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Q1 2025 RTX Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Christopher Calio; President, Chief Operating Officer; RTX Corp

Neil Mitchill; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; RTX Corp

Nathan Ware; Vice President of Investor Relations; RTX Corp

Peter Arment; Analyst; Baird

Rob Stallard; Analyst; Vertical Research

Myles Walton; Analyst; Wolfe Research

Ronald Epstein; Analyst; Bank of America

Scott Deuschle; Analyst; Deutsche Bank

Sheila Kahyaoglu; Analyst; Jefferies

Seth Seifman; Analyst; JPMorgan

Jason Gursky; Analyst; Citi Research

Gautam Khanna; Analyst; TD Cowen

Kristine Liwag; Analyst; Morgan Stanley

David Strauss; Analyst; Barclays

Doug Harned; Analyst; Bernstein

Scott Mikus; Analyst; Melius Research

Matt Akers; Analyst; Wells Fargo

Noah Poponak; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Gavin Parsons; Analyst; UBS

Presentation

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the RTX first-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Latif, and I will be your operator for today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes.
On the call today are Chris Calio, President and Chief Executive Officer; Neil Mitchill, Chief Financial Officer; and Nathan Ware, Vice President of Investor Relations. This call is being webcast live on the Internet, and there is a presentation available for download from RTX website at www.rtx.com.
Please note, except where otherwise noted, the company will speak to results from continuing operations, excluding acquisition accounting adjustments and net nonrecurring and/or significant items often referred to by management as other significant items. The company also reminds listeners that the earnings and cash flow expectations and any other forward-looking statements provided in this call are subject to risks and uncertainties.
RTX SEC filings, including its forms 8-K, 10-Q, and 10-K, provide details on important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. (Operator Instructions) With that, I will turn the call over to Mr. Calio.

Christopher Calio

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We're clearly in the middle of a highly dynamic operating environment right now, and we'll, of course, talk about that today. But first, I want to highlight the strong financial and operational performance we delivered in the first quarter.
Starting with the top line, we generated 8% organic sales growth. We also drove 120 basis points of segment margin expansion, which included strong contributions from each business segment. And we generated strong free cash flow, an improvement of the $900 million versus the prior year.
On an organic basis, commercial aftermarket sales were up 21%, Commercial OE sales were up 3% on a difficult prior year compare, and defense sales were up 4%. Underlying these results is our continued focus on execution and the deployment of our core operating system.
Starting with the GTF program, PW1100 MRO was up 35% year over year and 14% sequentially, and we remain on track for over a 30% improvement for the full year. This output is a key enabler for reducing AOGs, which we continue to expect to trend down in the back half of the year.
Isothermal forging output also continued to be strong in the quarter after record output last year, up over 10% versus prior year. And our outlook for the fleet management plan remains consistent with our prior comments.
Our focus on supply chain also continues to yield results. At Collins, overdue line items across all suppliers were down over 20% versus the prior year. And at Raytheon, material receipts were up again, marking eight consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth.
Also in the quarter, we made significant progress on two future franchises in our innovation pipeline. Pratt received FAA certification for the GTF Advantage, an important milestone for the program. The advantage incorporates all of the learnings from the first 10 years of the GTF engine and service. We expect it to provide up to 2 times the time on wing compared to the current engine, and it will enter service with full life LLPs. We remain on track for initial deliveries to Airbus later this year.
We're also certifying an upgrade package to incorporate roughly 90% to 95% of the GTF Advantage durability improvements into the existing fleet during MRO visits. We're targeting next year to have this package available for customers.
And at Raytheon, we have completed the prototyping and development phase of the lower-tier air and missile defense sensor, or LTAMDS program. LTAMDS brings advanced 360-degree performance to the market and more than twice the tracking range compared to the existing Patriot radar system, enhancing protection against complex threat scenarios, including large quantities of unmanned aircraft systems and hypersonic weapons.
LTAMDS can be integrated with battle-tested industry-leading capabilities of Patriot which is the backbone of air and missile defense for 19 partner countries around the world. LTAMDS will now transition into the production and deployment phase with continued deliveries to the US this year and next, followed by deliveries to European customers. So overall, we've made good progress in the quarter on multiple fronts, and we're pleased with our performance.
Okay. Let me turn to the operating environment and our current thinking on tariffs, which we have outlined in terms of potential direct impacts on slide 4. Generally speaking, the aerospace and defense sector has operated in a duty-free environment. and that has been instrumental to the industry maintaining one of the largest trade surpluses across American manufacturing industries for decades.
Our industrial base is largely located in the US, including about 70% of our employees and the majority of our total labor manufacturing hours. And on the supply chain side, about 65% of our product spend is with US suppliers.
We also continue to invest in our US industrial base. Over the last five years, we've invested nearly $10 billion to enhance our domestic manufacturing footprint and capabilities. And this year, we're planning another $2 billion of investment to further increase our US capacity. For example, in the first quarter, Raytheon completed a $60 million expansion project in Tucson, Arizona, which will significantly increase capacity to support growing effector demand.
In this year, Pratt has kicked off a $285 million investment to expand our foundry in Asheville, North Carolina. This is part of our broader turbine airfoil production strategy to support growing demand and to maintain a competitive cost structure.
Combined, this industrial base and significant investment supports our position as a net exporter of goods out of the US, with exports exceeding imports by over $12 billion last year. But like many companies in the industry, our supply chain and customer base are global, and we import raw materials, parts, and modules from around the world.
In light of this, we would be impacted if the current environment were to stay in place because not all regulatory and operational mitigations would address our tariff exposure. But the situation remains fluid, and it's difficult to assess the impact of multiple variables. From a change in the duration and size of the current tariffs, to countermeasures taken by other countries, to the potential secondary effects of customer reactions and supply chain and operational disruptions. As a result, we have not included the potential tariff impacts in our outlook for the year at this time.
That said, we believe it is prudent and helpful to at least share some estimates of the direct impact of the current tariffs on our outlook, assuming they were to stay in effect throughout the year. Now these estimates don't include secondary tariff-related impacts, such as changes to customer demand. So let me turn it over to Neil to take you through our assessment of the impacts. Neil?