Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the BAE Systems 2023 H1 Results Q&A session. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Charles Woodburn, CEO. Please go ahead. Thanks very much, good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us today. Hopefully you've all had a chance to listen to our results presentation, which we published earlier this morning, and I'll just cover a very few highlights before we open the call up for questions. In summary, we delivered a strong first half, building on our excellent operational and financial performance over recent years, with a growth in the half underscoring the strength of our global portfolio as a competitive differentiator. So far this year, we've assisted our customers in delivering urgent mission-critical capability. We've sustained good operational performance, cashflow generation, and contracting discipline. We've secured GBP 21.1 billion of orders in the first half of the year to set a new record order backlog of GBP 66 billion. We've increased sales and profit and effectively managed our supply chain and cost base in an inflationary environment. We've invested in our people, R&D, and capital expenditure to underpin our growth outlook. We've progressed our ESG agenda and engagement across our stakeholders. We've accelerated our three-year share buyback program. We've also progressed the long-term strategic pillars of the AUKUS Trilateral Submarine and Technology Agreement and the GCAP program, in line with important multinational partner agreements now in place. All of that, while reflecting this year's performance to date, and our confidence in the outlook for the group, the board has declared an interim dividend of GBP 0.115, representing an 11% H1 increase. We've announced a further three-year share buyback of up to GBP 1.5 billion to roll on after completion of the current program, and we've increased all our key guidance metrics for the year. The business is performing very well, and I see tremendous potential in the coming years as we look to deliver for our customers and position ourselves as a value compounding stock from an investor perspective. With that, Brad, Tom, and myself are happy to take your questions. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. I think probably start with a question from Rob Stallard of Vertical Research Partners. Rob, over to you. Thanks so much. Good morning. Thank you. Morning. Thank you Robert Stallard from Vertical Research, your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks so much. Good morning. Couple of questions for me. Morning, Rob. Yeah, morning, guys. Charles, you mentioned managing supply chain and costs in the first half. Other defense companies have been talking about this as well, and the margin pressure some of them have experienced on fixed price contracts in the period. I was wondering if you could comment on the sort of scale, if you've been seeing this sort of headwind as well, and whether it's starting to improve or alleviate moving forward from here. Secondly, with regard to the fresh buy-back tranche, does this indicate that you have limited appetite for major M&A at this stage? Thank you. I mean, on supply chains, obviously that's been a bit of a theme post-pandemic, and affecting certain areas, electronics, and the volume electronics supply more on the ES side. I think what you've seen from us is we've actually managed it quite effectively. We've, we haven't been immune from it, and I think generally speaking, the situation, supply chains is starting to improve. There are still longer lead times than we'd like to see in certain parts, and there are certain areas of the business where the components are now less of an issue, and it's more some of our suppliers on the platforms that roll those components up into equipment that w e're starting to see some of that from a year ago, play through into that. I mean, broadly speaking, we've been able to manage our way through it, and we continue to do that. We've just got better at managing the situation. I do think that over the next 12-18 months, we'll see continued improvements there. I think when it comes to fixed price and fixed price development we've obviously been quite careful over the last several years as to the kind of contracts that we've, that we've taken and been quite disciplined around that. I mean, largely through some of the challenges of the past, and we know through some of these fixed price development contracts, that they're hard enough to deliver in a benign inflationary environment. It b asically, all bets are off when you're at an exceptional inflationary environment. While I'd love to say that we saw the exceptional inflation environment coming, we, I mean, none of us did. The discipline that we've taken around fixed price contracts and, and, and, and taking only where we were able to really understand and quantify the risk and back it off into our supply chains, that discipline has served us very well in these exceptional inflation conditions that we've seen over the last couple of years. When it comes to the buyback that you mentioned, I mean, just to take a step back, I mean, it's the strong performance of the business that allows us to continue with our balanced capital allocation policy, which very well, is invest in the business, invest in our people, invest in facilities, and the self-funded R&D, all of which have seen increases in the period. give us capacity to do M&A of the kind of areas of interest, which I'm happy to go into, that we've spoken about in the past, and do the increase shareholder returns in the form of increasing dividend in line with earnings, and the buyback program that we announced last year and now continues as we look forward. The buyback program that we've announced today, or the roll-on of the program with an additional $1.5 billion over 3 years, we've certainly announced that in the context and keeping in mind any M&A activities that we see on our horizon for the future It from our perspective, it becomes invest in the business allow you optionality for M&A, options of the kind that we are interested in. Specifically when it comes to M&A, I just want to make be absolutely clear that we have been a disciplined buyer, and we will be a disciplined buyer looking forward. W e do have a pipeline of M&A opportunities, but the, the buyback has been the approval from the board has been done in the context of M&A opportunities that we see in the in the future. That's great. Thanks very much, Charles. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Can we do, George? D o you wanna do in order here? Oh, in order. I'm sorry, do it in order. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ian Douglas-Pennant from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yeah, thanks very much. This is Ian Douglas-Pennant at, at UBS. I think I was gonna ask another question around, what type of acquisition you might look at, but maybe I'll leave that for other people, and I'll ask about Dreadnought. The, the pulling forward of the, revenue recognition that we saw this H1, when do you expect the corresponding weakness to occur? Is this we should expect a weak H2, or is this d emand pull forward spread over an, a few years? Secondly. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. No. I'll let you ask your question, sorry. - I've obviously triggered you emotionally, so I apologize. No, not at all. I thought that was the question. I was about to go into answer mode, but I'm happy to wait for the questions. Sure. I'll go on to ship repair. There's been a material improvement in ship repair, at least a surprise versus my expectations. Could you talk about the demand outlook here? Should we just assume that this is back to normal demand situation, and what it looks like going forward? Thank you. Yeah, I mean, on Dreadnought, I mean, you'll be aware that when the UK government announced later in the year, the, the extra GBP 5 billion for defense as part of the spring statement, GBP 3 billion was for submarine-related activities and GBP 2 billion for Ukraine resupply. When it came to the submarine-related activities what it allowed us to do was start placing long lead items protect schedule and costs for the customer. Some of that came through. I mean, Dreadnought is a ascertained cost program, traded at relatively low margins, but is a long-term long cycle part of the business. What we've done, as you can see in the, in the sales guidance, is we've said, for the full year, we've upped our sales guidance from 3%-5%, to 5%-7%. We're not expecting in the sense that whole 11% to come through as, as a full year. There is a little bit of, of pull through, but, but I would suggest that with programs of the submarine size and with AUKUS and some of the big things coming through, that the submarines is actually well set for steady growth for actual several years ahead of us. Is there anything you want to add to that, Brad? Yeah, we do think it's stabilized. I think the acceleration was, was largely an H1 event. Yeah. We think it's stabilized for the second half of the year, for Dreadnought specifically, but overall, as program submarines should grow across the medium term. Yeah, and then on ship repair, I think, given that we've got Tom online, who's, close to that with us, I mean, we, we would agree it is definitely an improving business, but I'll maybe, pull Tom in to, give you some more details on that. Well, thank you, Charles. Good morning, Ian. Yeah, I think, if, if we look back on last year, you'll recall we talked about some shifts in the Navy's priority as they were moving vessels around in order to respond to the situation in Ukraine, that, that resulted in some delays. What, what you're seeing is, as you put it, a bit more of a return to normal as the ships come back into port, and go through their maintenance process. We expect to see that continue. T hat said, we're also focusing on margin improvement there. We had, as again, reported previous in previous years, we had a couple of more difficult ships there. I think the Navy saw it the same way, and, and that, put some pressure on margins in the business. Those ships are largely behind us now, and so again, we expect to see a, return to normal in that, dimension as well. Thanks for the question. Thank you. Can I, can I ask one more about a different business line, if, if that's okay? The, the Hägglunds business was very strong, again, versus my expectations in the H1, as demand seemed to come through earlier than expected. Is this the start of Slovakian CV90 deliveries, or is it just a broad-based increase in supply side or demand side, or again, just how should we think about that? Thank you. Yeah. Tom, why don't you carry on with that? Oh, yeah. Well, actually i n these businesses, the CV90 deliveries will not actually won't start for some time yet. We are in the ramp up to those deliveries. We also the backlog in that business has grown significantly between Slovakia, the Czech order, and the win in the US on the Cold Weather All-Terrain Vehicle, and so we expect to see those play out in the coming years. Okay, thanks. I'll jump back in the queue and hope somebody else asks a question again on M&A. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ross Law from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Yes, morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I'll take Ian's tee up there and ask, just given the health of the balance sheet and the extension of the buyback, what level of leverage you'd be comfortable moving up to if the right acquisition target became available? That's the first one. Secondly, the three-year rolling cash guide's up GBP 500 million, but the FY 2023 guide's up GBP 600 million. Anything to read into there? If I can ask one more, please, just on AUKUS, any views on some recent resistance in the US providing ITAR exemptions to the UK and Australia, and whether you think that could impact out the program? Thank you. Maybe this first 2, I'll hand over to you, Brad, to. Yeah. Hi, Ross. Yeah, look, we don't give guidance on target leverage or anything like that. But, you've seen us continue to deliver across the last several years. And together with that, you've seen the pension go from a deficit to a surplus. O ur net debt at GBP 1.8 billion a gainst the context of EBITDAs that are north of GBP 3 billion, just, I think, underlines the strength of the balance sheet. E verything that we do in terms of capital allocation decisions, discipline, M&A, share buybacks, all of those decisions we make, with a clear tramline around investment-grade credit. And that's just how we look at leverage. As you can kinda do your own math, you can see that we've got plenty of s trength on the balance sheet to do the things that we, we wanna do. I'm not gonna give you a target on leverage, but I think you, you can see that we're probably stronger now than we've ever been with our balance sheet. What was your, your question on free cash? I, I'm not quite sure I caught the question there. The FY 2023 guidance is up $600 million, but the 3-year rolling cash guides, which include FY 2023, are only up $500 million. I'm just wondering if there's anything to read into that? Well, our, yeah, our 3-year guides are greater than sort of targets. O ver 3 years, a lot can happen. I think that's just in the noise levels. W e just want to point out that, when we started giving those guides back in 2019, we've, we've exceeded every single one of those 3-year guides. Now with the guidance that we've given today for in-year cash flow, a lot of that beat is coming from advances that we don't typically guide for. T hat's just an element of our business that is very hard to predict. Those 3-year guides help us to iron out some of that volatility and noise, and I think it's a better way to look at our, our overall cash generation. You're always gonna have variability in year from the buildup of our three-year guides, you can see that the business is just generating consistently higher levels of cash, which we're very pleased about. Just very briefly on AUKUS. I mean, I think there has been good momentum since the announcement between the three nations on the various enablers that will need to happen to make this multi-decade program, the success that we all know it can be and in fact, needs to be. I would suggest again, that the footprint of our business across the three nations means that we are well positioned to help and at least highlight to national governments the various enablers that do need to be in place to make sure that we can as a defense community, deliver on the aspirations. Thanks very much. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of George Zhao from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good morning, everyone. I'll ask a few program-specific questions. I guess first on your UK munitions business, I think that generated about GBP 300 million of sales last year. Y ou had the order recently for up to GBP 400 million, and the MOD is talking about additional GBP 2.5 billion through the upcoming decade. How significant can this business be for you over the upcoming decade, and do you have the capacity to meet that demand? The second one is on Hunter-class frigates. G iven Australia's ongoing review of the navy surface fleet needs, what, what do you think that means for the prospect of this program? Given the delays, on the program, does this have any impact on your margins, or is this fully a cost-plus contract? Thanks. I mean, UK Munitions, as you saw, I mean, we got the contract last month for the step up on 155mm and 30mm and some other various pieces. We'd been building the capacity. I mean, this, that is a business that will grow over time. I'm, it'll take time to build that capacity, and for that to play in. I think, I'm not gonna give a long-term guidance on it, but I do believe that there's good momentum in the business, as we see in other parts of the business where you have ammunition-related activities, like, our MBDA business. On the Hunter-class frigate, well, yes, you've alluded to the review that's going on. I think this is in the light of, of the AUKUS announcement, what is the, the requirement of ASW frigates, given the additional, and, and now more capable attack subs that will be going into the mix, in the n ext couple of decades in Australia? But I 've also been reassured, as you'll have seen in the announcements, down in Australia, about the continuous shipbuilding in Osborne. The question becomes if the number of ASW-specific holes is changed from the original aspiration of 9, what follows, and how can we assist with those? I mean, let's be clear that those are decisions that will, that will play out into the really into the second half of the 2030s. T hat's quite some way down the track. You, you spoke about Hunter-class frigate. I mean, at the moment, it is really on a sort of ascertained cost basis early development phases. Th ere was a delay that was really a knock-on from the first year of the pandemic in the UK on the Type 26, where we had to readjust our shipyards to be able to w ork through a pandemic, get people back to work safely. I mean, that did have an initial impact on the productivity of the program. That, combined with some of the challenges which are w ell known to everyone on this call around the gearbox and the fact that the gearbox being a key part of the capability, we had a lot of work to do to make sure it met the requirements, and that took longer than expected. T hat combination had about a year's impact on the first-in-class UK Type 26 program. I said that this was all played out in 2020, and there was a knock-on effect. I mean, since then, I might say that the UK program has been stable, and once that i mmediate knock-on was taken into account on the Hunter-class program, that program has been stable, too. In fact, in my last visit down to Osborne, I was delighted to see the progress on, on the, on the program. Good momentum down there in Australia. All right. Thanks. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Christophe Ménard from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead with your question. Yes, good morning, thank you for taking my question. I had 3 quick ones. The first one is, could you comment on the order intake in H2? What will be the main moving parts in the 2nd part of the year? On the guidance upgrade, what are the moving parts at the divisional level, I mean, in terms of sales and EBIT, in particular? The last question, on M&A, what is a transformational deal in your definition? I'm asking because some of your peers have changed their definitions or the scope of their acquisition, just wanted to have an update on your definition of a transformational deal. Thank you. On orders, I mean, there's still quite a lot to go for in the second half. I, I mean, I, I won't be necessarily drawn on all of them. I mean, it could be circa another, up to another GBP 10 billion, probably in the, in, in the second half. I mean, in our business, s ome of them might slip in, into next year. What we are seeing is, is another strong year of order intake with a book-to-bill of, of, of, of significantly in excess of one. I mean, there's further orders potentially expected on, on submarines in, in the second half. There's more to come on, MBDA. I think on combat vehicles, potentially the full rate production on AMPV in the second half. There's quite a lot coming through. Then, ES, and whilst it's a lot of small order flow comes through, we're expecting continued momentum there. I think there's, there's definitely more to go for in the second half, but some of those big ones, as in the nature of our business, if, it doesn't happen in the second half, it'll be first half of next year. I'd be a little careful about being too specific on numbers, but still plenty of momentum out there in the business. You wanted a bit more granularity on, on the segment by segment. I was gonna maybe pull you and Brad or Tom to, on the, on the Inc. side, but do you wanna do it? Yeah, sure, Christophe, just, can you reframe your question on sales and EBIT? What, what were you looking for there? No, I was just trying to understand where the guidance upgrade in sales and EBIT was coming from, in terms of which division. Is it more in maritime, in terms of sales and EBIT? Is it more Air, driving the upgrade? Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously the Dreadnought H1 performance is a big part of that, that increase in the sales number. I think all the other sectors are gonna be at the higher end of our original guidance ranges. So collectively, that also helps, but I mean the big skew on sales is clearly Dreadnought. Then across the board, I think all of the sectors are more or less in our guidance range on ROS. I think Maritime is t he one that's challenged simply because Dreadnought is, as in that single source profit environment. Having higher Dreadnought sales is a challenge to the mix, overall, but we've, we've guided, as you can see, for a modest, margin expansion for the full year. T hat's in spite of having that, that big increase in Dreadnought. We're pleased at how the portfolio is performing. Obviously that Maritime is a big skew from Dreadnought. Maybe Tom can, can build out some of the Inc. stuff. Yeah. Tom, do you wanna add anything on, on the Inc. side? Yeah, I think not a heck of a lot more to say than what's been said. I would just point out, the growth we're experiencing is remarkably broad-based. I mean, all across all three sectors in the US and effectively across all of the business areas below. So it's a really good, strong, broad-based growth as we see continued demand across the portfolio. We, we've spoken in recent years about the work we've done to align around the priorities of the budgets that we are associated with, and I think this is a testament to that. Yeah, back on M&A, just to close out on that last question. Well, first of all, I'll just reiterate again, disciplined approach to pricing on M&A. And the question was really around what do we mean by transformational? I'll just back for a second. The areas we've spoken around, spoken about for M&A before that are of interest to us are things like multi-domain electronics. That takes you into the electronics, adding to our electronics portfolio. I mean, ES has proven to be, well, it's a brilliant business in its own right, but also a fantastic integrator of additional capabilities. The two Raytheon UTC deals that we did just before the pandemic ES have integrated them superbly well. They've delivered very well for us. They were great additions to the portfolio. T hat encourages us to look for more in that space. I think ES as a sort of an aggregator of, of defense electronics has proven itself to be very strong. The other area that is clearly of interest for us is expanding our space portfolio. We did the In-Space Missions deal 2 years ago here in the UK, which is a small UK-based, small sat provider. Across defense portfolios, and we've seen, in fact, the relevance of space in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. And, and it's definitely an area of growth for many of our military customers, so that is a, an area of interest for us. We've also spoken about building out our some of our sustainability driven portfolio around the power propulsion solutions and broadening that as, as we look to reduce carbon footprint in other transport streams building on the, the already very successful hybrid bus business that, that, that we have. Those are some of the areas that we've looked at. When it comes to w hat do we mean by transformational? For me, we've always said that we'll build out into adjacencies of where we already are. And I would suggest that, that a transformational M&A, and to be clear, we're not interested in transformational M&A, would take us into sort of significant new sectors, or they'd be large enough and, at the risk of plucking numbers out of thin air more than 30% or 40% of market cap for the business, I would suggest would be, that would be a transformational M&A. To be absolutely clear, we are not interested in those kind of deals. I think we've been now, I hope, hopefully relatively clear on the kind of deals that we are interested in doing and the ones that we're not interested in doing. Thank you. It's very clear. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Olivier Brochet from Redburn. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, Charles, Brad, and Tom. A couple of small questions. First, on the tax at 19%, what do we expect now for subsequent years? Is there any chance there? What was the Air Astana contribution in H1, please? Then a question for Tom, maybe. For the budget in the US in 2024, what is the assumption that you've made? How do you see the discussions in the coming months in D.C.? Do we get a very long continuing resolution as a result of what is happening there? Thank you. I think that's the first two for you, probably, Brad, and then over to Tom for the US budget. Yeah. Your question, Olivier, by the way, we, we did have a lower tax than, than what we expected in the year. We do see a step up, though, and so I, we're gonna see a higher corporate tax in the UK. We, in general, I think a 21%, circa 21%, ETR is probably good for your, your models. It's always gonna be mix dependent, so fluctuates with that it's gonna be ranging around, around there. Then on Air Astana, for the H1, we had just over GBP 200 million in sales, and so that's a business that has performed extremely well and continues to come out of the Covid period, and, and we're very pleased with how that, that business performed. ... Thank you. Do you have a- Sorry. No, no, I was going to ask, do you have a contribution at the EBIT level as well? Yeah, I don't, I mean, it's running about sort of circa 10%. 10%. Yeah, there about. Thank you. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Now, Tom, on the- Yeah, shall I- US. Chip in on US budgets? Yeah, well, Olivier, the US is expecting to land on a budget that's about 3% higher than fiscal year 2023. It's made its way through the committees and is largely supported at that President's budget line. That's $842 billion for defense, the largest in history. I think the political debate that has ensued is likely to drive a continuing resolution. Remember, the government fiscal year in the US ends on September 30th, and so the likelihood that this will be resolved before then, we think is pretty remote. Still a possibility, but we do expect a continuing resolution of some duration. We are hopeful, and that's our best guess, that it will be a modest duration, not unlike we've seen in recent years. We are preparing for that. That said, a lot of what happens in continuing resolution has to do with how many new program starts you have. You're effectively held to the budget of the previous year. Given the, the modest growth, in fact, when you account for inflation, relatively flat growth in the budget, we don't expect that to have much of an impact on our performance in the year. I hope that's helpful. Yeah, it does help. Thank you very much, Tom. Thanks, Charles. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of David Perry from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, gentlemen, congrats on the results. I've got 3 questions, please. The first one is on your slide 8, which it's not a new slide, but all those arrows going straight up, is quite rare for a company to have every major line pointing up. Just wonder if there's any granularity on that, or any of those double up? Should any of those really be diagonal, bottom left to top right? If you could just maybe just give us a little bit of, of a high-level view there. The second question is, the last point on slide 11, about discussing potential increased production on ammunition in the US. I think we all saw the decision of Biden to send cluster munitions to Ukraine a few weeks ago. There's clearly a huge shortage of traditional ammos. Just wondered if you could give us a bit of color on that. The third one is, if I can have another crack at this M&A issue. What I thought was interesting on slide four, was the strap line that you say, "Five core technology areas supporting growth beyond core defense markets." I think that's new. I don't think we've had a slide like this in your presentations before. Could you just speak to that a little bit? For example, space, would it be commercial space that you'd look at? I know Brad didn't want to give a leverage target, but we are in a world of higher interest rates and so forth. Just any thoughts you have on, on the financial criteria for any potential deal would be helpful. Thank you. The first question, I mean, basically, in the coming years, we expect growth across all our sectors, and that's the message from the slide. Particularly, we, we would pull out electronic combat and Electronic Systems, the commercial-- both the defense side of that and the commercial portfolio in particular, submarines and global ships, for all the reasons, some of which we've covered already, but are in the presentation. Combat vehicles, in particular, especially from the Swedish facilities and this, trebling of output from Hägglunds, that we've called out already. I mean, generally speaking, the munitions and weapons restocking. I'm just gonna pull out a, a few there that whether they're double-up arrows or not, they're definitely growing faster than some of the other parts of the business. I mean, it is a broad brush g rowing portfolio across p retty much all, all areas of the portfolio. On the slide 11, the, that was the Ordnance Systems Inc.. That was, Radford. Radford, Holston. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So maybe, I can maybe get Tom to just say a little bit about that, because, I mean, clearly there, given the situation, the fact that, we've now got this terrible situation of a ground war in Europe, and the requirements that everybody's now rethinking, what are the stock levels needed for things like 155mm shells and stuff, and here in the UK, but also in the US, ramping production for that. Those two plants are obviously a very important part of the supply chain within the US. So maybe over to you, Tom, just to bring a bit of color to that. Yes, thank you, Charles, and good morning, David. O ur contribution to the munitions production stream is pretty far upstream. We do the chemical production for energetics and for propellants. Those businesses operate out of our 2 army GOCOs in Holston, Tennessee and Radford, Virginia. These businesses are largely built around chemical production and the capacity of those of those various chemicals. Our customers ultimately determine which of the munitions these chemicals will be used for. Many of them are multipurpose.... The discussions around where can we ramp production, how do we change the mix of where these propellants and energetics ultimately go, has been an ongoing discussion, and there are— we've presented the Army with a number of options of ways that those production rates can be increased, and we would expect a decision on that in the coming months. And that will result in s ome modernization, some redirection, across the variety of products that are made there. I hope that's helpful. Thank you, Tom. Sorry, David, you were gonna say? Well, I was just going to, I mean, we've seen some massive numbers on ammunition in Europe, for example, going to Rheinmetall. I just wondered, Tom, whether you, are you able to size the opportunity here? I mean, it seems to me it could be quite significant on the ammunition. Yeah, I think it's a little, it's a little early to say, David, but I mean, you can imagine, just based on what you said, that the demand across the, across the portfolio, I mean, there's a, there's certainly an interest in 155 millimeter shells and, opportunities for us to contribute further to that, are, we're sort of on the doorstep of that. Stay tuned. Thank you. On the, the M&A areas, so the slide that you referenced, slide 4 in the, in the presentation, I'm glad you like the slide, but it's, it's, to be clear, those, those areas that we highlighted, the 5 areas there, were, were also in the annual report as being the areas that we are investing in. As always, when it comes to between defense and civil, and once we have a good civil business in commercial air it tends to be where we find adjacencies to some of our military activities and space being an obvious area that if you've got a military space business and there's some clear adjacencies in the civil area those are obviously things that would be sensible for us to, to, to look at. Those areas, I might say, have been something that we've been relatively consistent on, even if it hasn't been in the investor deck. It's certainly been in the annual report. Thank you. Does Brad want to take the one on financial criteria for M&A? Yeah. Hi, David. Yeah, I mean, we obviously said with M&A, what, what's important is, first of all, is there a good strategic fit with any target we might be looking at? W ould we be good owners of this business and be able to make it something better by owning it? That's one of the key tests. Obviously, when we look at price, we need to make sure that whatever price we pay, that we've got NPV positive pathways, so that overall, the deal is NPV positive. W e certainly, it will depend on the target and sort of what cycle it's in, high growth, medium growth whatever the case may be, there's different variables. We certainly like, the types of deals that we did a couple of years ago, which were accretive and earnings straight out of the gate. It depends on growth cycles. Yeah, I would say a, a very short, time of, of earnings accretion, in the horizon of, of acquiring it is important. I think, being cash accretive is important, and I think having, a return on invested capital, greater than cost of capital within a reasonable timeframe, those are the types of things that we look at. Overall, across the entire horizon of cash flows of the target, we wanna make sure that, those in present value terms are greater than whatever it is we pay. Thank you. Thank you, David, for the questions. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Nick Cunningham from Agency Partners. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you, and good morning. Everything's going well, I mean, across the whole group, as far as I can see, even things that have been difficult in the past. There was one fly in the ointment, it seems a bit churlish to raise, but I think we have to, which is that you didn't get down selected for OMFV, and that's a segment that's been a BAE franchise. I wondered if you had any sort of post-match analysis of why you didn't get down selected, and what the implications are for the armor business skyline over the coming years. Does it matter, in other words? Then also in the US, NGAD has sort of finally emerged into the daylight, to the extent that your colleagues at Northrop were willing to comment on their approach to it. Do you have any thoughts on whether you'll bid as a high-level partner, as you did on F-35, for example, or will you focus on being a subcontractor on the subsystems? Perhaps the same question for SAX, SAXX 2, if you can comment on that. Then finally on that, so we can judge over the next few years on how you're doing, where do you see your real strength in terms of what you can offer on those next generation platforms? In other words, what, what should you be aiming to win on those? Thank you. I think, Tom, it looks like, over to you on, on those questions. All right. Thank you, Charles. Good morning, Nick. Hey, listen, while- Morning. We were certainly disappointed by the outcome on OMFV you probably read we decided not to protest the Army's decision. I mean, this was a fixed price, 5-year program ahead of a era where the Army's budget is, is under, under a bit of pressure. So in the big scheme of things, certainly disappointing. We're, we're gonna continue to focus instead on what's been a really remarkable buildup in backlog for the combat vehicles business. I mean, I think the book to bill in the half for P&S exceeded 2.0. We're on track to deliver well over 500 vehicles this year. As I mentioned earlier, we're just preparing for the ramp in CV90 for Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Those deliveries will begin out in 2025. On top of that, you may have read very recently, the Army has reached its full rate production decision on AMPV. T heir stated objective there over the next 20 years is just short of 3,000 vehicles, and so some good long-term visibility there. You expect a contract on that program here in the second half. Then all the while, we're continuing to focus on operational excellence and margin expansion in that portfolio, and that business has been on a good margin expansion journey. We expect that to continue. O n NGAD, I mean, this is a sensitive program, and while there has been some shuffle amongst the primes, and announcements there, I mean, our, our contribution is solidly in the second tier as a, as a subcontractor, in, in, in the traditional areas that you would expect, where we have been strong, in fighter aircraft, electronics, in the past, in places like electronic warfare, and of the like. So I guess, I think I'll just leave it there, but that is, that's something we are smack in the middle of, on all of these next generation programs. I hope that's helpful, Nick. Thank you. Could I just follow up on OMSE? I mean, it's going to be an extended timeline on, on that, and probably more extended than currently planned, as these things often are. Does AMPV become a sort of de facto Bradley M113 backfill replacement, such that you end up getting more volume on AMPV than, if you like, the current outlook would suggest? Great. Nick, great question. I think it's anybody's guess what will happen over the coming decade. I mean, the OMFV is not due to field until first part of the next decade, at very end of this one, the first part of next, and so there's a lot of time between now and then. I'll see how which way budgets sway. I n the meantime, again, we're focused on, on delivery. By the way, I should also mention t hat AMPV production, in addition to the Army's requirement, we're seeing the backfill of M113s that had been sent to Ukraine, measured in probably in the hundreds that will feather into the production line here in the near term as well. Y ou really have to have a crystal ball, to get a sense of where things will be 10 years from now. We've got what we think is a pretty enviable backlog, and our focus is on delivering that and delivering margin expansion to our shareholders. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chloe Lemaire from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, if I may. The first one is on free cash flow, because at the end of last year, you said you had about GBP 500 million of timing effects that boosted free cash flow. I was just wondering if all of them have now been actually reabsorbed. The second one is on on air. If you could help us understand the phasing of the Qatar Typhoon headwind on sales, but also, and over, over H1 and H2, I mean, and also the how the end of the contract and the risk retirement impacts margin in the division. Thank you. I think, Brad, you probably do both of those. Yeah. Hi, Chloe. I think your first question was on the advances and phasing of those from last year. Some of those have been consumed in 2023, but not all of it. S ome of those advances go out across several years as we build out programs, but there was a significant consumption, so far in the year. Then, just your question on, I think, air phasing, I'm not quite sure I caught th e question specifically. Maybe you can remind me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. On the Qatar Typhoon contract, because you said, you would obviously have a headwind to sales in- Yeah. in H2, so, and also for the full year. If you could help us understand the phasing between the two halves and also the impact on air margin as you retire risks on this contract? Yeah, I mean, as we across these long-term contracts, we are very prudent in how we trade. We, we assume that all risks materialize, and then as we hit milestones, we're able to retire risks. As programs mature, what that means is you, you then have improved margins if you're able to retire risk rather than consume it. That's been a big part of, I think, the last 3 years, margin expansion. W e've grown margins by over 100 basis points in the last 3 years, and a lot of that is because we've been able to release risk rather than consume it. Qatar is part of that story, we do expect to be able to retire risk as we continue to, to mature that program. We are seeing a sales drop-off, last year, compared to this year. We said that we would experience a significant drop-off, and that's just normal based on the maturity of the program. I think that, that, I don't know if we've given a number on, on that specifically, but it's in the GBP 200 million-GBP 300 million range in terms of a drop-off. That is part of the comparables. When we look at full year sales versus last full year, a lot of the air growth is informed by that drop-off in Qatar. If you look at all the rest of the air programs, apart from Qatar, they're actually growing significantly. The air sector would be having a pretty high growth rate apart from Qatar. All right, thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of George McWhirtre from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Good morning. Just two questions from me, please. On the Typhoon program, please, can you comment on the outlook for further orders on the Typhoon, particularly those where you are the prime contractor? The second question, just in terms of the transition from the Eurofighter to the Tempest, how should we think about the combined revenue profile of these two programs as we move from the end of this decade to the next? Thank you. I mean, there are a number of other export opportunities that we're pursuing. I wasn't gonna go into the details of them, but between additional sales to European partners, which are some are in the pipeline, obviously, we, we wouldn't be prime on some of those, and then additional Middle East opportunities, there are a number of additional Typhoon opportunities that we're pursuing. Our general outlook is stable at the current levels for several years ahead of us, based on things that we already have. As, as we look forward i n the second half of the decade, I mean, I think that, that the, the outlook is actually quite positive as we transition from stable Typhoon into Tempest. I mean, the, the, the outlook is, is, is obviously growing because as we segue from one into the other, we do see a, a step up. I mean, this is a long-term e nd-of-the-decade type opportunity, but definitely a, an, an increase in, in, in revenues, through the end of the decade and in, and into the next decade. Great, thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to the next question. I think, operator, this will be our last question for the day, time-wise, I'm thinking. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Charlotte Keywood from Barclays. Please go ahead. The line of Charlotte Keywood from Barclays is open. Please go ahead with your question. Morning, Charlotte, are you there? I can only assume she's having some technical issues. In that case, there are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to you for closing. Very good. Well, look, thank you, everyone. We, we will circle back with Charlotte and make sure we address her question. Thank you everyone for joining. I look forward to meeting many of you on the road show after the summer holiday period. Yeah, look forward to seeing you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.