homogeneous. It's pretty much the same material system for all the different parts of the aircraft, some variations, but essentially the same. On the next generation, you're going to see a lot more variation. It will be optimized for each part of the aircraft, not only the material system, but also the production process. And so because of all of that and the sophistication, I do think you're going to see a carbon fiber wing and a carbon fiber fuselage, my view. And what that means is that the carbon fiber will be from 15% to 30% with the wing, and to 50% with the fuselage. So today, on the narrow bodies, which are 15% carbon fiber, it's $300,000, $200,000 to $500,000 per ship set. In the future, it'll be about $1.5 to $2 million per ship set of carbon fiber. And when you think about the production rates of 75 for Airbus, 52 for Boeing, and then throw in some A220s, it's close to 150 aircraft per month at $1.5 to $2 million per ship set, that's a lot of carbon fiber. And there's only three companies that make it, so we're going to get our share of it. And that's why we also feel good about that. We're doing a lot of hard work in R&D right now with both of the OEMs, but that's what the range of opportunity is, very significant.

So maybe given those volumes on the narrow body side, obviously smaller fuselages, But is that type of volume a challenge for the industry between Hexel and your competitors if narrowbody goes 50% composite?

Well, it would require some more capacity investments in the future. But that will be a great challenge for us to tackle. And we will absolutely welcome it. So I have no doubt we'll be able to do it.

And then maybe just you mentioned R&D. So maybe if you can talk about the level of spending there, like where are the priorities, and then we'll talk a little bit about defense and space after that.

So R&D, historically, we're about 3%, I'd say, because of all the work going on with Next Generation Commercial, but also looking at space and defense amongst other things. We've upped it a little bit. So it's going to be about 3.25% is where we see it leveling it out. And it's all the things I mentioned. It's working on the fiber itself. It's working on the resin system. it's working on the production system, and it's looking at variations in the materials. So for example, most of what we do is called thermoset. So once you cure it, you can't change it. You can't reheat it and change its form or weld it or melt it or anything like that. There's something called thermoplastics, which uses a different type of resin system where you can reheat it and reform it. It's a little bit more expensive, but it has some other properties that make it interesting. And then you have different versions of carbon fiber that can do higher temperature applications. So, for example, carbon-carbon, which is used in hypersonic missiles and space applications, thermal protection shields, that uses our carbon fiber as the base feedstock material, but it uses a different densification and resin system to create the high-temperature material. So there's a full range of materials and production processes that we're supporting with our R&D. It'll cap at about three and a quarter percent of revenue.

And plenty of optionality for your customers to choose from. So maybe on the defense and space side, the $200 million of incremental revenue potential there, maybe if you can bracket that. I know the business ranges from missiles to fixed-wing aircraft into the space kind of launch market.

Well, we see space and defense as really five segments, and all of them are using more lightweight carbon fiber composites. So you have fixed-wing aircraft like the F-35, and those are going up in production, although the F-35 has now reached a plateau of about 156 units a year. Then you have the rotorcraft like the CH-53K or the Black Hawk or new rotorcraft. And a lot of those developments, including the MV-75, are either in development or just getting into higher-rate, full-rate production. So those are opportunities. And then you have missiles. Now, missiles typically don't have a lot of carbon fiber content per unit, but the units numbers are just going up. They're skyrocketing right now. So that's no pun intended, but that's a source of demand. Then in terms of drones is another opportunity. Now, drones are different classes. So the smaller drones don't necessarily need aerospace-grade carbon fiber composite because they don't carry people and they don't necessarily come back. So you have different requirements. But we have some options of lower-grade materials that we do make. As I said, we're the only U.S. carbon fiber composite maker, so that gives us a unique position. But on the Class 5 drones, like Predator or Reaper, bigger, more sophisticated drones, those do use aerospace-grade carbon fiber. So that represents an opportunity for us. So you have the fixed wing, the rotorcraft, the missiles, the drones. And then space, you've got three categories. You've got launchers, you've got the space vehicles themselves and the thermal protection systems, and then you have the satellites where you have the buses and the solar panels, which tend to be made out of carbon fiber composite. Now, in the launchers, the biggest launcher, SpaceX, doesn't today use a lot of carbon fiber. They may in the future, but the others do, and so that represents a lot of opportunity for us in the future as we continue to see the launch vehicle numbers just go up and up and up. so maybe uh you know earlier this year you mentioned that you would expect some of those defense and space orders to sort of accelerate around the back half of this year give or take maybe if you can update us on what you're seeing in terms of kind of the purchasing activity on some of those fronts yeah it you know for example space is only 10 of our space and defense business so it's pretty pretty small numbers and it's choppy uh the the launch has happened sporadically throughout the year. Blue Origin and ULA, who are the bigger users of carbon fiber composites, are in a bit of a pause right now as they address some issues. So that's impacted some of the launch activity. The missiles, while you're reading all of these framework agreements for these huge volumes, they really haven't started yet. So that's going to come. And we don't have a lot of content per missile. It's just going to be a lot of missiles that'll create it. So I'd say we're on track to what we said, which is kind of low to mid single digits growth for the year. That will continue to increase as we see the contracts come into play and we see the launch activity continue and we get some more consistency in the actual demand.

And maybe, I mean, you can sort of back into like the implied mix over time of aerospace growth versus defense and space growth. But when you look over like past that 2030 window, you know, you would think that the proliferation of, you know, low earth orbit satellites and kind of the missiles ramps that are ongoing. Do you think that there's a more material change in the business mix between aero and defense over the longer term?

I mean, the next three, four years commercial, the good news is it's going to be growing at a very high rate. So you saw last quarter, we were 18% growth. So as this recovery comes, the growth rate on commercial is going to be very high. So defense will struggle to outpace that. Eventually, though, once commercial aerospace starts to reach its plateau, and maybe it maybe it keeps going up as the rates go up, but it'll taper off a bit. Defense will then kick in. And so we expect eventually we'll be at a 50-50 level as opposed to kind of 35-65 right now.

And is there any kind of change in like the margin profile or the way that those contracts would work on the defense side that would look so much differently than...

No. I mean, interestingly enough, we don't do military contracts in the sense of cash compliance where you're you're you're regulated more in terms of your margins so we sell commercial items to our defense customers and those commercial items command commercial margins so the margin profile for us is very similar on commercial and defense which is a little bit different than a lot of other companies but it is probably to our advantage right now yeah totally cool i think maybe on the uh kind of free cash flow and capital allocation as we come up close here on time.

Obviously, you've talked about CapEx is probably at a baseline level for the next couple of years. How do you balance that against what you'll do with the cash generation that the business is?

Right. So as we said, because we invested in all the capacity before the pandemic, we don't need to make those investments. Now, we can grow back into the capacity, which means we can keep our CapEx under $100 million, and that'll help our free cash flow generation. And we're going to be generating a lot of cash as we get into that full rate of production. And so that gives us a lot of optionality. One of the things we did last year is we knew this was coming. We knew these rate increases were coming. And so we did an accelerated share repurchase, and we took some leverage out to do it. So we got up to about 2.7 times net debt to EBITDA. We said we would get back down to under two before we resumed repurchases or did any M&A. Now, we'll get there before the end of the year. And what we said regarding M&A is that You know, we're going to be very disciplined. We are an advanced material science company, heavy focus in aerospace and defense, and we want a 15% ROIC or better. Now, if there's something out there that meets those criteria, we will certainly consider it. Absent that, we're generating a lot of cash and we'll return it to shareholders with our dividend program and our share repurchases.

Maybe just because the market is so consolidated between you and your kind of two main competitors, what would M&A even look like in that context? Is it vertical integration between either the manufacturers of your equipment and tooling, or what could that look like?

There could be some vertical integration into some of the chemical inputs, of course. There could be some horizontal integration in terms of things like resins. There aren't a lot of other fiber companies that you can buy, certainly not aerospace-grade. But, you know, we look at, in aerospace, we've got, you know, these five segments that I mentioned. So fixed-wing rotorcraft, drones, missiles, and space. And space has launchers, space vehicles, and satellites. There could be some opportunities there. We also look at the spectrum of material. So you think about thermosets, thermoplastics. Then there's things like sealants and coatings that are part of that advanced material system. I talked about thermoplastics. I talked about carbon carbons and high temperature materials. There are things that are in that range. There are things that are close adjacencies that are materials like ceramic matrix composites, things like that. So there's variations on that advanced material science theme that could make sense. And so we'll look at those things, but, you know, in the immediate future, our focus is on recovering on production rates. That will drive operating leverage, margin, and cash flow. And, you know, absent any sort of inorganic growth that would make sense and meet all of our criteria, you know, we've been very successful with our share repurchase program in the past and our dividends, and that's what we'll focus on.

Maybe just with the last minute or two that we have here, maybe how you're spending your time over the next, you know, call it 6 to 12 months, What are your priority areas? Obviously, you have a lot of volume in front of you.

Well, it's really just making sure the plants are ready for the volume, getting the people hired and trained, making sure we're retaining them, getting them with on-the-job experience so that we can meet the production rates. And we've been waiting for it for eight years. Now that it's here, we don't want to miss out on any of it, and we want to execute for our customers.

Thank you, everybody.