Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Howmet's, I'll call it Investor Day, but really we've called it technology because that's what I'm gonna major on today. I've taken this at great personal risk to take over from PT, reading the safe harbor statement. He asked if I knew what one was, and I felt confident that I could do it. With the first slide, just to make sure we do put it up on the screen. Oh. Well, maybe we do need PT to press this button. There we go. It is now working. This is a statement regarding, I'd say, forward-looking items that you may hear about today during the course of the presentation, and followed with obviously some words around non-GAAP information. What I intend to do is to, first of all, give you an overview of the company, to introduce it for those people who may not be totally familiar. Then move directly into start talking about the industry and then our product lines within Howmet that face into the industries we serve. During the course, hopefully see some really interesting things. Today I will present the first part of the meeting. Ken will follow with some financials, and then myself with the four business unit presidents to show the depth of management that we have here and also who you've been able to talk to as you've seen the displays. We'll come to the stage, and we'll let the questions roll at that point. Let's start with Howmet. It's truly a storied name in the industry. It goes back over 80 years and we've had a major presence, particularly serving jet engines from Howmet in the past. We have differentiated technologies with a very rich IP portfolio. You can see in the middle of this slide, in the bottom there, over 1,000 patents that have been granted. Not all the things that we, let's say, invent, either by way of product or process, do we patent just so that we can then keep those things hidden from view. As you'll come to realize if you haven't already got there, is that we actually are mission critical, both for defense aerospace and commercial aerospace. The reason why I put a picture of a jet engine there in the middle is that at a couple of times during my presentation, I do wanna talk to the engine. The purpose of this part is to say, over the years, how it's changed. I'll keep it very simple in the outset is that if you go back 20, 30, 40 years, most of those engines would have been long and relatively thin. As you've seen more recently, you've seen the engines grow wider or fatter and relatively shorter. That in itself has had a major influence on the products that we make as the engine manufacturers and aircraft manufacturers have strived for fuel efficiency and for emissions control. What is our strategy? The first thing is, as a business, we try to focus on the things that we are good at and seek to grow those at above market rate. If you go back to 2019, before we'd split Arconic into Arconic Corp and Howmet Aerospace, we sold off some seven businesses that I deemed were either subscale, had poor results, and really, we were better focusing our management's time and effort to making the good, really good. We underpin that strategy with a great deal of discipline, both commercially and operationally. Hopefully, if you've tracked the company over the last few years, you've seen that come to the fore by way of the results that we've achieved. If you go to the top right, we don't treat everything equally. We truly differentiate, not only the products that we keep, but even inside the company, we have clearly disciplined resource allocation with, more resources going to those, parts of the business that produce higher returns for us, and weighs higher returns by way of capital, higher margin, and that's a prioritization of where we'll place our capital dollars and our engineering dollars. All of that is underpinned by a very disciplined capital allocation strategy, because also, when you think about it, what do you want as shareholders and potential shareholders? It's capital returns. We believe that we are very good stewards of capital. Let me now introduce to you the four segments of the company. We have Engine Products, Fastening Systems, Engineered Structures, and Forged Wheels. While we can go to the individual product lines, which are shown at the bottom section of this slide, for me, the most important thing is that we are either a number one or a number two. In fact, if you look across the line, essentially, we're a number one in most of the markets we serve. In fact, it covers some 85% of our revenues. I actually believe that's really important when you think about the robustness of a company and its returns, and you get into concepts about relative market share, et cetera. Across the bottom of the slide, you'll see the customers that we serve, and I don't think there's any need for me to call those out for you. What do we seek to do, and what problems are we there to try to solve for our customers? Essentially, the battleground today in matter of transportation is lightweighting to produce better fuel efficiency or another way of expressing it is a lower carbon footprint with reduced emissions. It's not just carbon dioxide, but it's also nitrous oxide and any other emissions. That it can also include noise because aircraft noise, particularly around airports, is also a really important topic for which, let's say, the aircraft manufacturer needs to be aware because airlines are very sensitive to it. If we can help our customers to improve their operations, whether helping them to make their own production lines more streamlined and efficient, that also goes to help our relationships. Finally, I think we can demonstrate that we always try to deliver whatever part we do at the lowest operating cost that we can conceive. We're a global company, essentially, located in the Western world, which is where the two large commercial aerospace companies are, and also defense contractors that we serve. We have 65 manufacturing locations, but we're also able to cover Japan and China, as you see on the far right. This was just a slide to demonstrate the breadth of our capabilities. I'm gonna talk to you a bit now the aerospace market and tell you what's, in our view, what's going on there. All of us are very familiar with the consequences of the pandemic upon the industry. Of course, that was overlaid by the particular problems that Boeing have had, starting with the 737 its grounding at the end of 2019, and then obviously more recently with the 787. Despite all of that, is that the recovery is now occurring, and you can see it in. This is an example of the TSA check-ins, which have risen to now 90% of 2019 levels in the U.S. or in North America. Similar numbers now in Europe. While China actually was at those sorts of numbers some months ago, with the current lockdowns, they have actually fallen significantly from that level. The most important thing is I think there's a sense of confidence in the airline industry, and that's feeding itself in through, I'll say, the production of aircraft, which I'm gonna talk to you more about. For us, what does it mean? It means that I think we have higher than normal growth. I would normally think of growth in the 4%-5% region for aerospace companies and passenger air miles. This is going to be three years of, in 2022 and 2023 and 2024 of above normal growth for the industry, which hopefully, if we're able to perform against that, then, things will look quite good. Commercial aerospace essentially has responded to domestic travel more than, transatlantic or transcontinental travel at the moment. You can see these revenue passenger kilometer graphs, which show that by 2023, is that domestic travel, as in domestic inside the U.S., Europe, and China, we believe we'll be back to 2019 levels and then continue to grow from there. In terms of interregional travel, which is let's say, international travel, that's still in a recovery mode and, we think it'll be, getting towards 2024 into 2025 before we reach, those previous levels. That obviously does impact again, aircraft production, particularly in the wide-body market. The most important thing is, despite all the noise, the noise around Boeing, the noise around the pandemic, the noise around individual aircraft certification, is that the industry is in a growth mode and should continue to do that at above norm for the next three years. How does that translate into production of commercial aircraft? This is a graph that we see of production of narrow bodies. We're not identifying that which is Airbus of an A320 or a 737 in those graphs. We're essentially saying that, by 2024, we'll be at a rate above 2019 levels. As you know from the ship set values that we provided to you, is that the commentary is that we have a similar value delivered to an Airbus A320 or A321 to a 737 MAX. In the short-term, fairly agnostic to an increase to either one. Obviously, long-term, we'd like to believe that both of our customers will be very successful and have, you know, I'll say the normal levels of market share, which I'll say should be around 50-50 maybe for the future. In wide body, we see that it's starting to improve, in fact early days for considering the wide body market will improve. When we think about, for example, the committed increase in the Airbus A350, it's only going from five to six, but that's a 20% increase. 20% of anything is good for us at the moment, and we see that beginning to occur as we move from 2022 into 2023 and hopefully grows from there. Which in our case may be slightly more accelerated given the fact that 787 is currently in essentially a very limited or no-build condition. Let me just cover the defense industry. I've put up the slide there for the F-35 because, 40% of our sales are dependent on that aircraft. I think you know, we have a fairly good content both across the structural parts, fastening parts, and also in fact, a sole supplier for the turbine parts for that current engine. The growth, which has been, I'll say, a little bit delayed from the last couple of years, Lockheed Martin have stated that they've been affected by COVID in terms of their production rates. You can see that rate increase from last year's 142 to this year's in the 150s and then beyond, and then should stabilize is obviously in a good condition. Once we've burnt off the inventory for the bulkhead side of our structures part of the business over this year, hopefully you'll see that continued growth for Howmet Aerospace. We should begin to start to see the benefits of the increasing spares content of the engines as that park of engines. If there's, I think 700 aircraft currently in the total aircraft park, and that increasing at 150 a year, and while not disclosing to you the duty cycle of that engine, then the spares growth will be meaningful on top of the OE growth in years to come. At the bottom of the slide, I just commented on a couple of other programs. The heavy-duty lift helicopter program, the Chinook and then the Apache, that's coming up for award, and we're optimistic that we feature in that program or those two programs. In fact, the B-52, that was actually concluded and awarded last week to Howmet. So we'll be providing the turbine blades to Rolls-Royce for that complete re-engineering of the B-52, and therefore, say good news for us. Let me now start to talk to the individual product lines that we have in the company and get to more of the technology focus, which is what today's all about. I'm gonna start by asking that we gonna play four videos during the course of today, and this is the first one, regarding engine products. Thank you. Hopefully, the video can probably explain some of what we do as we go through this, maybe even better than I can. I've already commented what is Howmet about, and which is fuel efficiency and allowing for that, reduced emissions, and overall efficiency for the industry. In the middle of this slide, I've drawn your attention to what are the major drivers in that? Clearly, over the last, let's say 50 years, the increasing temperature, particularly in jet turbines, has been something that the industry's had to step up to. Beyond that, we also have to create what we call aerodynamic shapes of our turbine blades and fan blades for the engine and control airflow. I'm gonna be spending quite a bit of time today talking about airflow in the jet engine. We also have to make our parts resistant to the environment. If you think about some of the countries that aircraft fly in and the degree of pollution and different type of particulates in the air, and how the turbine blades have to withstand that, particularly when they're operating at the elevated temperatures that I'm gonna be talking to you about. Finally, of course, component integrity. These parts are operating in an extremely harsh environment, and the last thing we want to see is Telephone calls of spam. I wish I hadn't switched off my phone. Sorry. Finally, you know, model-based manufacturing. We deliver this through casting techniques, cooling techniques, how we create complexity of shape, how we coat, and how we enhance the strength of our parts. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the way we employ what we call digital manufacturing to create the quality and yields which are vital to the success of the company. I'm just gonna comment one stage further on the engine you see at the bottom there. I've already mentioned short and fat. The thing which I want you to concentrate on is the middle part of the turbine, which is just after the large fans, where the combustor is, and where the combustion occurs, and then what flows from that in terms of the hot gases into the first part of that, the turbine blades. Those are the blades which then start the spinning process, which then go back up through the external fan you see at the front. I'm trying to explain to you why that's is a really important part of the engine to control, both for its output, but also the differentiation and the economics that go with it. In terms of, again, leading positions in all but one of the segments that we call out here, we're number one, again, sometimes number one by a very large amount. For example, an RMS of one point seven on the airfoils, as an example. You can see but whether it's airfoils to commercial aerospace and defense to the industrial gas turbine market, but we also support that with a significant number two position in structural castings, which is growing, and then seamless rings that we have, which provide the outer boundaries of the engine. In terms of our revenues, you can see those on the right-hand side, going from 45% on airfoils. In the IGT, we've put both oil and gas, as well as the industrial gas turbine business to give a composite there. Then you can see rings and structural castings as well. I think every one of you is familiar with the sequential transition of technologies in turbine blades from equiaxed through directionally solidified and then single-crystal blades. I'm gonna talk to you about that, but that really is, I think to some degree, yesterday's news. Let me talk about our materials expertise. Essentially, we operate in three fundamental metals in aluminum, titanium, and nickel. Essentially, you can think about increasing temperature applications as you go across those, and that applies whether it's for a turbine blade, or a structural casting or indeed a ring. Within that, of course, we supply many different alloys, some 100 different types of alloy, across those, and we agree what those alloys are in conjunction with our customers. The selection of the materials themselves are all based upon the performance requirements of the part in terms of temperature, strength, et cetera. To bring everybody, first of all, to I call Base One, which is, the different types of turbine blades that there are. I mean, many of you will be familiar with the terms equiaxed, which is basically where the grain structure within that airfoil is essentially random. It's a fine- grain structure. I mean, they do perform at a very high level. At the same time, is that because those, I'll say grains or say crystals within that blade are subject to all different slip angles within it, then the structural integrity of that is, I'll say, can be compromised in very high temperature and pressure situations. Back in the early seventies, I think it was, the Pratt & Whitney engine, which went on the, I think, SR-71, the Blackbird, the reconnaissance aircraft, which had the first application of directionally solidified airfoils. Essentially, what that is that you take the grain structure and you, I'll say, align it longitudinally. You can see where this part here has been acid etched to reveal the grain structure, and you can see the vertical lines on the airfoil, which enable the increased structural strength to withstand the, I'll say, the lateral stress forces within the engine at those temperatures. We go to one further stage, which is the single- crystal turbine blade. You see where all of these blades were originally solid in form. A single- crystal blade is where every single atom, every ion, every molecule is aligned in a continuous, I'll say, structure, which is equal in every adjacent alignment of every molecule, atom, and ion within that single- crystal. It truly is something which provides a unique level of both temperature and pressure capability and is at the pinnacle of metals technology in the industry today. The question is, really for ourselves, is the degree of difficulty of those parts to make, which is all about then the casting technology that you use, the different, I'll say, temperature gradients within your casting furnaces, the way that you cool different parts of those turbine blades to produce the increasingly complex shapes that I'm going to talk to you about. That essentially gives you a route map through the three levels of turbine blades, and at its fundamental level in the industry. Let me go a little bit further now and talk about what's been happening. Of course, the need for fuel efficiency is has been the quest for, I guess, every decade in recent times. To enable the turbine blades to operate at the current level of temperatures seen in commercial aircraft engines, which is about 2,500 degrees, is that because those temperatures are about 200 degrees Fahrenheit above the melting points of the alloys that we use, then we need to find the means of cooling them? When we have achieved that, essentially, it's the passing of air through those airfoils, which enables that cooling to occur, and therefore the turbine blades to achieve that level of temperature stability and have it at in the environment where it should be melting as we go through. You can see the sequence of developments we've had from what we call 2D cooling, when air is passed through the chambers in just longitudinally, and it goes in from the turbine disc at the center, goes through those turbine blades, and then is exited by holes. Essentially, it just moves through at that 2D cooling level, you can see. We've taken that and improved it to what we call 3D multi-wall cooling. There are designs today, particularly at the more sophisticated military applications, which use multiple wall layers with inside the airfoil itself. Over and above that, if you look down to the bottom left, where you can see that looks like veins in, maybe in an artery or something, that actually is the cores that we have placed inside those airfoils. You can see at the bottom where the air goes in, and then you can see that it goes in, it goes out at top right, but then it also bends round, goes back down the airfoil, and back up through different holes. It's a serpentine path of air control inside the turbine blade. Then if you think about at its most extreme, where we are taking those temperatures, maybe even 1,000 degrees higher, which I'll talk to you in a moment, is that it's the sophistication of controlling the cores inside those airfoils. How do you hold them with the microns of tolerances necessary to be able to cast at the temperatures that we do, which happen to be several hundred degrees higher than the next highest in the industry? That they provide, again, the gradients of capability of metal flow within it to give the complex shapes that we're talking about. Here you're seeing, without identifying exactly the numbers of cores that we are placing inside the casting, is that it's all to do with the complexity of the airflow through those serpentine levels. You can see on the bottom, right on the four-wall design, and beyond. Essentially, one of the critical ingredients to Howmet's capability is our ability to control the core technology. If you were to see the cores that we place inside them, they are, it's almost a microscopic level in terms of thickness at certain points. You can see that controlling that core distortion on the very bottom right to look at what we've done by way of our generations one and two, and there to hold the distortion levels of those cores, because as they distort when you're casting them, you have to hold them to extreme tolerances. It's holding those tolerances of the cores inside the casting, which allows us to be able to manufacture the airflow passages inside these castings, which in. Oh, by the way, they all happen to be single crystal, where every molecule through every chamber is aligned exactly, and every atom and every ion and every molecule is aligned exactly the same as its next adjacent part to form what we call that single crystal. This is a really important slide, but that's not the end of the story. This just gives you sort of graphically or pictorially the difference in temperatures between the F-35, which happens to be a long and narrow engine by comparison to a commercial jet, compared to the current, I'll say highest commercial jet application. Of course, if we are able today to produce the capabilities of those turbine blades to operate at 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, clearly the flow down of technology for us and the opportunity is there to take that into commercial aerospace and its requirements in the future. Of course, it's not only about temperature as you'll begin to hear. We've also taken those aerospace technologies and applied them to the gas turbine market. For those of you in the room here, on the right you've seen those very large turbine blades up to 3 feet in length, very different to the short, stubby, you know, say 3- or 4-inch turbine blades that we apply for many jet engines. Basically applying, I will say now these same levels of sophistication, maybe not quite to the extent yet, but they are cored blades, which allows airflow to go through them. They're also dual use turbines. When we provide a turbine with one of our customers, those blades are agnostic, whether it's flowing natural gas through the turbine or hydrogen or indeed any blend of, I will say, input, you know, fuel to it. Whether it's a fossil fuel or a more synthetic, it doesn't really matter. You just basically pay at what level you want for what level of compatibility you want when you say order the turbine. Essentially again, you go to 3D core walls, cooled first stage blades, single- crystal technologies. Now as you can imagine, the complexity of growing a single- crystal through over three feet of length of a part with, again, every single particle aligned is at another level of complexity. Today we do have, let's call it a very high market share, if not the total market share of that, at that level of capability, essentially unique. Now I'll just turn for a moment to our rings business. A ring essentially is that part that goes around the engine to hold it in place and keep all the parts inside should a catastrophic failure occur. Of course, we want to make them thin and a very high integrity. Again, all our mission to reduce weight. And so. This allows me to introduce to you the concept, the initial concept of using automation within aerospace, because it's very different to, I'll say, my history coming from automotive, where high degrees of automation are the order of the day. Essentially, it's born of volume and variety, and by the fact, if you take a ring when it comes out of the forging press, which is at, you know, high temperature, maybe it's at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, it's been subject to extraordinary pressures, is that when those parts come out, every one of them is different. It's really difficult to automate things when every part that you have coming out of your fundamental process is different. What we've done there is instead of treating them as the same, we've actually come up with a system whereby we optically measure every single ring that comes out. As we measure it optically, both on the outside surface and the inside surface, that then gives us complete digital mapping of that ring, which enables us, instead of having people there with grinding the parts by hand, that we bring in, I'll say, guided robotic grinders to be able to produce the part exactly the shape. That contrasts very much with the historical process, which would be you'd forge it, you'd hand grind it, you'd look at it, you inspect it. It wasn't quite right, and you'd send it back around the same loop several times to do it. It takes a lot of labor content out, and it makes the quality of the product that much higher. Let me now take you one stage further in terms of the jet engine that I've shown on this slide here. I've already drawn your attention to where the combustor sits in the engine and where the first blades sit, second blades sit, which sequentially see the highest temperatures, and therefore, I'll say, the most stress on them both by way of taking temperature stress, I'll say, pressure stress in the engine. That's where those, let's say, you know, the center of the turbine begins to get a little bit narrow, maybe a third of the way down. Today's commercial jets, it's a balance between trying to provide the highest degree of temperature, and so you want to run that core at a very high degree of temperature. At the same time, you want to cool it because you've got those high temperatures. Then the more you cool it, the more air you place through that part of the turbine. While the hot gases, which are exiting out of the back of the engine, they are creating thrust. You saw that F-35 with the red at the back end of the jet, where you could see just all that temperature and gases coming out of the back of the engine. In this case, the majority of thrust for most commercial jets is actually provided for the airflow around the outside. It's coming from that main fan you see at the front of the engine. The more air you can get going through the main part, it's what the bypass air, as it's called, is that provides the majority of thrust of the airplane. The smaller amount of air you can put through the turbine blades, the better, 'cause it allows more air to go through for the big, large fan blade and the bypass. That produces more thrust. You can then gear it in the geared turbofan to enable that external fan to move slower, and therefore, again, moving more air through the engine. What does it do? It first of all creates more thrust, but it also creates lower emissions because you've had the temperature in the center running at a higher level. Then you've also got far less noise because the noise coming from those hot gases in the middle of the turbine are then, I'll say, shrouded by the air coming through the lower flow part of the turbine. It's about how do we do that? How do we provide for elevated temperature? We've told you the need that we take air to be able to cool the turbine blade, but at the same time, the critical stage of the next frontier of fuel efficiency is to try to minimize that amount of air and maximize the amount of air going through the bypass part of the engine. The first part of the journey, I'm gonna talk to you, is about coatings. We have invested a lot of money in the way that we coat our turbine blades. In fact, for the LEAP range of engines, for example, we coat not only our own blades but also our competitors' as well. It's there for corrosion resistance, oxidation, and produce these Thermal Barrier Coatings you can see. If you think about it, when there's been a recent note about, I'll say, sand particles in the Middle East creating problems for the turbine blades. It's also for protection, I'll say, with you know the ability to withstand whether it's sand particles or other, I'll say, particulates in the air. It's the way that we do that, and you can see on the right-hand side, a turbine blade where we've applied different coatings at different parts of the blade itself, with oxidation and thermal barrier coating or corrosion resistance coating, or indeed no coating. Then the ability not only to coat the outside of the blade, but also critical to performance and, I'll say time on engine, is also to be able to eliminate corrosion from the inside of the turbine blade. Because you imagine all of those hot gases are also going through the air flows through the center of the turbine blade, and then are emitted through the holes that are created. The thing that Howmet has done has also enabled the coating of those turbine blades to be done from the inside as well. We're applying these plasma coats all the way through the internal chambers and those serpentine airflow maps that I showed you earlier. The most important, maybe it's on the bottom there, which is to uniformly deposit those thermal barrier coatings across the engine. That's stage one. We coat them on the outside, we coat them on the inside, and allows that performance to start to occur. You come to the next level of technology, which is something that we have developed and is there for application in the future. Essentially, all those turbine blades you see in this room, you see them, they all look solid to you, and that's because we've shown them to you without the holes drilled in them. That's the reason why we didn't show you where the holes are drilled is because that's proprietary to each customer and the patterns of airflow, and so we don't show them to you. I know obviously you won't see an F-35 turbine blade in this room because even if you could see the outside, you wouldn't see the critical things which are on the inside. Again, we wouldn't be showing you the airflow maps of that particular blade. Most importantly is now if you think about how do you create the air's gotta come out of the blade somewhere, so you drill holes in it. We've cast it to a single- crystal. We've created this chambering effect on the inside, and now you drill holes in it. To drill holes in it, you need a level of work in progress in your plants to be able to have that before the hole drilling, and therefore, it's a level of inventory which is in the industry, which actually is probably unnecessary. Also, if you think about it, you can only drill a hole where you can get a machine or you can get a drill to go in it. What if you'd like holes where you can't access? That becomes really important. Here you see at the top, on the top left there, the cast film cooling holes. We have this technology where, which we've shown there's the holes, but now we're able to produce holes in this turbine blade, you can see there, which are less than the diameter of two human hairs. We don't have to be able to see it. The way we create the hole, and those, you don't have to create a path for a drill to come into it. Even more important than all of that is that you don't have a round hole. You can say, "Well, or any old hole's good enough to let the air out?" The answer is no. Because if you can flare that hole, if you can create those holes to flare air at angles across the vanes and blades in the jet, you can then direct the air molecules to stick to the outside of these turbine blades. That allows for another threshold, another boundary to be exceeded by a further temperature performance and pressure performance within the engine. If you imagine it at its extreme, now that you've got two conceptual applications, one is where you might say, "Well, what's the next frontier in terms of high, even higher bypass ratios for air in a commercial jet?" Think things like an UltraFan. That level of technology is gonna be a smaller central turbine, higher temperatures, but more air. Well, this allows for less air. Oh, by the way, those hole structures are actually cast as one casting, all single- crystal. Of course, if you're at the extreme on the military side, let's assume that your avionics and weapon systems on a military jet are taking and pulling too, you know, an excessive level of current from the engine, and therefore, what you're suffering from is lack of thrust because you're having to direct so much energy to those weapon systems. If you're able to overcome that and think today's engine and maybe apply this level of turbine blade technology to be able to elevate the temperature, to actually reduce the amount of air going through the central core and providing more bypass air and therefore increasing thrust, you solve many of the issues regarding next-generation technology without having to go $10 billion or $100 billion to create the next level of military jet engine. That's where we have reached today in terms of the technologies available to us. It's all about not just temperature, it's not about single- crystal, but it's also about the control of air within the engine and how we enable those differences to occur. I know it's a lot to absorb. I'm still a student of one of my colleagues in this room, he teaches me every week. On the right-hand side, the next level of barrier coatings, where you can see at the bottom, this is the surface of the single- crystal alloy. We've come up with the ability to apply multiple levels of coating, all in a single coating process. We actually enable them to occur, say multiple coatings all at the same time, both on the outside and the inside of the turbine. Maybe that's enough about the frontiers of technology on turbine blades. Maybe it's because I say that in one sense, it, like in any engineering department, I say it's really easy to make one. I mean, I say any fool can make one. To have an economic organization, which is what Howmet is, you have to be able to produce many. There's the secret for much of what we do, not just in the basic single- crystal technology, but also through all those multi-walls of core applications and, I'll say, serpentine airflow, say, chambering that goes on an airfoil. It's how do you do that? How do you do it at rate? How do you get the yield to make the economics work for you? A lot of it is about the application of automation within the production. Automation in the production of the cores, automation in, I'll say, the way we do our casting, the way the level of automation in our shell processes, all to reduce variability. You can see there on the slide, on the left-hand side, with us using, say, the way I've put their data analytics to be able to control that variability of process. Of course, rapid prototyping to market. Moving to the right-hand side of the slide, you can see where we've tried to describe to you the process that we go through, and then the increasing use of automation, both at the start, all the way through to us X-raying the product as we deliver it with every one delivery with a unique identifier to our customer. What have been the key messages? It's that we think Howmet does enable a superior level of turbine performance. We use a variety of alloys. We collaborate actively with our customers, and we have significant and dedicated R&D with a rich intellectual product portfolio to go along with all of this. We've been willing to invest both in the fundamental processes, but also automation to create the yields and the economics that we achieve. Let me move then now to Fastening Systems and show you the video of fasteners. While that video is playing, 'Cause the head of our fastener business describes our fasteners as a like a piece of jewelry. I got one. The only trouble was, as I tried to put it around my neck, my dexterity, because these things are really fiddly, trying to get that thing reconnected around my neck, and so I couldn't do it. That is a piece of jewelry. Jewelry matters because if you respect your product, you'd be amazed what you can do with it. That applies to anything which people think to be, is it commoditized or not? Let me describe to you what I believe our fastening advantage is. First of all, we have a very broad product offering. Whereas you have a fastening issue, whether it's on an aircraft of any type, whether it's a commercial jet, or whether it's a stealth bomber, or whether it's a drone, or whether it's another fighting vehicle, or whether it's a commercial truck, or a space satellite, we provide a fastener in terms of a solution for you. We have a significant amount of engineering and provide proprietary products for about 40% of our revenues. We do have brands, and brands matter. Not just the Howmet brand, but you'll see, as I talk about brands in two places in this presentation, and brands matter for us in our fastener business. You say, "Well, what does a fastener do? Well, it just binds two things together." Absolutely. Probably the most important thing is they stuck together, and you make it easy to do so. It's anti-vibration. What we try to provide, whether it's a truck doing, let's say, 500,000 mi a year and all the vibration of that, or whether it's in a commercial, those fasteners have to stay for life of, let's say, life of vehicle in place, not rattling. If you created a racking system or the robotic transfer mechanism in an Amazon warehouse, those fasteners have to stay in place, and they haven't come out. They have to be easy to assemble. We provide not only fasteners which are easy to assemble, we also provide you with the tools for which you can engage with that assembly. They have to have examples of low profile, such that you can have stealth applications. You have to put them, sort of fastening dissimilar products together. Think of composite aircraft and need to, I'll say, fasten the mesh across the carbon fiber part of the plane and then fasten it to a titanium structure, but with no air gap. I'll come to that in a little bit more. Low maintenance costs with automation on the way through. The majority of the slide I've covered and said it's about trying to find ease of use to your customer, so they can be placed in situ, they can cope with any type of dissimilar or similar materials, they have aerodynamic shapes, and basically, once placed, they don't come out unless you want them to come out. Then, if you do, how do you get them out, and how do you put them back in? All of that is really important. On the right-hand side, you'll see the first example of a smart installation tool, and often we are providing those... That tooling capability of those tools, along with the faster applications dedicated to whether you're putting up a solar field or whether you're putting it on an aircraft. I'll come to lightning strike in a little bit more detail in a minute. We're number one in aerospace, commercial, military, number one in industrial. You can see approximately on this slide the patent coverage, the proprietary nature of our revenues, and the revenues which go to each end market. The theme is we're number one. We're also leading in innovation. We're number one in innovation. Just an example, over the last eight years from 2013, these are the generations of fasteners that we've brought to market, and with the different applications that they go to, and you can see them listed, and I'll pick two or three out in subsequent slides to talk to you about. It's an example of where, you know, we invest in the product technology, we work with our customers, and you can see at the bottom on the left, the numbers of patents that we have in terms of protection. Also look at the range of industry-leading brands that we have. As I said, brands matter to us in this particular industry. Let's give you a first example, which is Flite-Tite. This is the trade name for the suite of fasteners that we supply, for example, on the 787 aircraft. I think the most important thing is, as you drive that fastener through a hole, is that there is no air gap left, because when the lightning strikes the aircraft, as it will, the last thing you want is some form of plasma field to be created, which then burns the composite or compromises the fastening to the mesh system on the outside of the aircraft. Why do you want the mesh? The answer is to create the Faraday cage around the composite aircraft, because in metallic, it's got a natural path for that, for that lightning strike to move around the aircraft. In a composite aircraft, it does not. The value, and the value is shown on the bottom right, is that, in terms of ship set value, for example, on a 787 versus a 767, it's a 3x value in terms of provided to the ship set value, and for an Airbus A350 to an A330 there, a 2x value. A really important part of the direction of the industry, which everybody knows that there'll be more coming. In fact, if you think about even the narrow- body aircraft, so take the current Airbus A220, that has got composite wings, and that's here and now with us, and those volumes are beginning to increase. I think that increase at a higher rate than we currently have, by the way, in our forecasts. Also, in the 777X, even though we know that's now delayed another couple of years, is that those wings are also gone composite, which take this new suite of fasteners. Let me just touch base on Ergo-Tech, which basically, in the middle, you see that orange, actually it's yellow, aircraft where you see someone on the outside, someone on the inside, putting the fasteners together, and as you attach the panels to the aircraft. What we've done, if you look at the bottom right picture, where you see that knurled knob on top of the fastener, that's where you place the tool. You place the tool, you twist it in place, it's single-sided, and at the end of the process, the knurl breaks off. You end up with a flat surface finish you see on that fourth fastener from the left there, where you see the knurl has gone and now it's flat to the fuselage, and you've put it in with the automated tools you see on the bottom right, all of which talk to the factory with data acquisition regarding the placement and torque of each fastener that is placed on the aircraft. Again, a huge improvement in labor efficiency in terms of aircraft assembly and with all different sizes, which again you'll see in the displays on the left-hand side of this room. We loo,k at FC43s. FC, by the way, was a person's initials, another one of our patents. It's for basically retention of the fastener in place, and it enables basically whether it's, I'll say a drone or a fighter jet, but you can see the people which are maybe on an aircraft carrier disassembling a panel. The fastener stays with the panel. It allows. You haven't got, you know, you know, say, panel fasteners being dropped on the floor or rolling around with the ship. Basically, they're all staying in place, rapid disassembly, fix and reassembly, and you know you have no foreign debris or particles which are going to interfere with the performance of the aircraft going forward. Again, ease of assembly, disassembly, and in very harsh environments where you need very rapid turnaround is the order of the day. We have a Huck BobTail range of fasteners, which, where they go, is in for a solar field, where, again, a single engineer can put up a solar field with his array of automated tools and fasteners, all single-sided, which enable for very simple ease of assembly, particularly in very remote locations. They're also for wind turbines, but also in these more mundane applications for trucks, whereby I said whether it's a, let's say, 10-year life for that truck, those fasteners are gonna stay in place. Unless you decide to disassemble them, they will not be vibrating and coming loose as it goes through all of the vibration exposure that it has. Finally, on our industrial fastener range, a very wide range of applications. In fact, I think Amazon is now our number one customer in this part of that racking space. As each new warehouse gets built, and as each old warehouse gets refurbished, it takes racking and fastened with Howmet fastening systems. A very interesting part of the portfolio when you consider the growth in modern logistics, and requirements of stored products. What are the key messages? We have brand, we have technology, we have an extremely broad portfolio. It's a one-stop shop, and we supply your needs, and they provide the integrity of the fastening system on your product, whatever it may be. Now let me turn to the third part of the business, which is also in aerospace, called Engineered Structures, and I'll show you a video of this as well. We specialize in titanium, aluminum-lithium, aluminum, and other forms of metallic alloys to provide strength with lightness, with all of those structural components. Again, providing a level of technology which enables the end product to move to a different level. If you take the F-35 bulkhead, which you can see half in this room, that's a titanium structure. In its predecessor form on a predecessor fighter jet, that would have been made in, let's say, 10 different parts, then fastened together. Clearly, by us being able to forge something of that scale, that size, in a single forging press, albeit maybe with multiple blows, that provides a level of structural integrity which was previously unobtainable. Secondly, we can make it lighter. Thirdly, you don't fasten anything together, so you save, again, an awful lot of assembly labor in our customers' plants. Providing those structural bulkheads, which are mainly titanium, but also aluminum, to that program gives you an example of the value that you can bring by applying modern alloys and modern manufacturing techniques to structural products. We provide titanium mill, whether it's in the form of plate and sheet or ingot. That's one part of the business. We forge, and whether we forge titanium, aluminum or aluminum-lithium and provide those structures. And/or is it just taking titanium in its super grain format and then extruding it or then forging it? Finally, something which we've probably never talked to you about before is the ability of Howmet to provide the very large radar structures that we do. You can see that's 10% of this business. When you can see the picture on the bottom of the page, where that's a huge structural part, which is in the very large, I'll say, radar sort of facilities that the U.S. has, I'd say to do it. Maybe in the middle, I'll draw your attention to that seat track, which is on a 787. That's all the titanium seat track system, which enables part, again, is part of that whole light weighting of the aircraft. Again, number one positions in the way that is defined on this page. Going with these, I'll say different structures that we have, and metals and alloys is some very special patented alloy technology. Whether it's using the aluminum-lithium that we do from formerly our sister company of Arconic or now Howmet THOR titanium advanced alloy structure, which again gives another level of performance and weight to a titanium structure. This is also the part of the business where for that which was called Firth Rixson and Disc, which I dare say I'll never say the word Firth Rixson ever again, but I've just committed the sin. That's where this resides, having sold off the European business as being old and inefficient, to the modern business I'll talk about in a minute. In the middle, you can see this is an example of a large forging press. This is our 50,000-ton forging press. It's one of those unique assets in the world. It's 10 stories tall. Five stories you'll see above ground and five stories below ground. It's quite extraordinary, and to which we've applied now both new hydraulic and digitally controlled hydraulic system to it to enable us to control both the squeeze pressure and the temperature controls within that press. That gives us the ability to do the sort of things I've talked about of those large, I'll say structures, whether it's for the F-35 bulkhead or for a pylon or indeed anything else. We also have a range of other presses. You can see our 35,000-ton and 15,000-ton presses, where we are producing, for example, aircraft wheels, where we're the number one in the world of wheel and brake assemblies. Also I'll talk more about our isothermal press, in fact, on the following slide. This is a picture of our plant inside Savannah, where we had struggled with this plant for many years. In fact, now it is in, I say reasonable serial production. We were qualified last year on the LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B applications, and in fact, taking a significant part of the market share during the course of 2022 for that particular engine. We see that as a precursor to really filling up and driving this isothermal capability further than we have ever done before. When you think about it, the applicability of these modern alloys of titanium, aluminum-lithium or aluminum to the aircraft, the only thing you know for sure is that there's gonna be more of them, and as you lightweigh further, it creates more value. Again, for us, the application of titanium on aircraft compared to aluminum, again, is another value enhancer, which goes along with the provision of, you know, with composite aircraft. Then, finally on our titanium sheet, these very fine alloys that we provide give us the ability to produce very complex shapes, and we forge them and create the sort of things that you have in heat shields or pylon applications in an aircraft. What are the messages here? First of all, we have large structures. We have all of the alloy technologies. We're trending more and more towards titanium. We have significant market shares in the segments that we provide, and with each generation of technology and aircraft produced, then value is further created. Let me turn to our fourth segment, which is then non-aerospace. We'll play the video, please. Those products are also a thing of beauty. They look like jewelry, but they were just too big to form a necklace, and therefore I didn't. You can see them at the back of the room, those really bright, shiny wheels, which you may think I'm underwhelming you here because you're really addressing the aerospace. This business is what I call a thing of beauty. What do I mean by a thing of beauty? Let me try to describe it to you. First of all, this is not a wheels business that you might think of in automotive. It's furthest away from that you could possibly imagine. What's different about it? Well, first of all, we Howmet own the design. That's fundamental. We have the design. We have the number one brand in the world. When you think of Alcoa, we sell under the Alcoa brand name. Think, most of you have heard of Michelin for wheels, for tires. We're like the Michelin of the wheel business. To start off, we own the design, we own the brand, we use patented alloys. Then the fourth thing is that we have unmatched global scale, like four times to our nearest competitor. That gives us a scale advantage that nobody else can match. If that's not a business that you don't like, I have no idea what you would like. That's why I just thought I'd introduce it to you in the way I see it, not that it's a boring wheel. It's round, I'll give you that. What do we try to do? Again, it's back to fuel efficiency. On our wheel, when we were at 42 Ibs for the average aluminum wheel, we were able to take 1,400 Ibs, 1.5 tons out of a truck, a rig, a truck and trailer rig. That's pretty significant, and that gives you, as the fleet manager, the choice to take the fuel efficiency benefit, or if not, then you can take the payload benefit and just stick more heavy stuff on your truck. Whether it's emissions and or whether it's the aesthetics, 'cause you've seen they're bright, they're shiny, and they look good. That's quite different to the dull, boring steel wheel because it's the wheels is our market, it's not aluminum wheels. It's about weight optimization and then product integrity and providing value, albeit, of course, it starts off with a higher purchase price for your truck in the first place. What you should have also gathered from that video was the very high degree of automation that we have in the business. In fact, we've taken as an example, while not only are our aerospace facilities all operating at better than average and maybe world-class aerospace parts per million defects, our truck wheel business operates at 10 parts per million, which is unheard of. In fact, if those of you who are Six Sigma aficionados know that Six Sigma is basically three parts per million defects, this is truly approaching an extraordinary level of quality. Again, how do we do it? It's to do with attention to component integrity, accuracy of the forging process, the machining process, and then finally, all of the application of digital tools and techniques to the production. We're number one. It's getting, I know, pretty boring 'cause I keep telling you we're number one, and it's number one in North America, number one. I've shown you the market share for the first time of the aluminum wheel market. That's not the way we define it. We define it as the wheel market. For example, in Europe, only 30% of the wheels are aluminum today. 70% is open to us in the future to increase our penetration. I'm going to explain to you why that penetration not should increase, but will increase. There's a huge difference between the words should and will. Therefore, the application of hopefully high market share, I'm not saying 90%, but high market share, to the increase which is gonna come, provides us with a level of growth and secular growth of penetration against steel wheels across the globe that we'll see in the coming years. By the way, the move from fossil fuel engines to alternative means of propulsion in trucks or the automotive industry, that's our friend. It's more than just metal. I told you it's about design and how we work with different, I'll say, truck manufacturers, to create designs which are in keeping with their vehicles, and whether it's a tanker or whether it's a cargo truck, you know, very different requirements. At the bottom, part of the untold story is the application of surface treatments, whether it's Dura-Bright, Dura-Black, and provide flange protection and mirror finishes. We've given you a dollar bill reflected in the Howmet wheel, the Alcoa wheel, and you can see how much brighter that is than the competitor's finish on the right-hand side of that slide. Just to show what benefit we have in terms of, I'll say just the way that these things look, which also matters not just to its appearance on the road, but also the ability to wash all the dirt off when it goes through and create the pride with which many fleet managers hold with their trucks. We keep moving. In the last few years, we've moved from a 42-Ibs wheel to a 39-Ibs wheel, and we're now just launching our 36-Ibs wheel on the market. Again, each one of these wheels has a higher structural integrity compared to a steel wheel. Our new product, which we are just launching now in North America and then will be later in Europe, is the cover to go on the outside of the wheel, which just happens to be fastened to the outside of the wheel with a, would you believe it? A Howmet fastener. So might as well bring it through from our colleagues. That again is providing a level of fuel efficiency improvement as we control airflow, in this case, around the outside of the wheel. Of course, we must have product integrity because we're producing these in the millions, and we have go through long-term durability tests, high impact tests, and achieve the quality levels of consistency that I've talked about because the last thing you want is a wheel fracturing on any form of vehicle and certainly not on a school bus. We're also the perfect partner for the alternative energy vehicles, 'cause if you think about it, whether you're going to apply, let's say for the first A battery electric vehicle, the weight of the batteries, I think all of us know, are very high. If you take an average, just take a car like a Tesla, I mean, you've put on over 1,000 Ibs of weight in that car over and above the heaviest SUV that there is today from the battery pack. If you're a truck guy running a fleet, you want to create the ability to create with payload. Well, there's 1.5 tons for you immediately. You take away from the battery pack by just using the aluminum wheel. Every single electric vehicle application that we've seen across truck and bus in the world has gone to aluminum wheels, because without it, the trade-off is, you know, in terms of what you've invested in the battery pack compared to a wheel, it's just unconscionable. The answer is you go there. The regulations which are coming through in Europe, whereby 2030, our understanding is that 50%, 51% of all of the truck sales will have to be zero emission vehicles by 2030. During the next, let's say 8 years, the transition from fossil fuel engine trucks to some form, whether it's a hydrogen truck, a battery electric vehicle or anything, they're going to obviously have the features of weight content, which can only be offset easily or relatively, or part of the weight content offset by aluminum wheel. Our expectation is that thirty percent penetration in Europe goes up very significantly over the next eight years as each new truck comes out with its alternate, I'll say, propulsion system, and we believe fitted with an aluminum wheel. Of course, our intention is to make it a Howmet wheel. I explained to our global capacity, whether it's North America. We've also moved into low-cost countries in Mexico and in Hungary and also into China. We have distribution in South Africa and Australia as well. Most importantly is the scale advantage we have. When you 4x your competitor, that gives you an ability to provide a level of efficiency which enables us to price, but achieve the margins that we do, and therefore a relatively healthy competitive position. One of the key messages, it's a business which I thought was good. I described it as a thing of beauty. I don't wanna get too waxing lyrical, but after all, it's just a business. It's a business that makes money with a huge defensible moat around it, just in the same way as our fastener business has, our structures business and of course, the incredible moats that I've talked about regarding our engine business at the first product that I went through. With that, I'll stop and pass across to Ken Giacobbe, who will take us through a financial view of the company. Thank you, John. Don't mean to disappoint people, but I don't have a video. I've got some numbers which we think are pretty good. Let me get started here by first, John's given a very detailed view of our differentiated products, the rich intellectual property that we have, global scale, and how this is all translating into strong market positions across all of the segments. Over the past few years, the teams have demonstrated very strong performance and established a very solid platform for us as we look into the future to grow above our market rates, to expand our margins, and also generate healthy cash flows. Although today the focus is on technology, I wanted to touch on performance since 2019 and why we believe we're well-positioned for the future. First, we have a disciplined capital allocation approach, which is very balanced. Since 2019, we've paid down over $2 billion of gross debt. In 2021 alone, we paid back $845 million. On top of that, we refinanced about $600 million of debt at a 3% coupon, which is pretty attractive. That reduces our interest expense drag by about $70 million on an annual basis. We've also repurchased about $1.7 billion of shares over the last three years, $430 million of shares last year alone. As we look at our Q1 exit rate in terms of share count, we're at 423 million shares. We've been successful in improving both gross and net pension and OPEB liabilities. To highlight just the pension liabilities, the net liabilities have been reduced by around 25%, and the associated gross liabilities on the pension side have been reduced by over $600 million. This is our plan to reduce mortality, inflation, and yield curve risk. We've annuitized many programs, we've made capital contributions, and we've made a lot of plan changes. Should discount rates continue to rise in the future, that's a future benefit for our plan. This year, we expect good improvement in pension and OPEB cash contributions. Back in 2020, cash contributions for pension and OPEB were $240 million. This year, we expect that number to be around $60 million, and into the future, it should be less than $60 million. We've outlined that for you in the 10-K. Moving to the commercial and operational performance of the business. The team has improved performance while navigating through some pretty significant headwinds. Despite the commercial aerospace headwind, the team here has been able to improve price, flex variable cost, reduced fixed costs to deliver EBITDA margins of 22.8% in 2021. That's better than the pre-COVID levels in 2019 of 22.1%. That puts us in the top decile when we compare to the peer group, which we've put in the appendix for you in the deck. We're optimistic that as the volume starts to come back in, we should expect strong incremental margin expansion. You could see this effect in the first quarter of 2022 with our engines business. Volume went up about 18% on a year-over-year basis, and the team delivered EBITDA margins over 27%. Moving to free cash flow. Free cash flow conversion has been over 100% over the last couple of years. That's driven by reduced interest, lower pension and OPEB contribution, and optimization of working capital. This slide here is our guide for 2022. As we've communicated in the guidance, the revenue is expected to be $5.64 billion and EBITDA margins of approximately 23%. That's solid performance, while we're attempting to overcome the headwinds associated with the 787 certification issues, the 737 MAX ramp- up issues, F-35 destocking, and inflationary costs. Earnings per share is expected to be $1.39 per share. What gives us confidence in our performance is the operational playbook that we launched in early 2019. Every quarter, we cover the key aspects of the business. We start with the markets, the competitive landscape, and new product launches. On top of that, left part of the slide here, is the operational discipline. What are we doing to flex variable costs, maintaining our fixed cost reductions, working capital, asset utilization, and then CapEx? Moving to the top right, in commercial discipline, we do a detailed review of all of the commercial contracts well into the future. We're looking at 2024 contracts right now. Lastly, we do a deep dive around talent management and quality. We've gained very strong momentum with this tool over the years, and that's translated into very strong performance. Regarding margins, we expect future margin expansion in all of the segments as volume returns, and we attempt to mitigate the risk of inflationary costs. Engines, fasteners, and structures are expected to benefit from the commercial aerospace volume recovery, but they've also taken out a significant amount of structural cost. Engines will have an added benefit with the increased airfoil sophistication, which is expected to drive further volumes and margins. Lastly, the wheels business is expected to have a volume benefit from all the pent-up demand caused by the supply chain issues, as well as the added demand of lightweight products which are necessary for the electrification of trucks that John just mentioned. Moreover, we're seeing some stability now in metal prices, and they're potentially even actually going down, which will work to our benefit. Cash flow. We have a long-term target where free cash flow is 90% of net income. As you can see over the last several years, the dollars have actually improved, and we've been over that 90% hurdle. A lot of these actions is how we strengthened our balance sheet over the last couple of years. Last slide I have is around our capital allocation strategy, which again, we consider is balanced. First, I'll start with CapEx. Prior to the pandemic, we invested a significant amount of CapEx in our engines business, in our wheels business. Today, our CapEx focus is on automation and productivity. That's gonna help us with more improved yields in the business and also to mitigate labor risk. CapEx in the near term is expected to be less than depreciation, which will be a net source of cash. Next, let's go to net debt paydown. We have a long-term net leverage target of 1.5x-2x net debt to EBITDA. We're well on our way. This year, we'll be sub 3x in 2022. That's where we expect to be. Recently, a lot of our work has just been recognized by Moody's, who gave us an upgrade last month from a Ba2 to a Ba1. We'll also be very opportunistic where we can around future debt paydown and then also gross and pension liabilities. Share buybacks and dividends will continue as we continue to have confidence in our free cash flow. Lastly, bolt-on acquisitions, we'll be very opportunistic here, most likely in the engine fasteners areas as we try to enhance our competitive advantage. That's all we have on the finance side. We're going to next just talk, turn it back to John for closing comments before we go over to Q&A. Thanks, Ken. Maybe while I'm just making these few closing remarks, my four business unit leader colleagues could come and take a seat on the stand here or the podium, so that they can be ready in place for your questions, which I'm sure will come. Again, to remind you, what was our strategy? It was about focusing on the things which we're good at, applying good operational and commercial discipline, prioritize resources to where the returns are highest, and then provide a disciplined capital allocation plan and execute that and to continue to demonstrate that we're good stewards of capital. I thought there was another slide, but maybe there isn't. There was a slide showing the whole management team, and I was gonna say it's one of the best-looking management teams in the business, but that goes without saying. Without that, Ken, I think if you join me, and we'll take it. I think, Peter, you're gonna moderate, I think. Just want to go over one. Okay. Thank you. That concludes the presentation portion. We will now take questions from the audience in the room, and we also can take questions from the audience on the webcast. For those of you in the room, please state your name and affiliation before proceeding with your question. We do have a few mic runners in the room, so please raise your hand and wait for the mic to come to you before you ask. With that, we can get started. Just wondering if you could dive a little bit deeper on the airfoil IP advantage you have today, and where CMCs come into play and the changing pathways that the OEMs are pursuing in that regard. Where are you in terms of, you know, buckling down your ceramic matrix composite supply? Yeah. Where are the risks to that strategy? While I have you, there was a lower right-hand side of the chart at where you were in first generation, second generation, and currently versus the competition. How long did it take you to get from first gen to where you are today? Okay, that's a lot of questions there. When I get something, I'm gonna phone a friend in a minute, call Boyd. Where is Boyd in the room? There's Boyd in the room. Boyd, can you be by Kat with a microphone just in case we need to call on you? 'Cause if it'll exhaust my level of knowledge, then it's Merrick's. Right. When we've gone through that, we'll turn to Boyd. I can't answer the years from Gen one, two to current in terms of, I'll say, controlling that core variability. I'm gonna get Boyd to answer that in a second. Let me start off with CMCs. We've looked at it, and of course, the principal advantage in the first look on CMCs is temperature. How far up the temperature gradient can you take these things? First of all, I am not sure yet that there is a need. Bear in mind, commercial aero was at 2,500. You saw the F-35 at 3,005 or 3,600. I didn't define exactly for you, but I did show you the route map whereby if today you wanted to take that up significantly, we could take it up again with today's technology. I showed you pathways not only in terms of what we can do by F coatings, but also the way we have air management within the airfoil, and just moving away from basic processes like hole drilling. The technical case in terms of temperature is not made. There's a weight case, and then, adverse to that, is one of the issues of corrosion, where the fundamental exposure to any form of water creates a problem with that ceramic technology. Beyond that is weight as an advantage. To gain the weight advantage against the cost curve, I did the math with Boyd last year sometime, and in fact, taking into the dialogue, the former head of Boeing Propulsion, who happens to be in the room standing against the wall there, so who knows something about it. We have a reasonable intelligence regarding this. In fact, indeed, it looked at the cost structures of where it's used, for example, on a shroud on a LEAP engine at the moment, and what were the catastrophic failures that were going on there. At the moment, it seems to be in its infancy. When I sat down with one of our major engine customers and had the whole debate about the application, where they hold themselves out to be more, let's say, wanting to advance material science, is that there is a case where you will see that on an aircraft which will come out in 2025, but for a few applications on the engine, none of which are economic, which is what I call playing with the technology. As and when I think we get deeper into it, when you look at the economics to produce an airfoil, as if you could produce an airfoil with that ceramic matrix composite technology compared to the long-established high volume, high yield. We haven't even got to talk about where the yields are in a CMC process, is that the economics will favor a, let's say a nickel alloy-based form by, I'm gonna call it factor five minimum. The whole system weight case would have to be proven to actually get there. I don't want to dismiss it, but at the same time, I'm trying to explain to you there's not just one foothill or threshold to get over. You've got multiple foothills and thresholds, even if you could ever climb the mountain, and I'm not sure that's the next two decades. That's if you can solve the corrosion issue that's there, and how you're gonna have to coat it to provide, and with what, to be able to provide resistance against coating. That's as much as I can get. It's probably, hopefully more. No, that's fair. Than you want. Yeah. Boyd can amplify, but maybe Boyd, can you address, like, how many years from one, two to where we are today in terms of controlling that core, I'll say Cpk capability? Yeah. We're bringing out a new generation in core bodies about every five to eight years. Keep in mind, we're actually splitting it, so there's sorta like two generations, because with the new airfoils that John talked about, where you're going from 2D to 3D, where you have three and four walls, we actually need to split the core because there's one generation for the very fine features, like on the trailing edge, and then there's another generation of core that we need to do the 3D component of that. It's getting much more targeted to the specific application, to the specific needs. Myles, is that enough? Let's get started with. Yeah. It's okay. I introduced you. While we're still queuing in the room, I have one from online. Can you comment on forward CapEx requirements, given it's been below depreciation, what is the risk of underinvestment versus over-utilizing current fixed cost? Originally I thought that by 2023 we might be getting close to depreciation. That was like predicting a further increase in CapEx in next year. I am thinking that was probably too pessimistic. I got a feeling that we're in for another year or so of sub-depreciation capital requirements. Obviously it's always gonna be volume dependent and technology independent. At the same time, if you think about it, all of those investments I've talked about in automation are actually totally discretionary. Don't have to make any of them at all, 'cause if I wanted to bear down on CapEx to come up with the lowest possible number, I needn't have done any. That would not have felt right for the business. The reason why I observe that is, I think it's always the case, you have to do what's right for the business in the long- term. I believe that the benefits of bringing increased automation to the quality, yield, and ultimately financial performance to Howmet is the right decision, and that's why we're doing it. As I was describing to someone earlier in the room, we're visiting one of our facilities recently. I was observing what I felt was an excessive level of hours spent improving, let's call it a molding post. Let's say it's coming out the die before it went into its shell and casting process and causing us downstream problems. Rather than deal with it in terms of fixing it by welding and grinding later in the process, I'm much more interested in solving it at root cause. If that required us to invest in new die capability, I would do it. If that required us to move from, in that case it was, maybe a sufficient hydraulic molding press, albeit with additional controls around it, to one with electric ram control, I would do so, because I fervently believe that having that level of control over your process pays itself multiple times downstream through your whole manufacturing plant. I'm gonna say I'm a bit of a sucker for a good story. It has to be a good story. You know, when I say a bit of a sucker, I don't mean I'm like clueless. If you wanted to come with a CapEx authorization to me, you might need to know your stuff before you walk in the room. Sure. You might need to know, understand the level of, I'll say, utilization of your existing equipment. You might want to be ready to answer questions about, you know, its up time and how much preventative maintenance routines have you got on the equipment. You'd want to be prepared, but I'm a sucker for a good story. It's a long way of saying I would invest appropriately for the business commensurate with what do we need to achieve, and ultimately, what are you trying to do? The answer is, we try to deliver outstanding quality to our customers. If you don't do that, then why would you ever expect to be, I'll say good commercially. I think I'd like to be at the best levels you can be in terms of consistent delivery performance, consistent quality performance. I think if you do that, then it enables you to hold your head up high in many different audiences and so feel a degree of confidence that you know, we do execute well. If it takes capital to do it, we'll spend the capital, but let's make sure that we spend it appropriately. Don't expect to spend the capital when you've got machines running, doing the same processes at less than 50 OEE levels. That would be bad stewardship of capital. We're not gonna do that. It's how you blend all those things together. You know, it's trying to say, we will do right for the business, we will invest in it. I try to witness that with investments in, let's say, new manufacturing technologies, new automation levels, all of it to try to improve. You know, and fundamentally, anything that takes variability out of our manufacturing is really good. I'm Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. I've some questions under the umbrella of growth, and in line with what you were just talking about. You know, as you go through each of your businesses, you have already very high market share. When we think about growth going forward, are there opportunities to gain market share with your existing customers? Or like in the wheels business where you have outsized market share, can you replicate that, or do they need to keep alternatives? If you could talk to that a little bit. The second part of that question is if you could identify within your end markets, if we are of the view that there's a consumer-led recession ahead, where do you see the areas of vulnerability versus areas where you feel- Oh. Quite confident in your long-term agreements holding? Thanks. Okay. I'll try and remember the last bit before I move on to answer the first one. Just recession, you know. I know. exposure. Yeah. Yeah. I really do believe that if you're going to be a good CEO, now I'm not saying that I am, but if I was. You know, what should you take care of first? What's your first order of business? That's taking care of your revenue line. I mean, your revenue line is number one, number two, number three. Oh, by the way, you also have to be good at your downstream, I'll say, operational disciplines and et cetera, et cetera. If you were to think of me as someone who can control costs, well, I'd say yes. I'm actually more interested in taking care of price, market share first, because there's always a lot more leverage in any business with that than any time you have. One mistake on your commercial discipline can take you five, 10 years to rectify in a manufacturing plant. You know, let's be clear what's really important. When you get to, yes, we have high market shares, but you mentioned wheels, but I'm only 30% of where I define the wheels market to be. That's lower. I got 70% of the whole market to go at. That makes it really easy to grow that business through additional penetration. The key to success will be how do we hold on to that level of market share while we're going through that. The best way of doing that is to maintain a level of scale advantage that nobody else can compete with. You know, be clear on what you want to achieve, which is basically you want to help the market transition. You'd like the tailwind behind you 'cause that's always good to have. I would say it's called electrification or alternative fuels. If you can then continue to create scale advantage 'cause nobody else can touch you, they can't buy the metals, they can't convert the metals, they just haven't. You know, their whole ability to see a whole process, even through distribution, is as an order that nobody else can compete with you. That's why I think it'd be good. If you look at in our engines business, we can make further strides, and we've described to you some of the technology in Airfoil, which is a way of aggregating value in somebody else's business. If I can aggregate all hole drilling into Howmet, that's a huge new, you know, market I can take, you know, further growth in. If we can take market share, not just through the, I'll say, high, I'll say the first parts of where our market share is even higher than our average across the turbine, through the other technology we're working on, let's say near net shape titanium blades, which we're working on at the moment. That will be another frontier for us to cover and victory, which would then take us further. Yeah, there's lots of other things we're doing. You know, we have plans, which obviously I've not made them public, but we have. We have cunning internal plans to improve our share positions in all of our businesses because that's what we do. That's what's expected when we go through our planning process once a year. It's like I have no interest, either for me personally or any of our businesses, what I call being a cork on the ocean, which is just going wherever the currents take you. The answer is, the only reason why we are here is to create value, which is the first part of that is you gotta grow your business. Tell me how you're gonna do it. Those are the sort of things we talk about and we talk about things like white space. I don't know whether white space resonates with you, but that's where we're not. We can try to be where we're not while not losing our core competence as well. We have a white space discussion. Let me go to the back end of your question now, which was recession refresher. It's probably one of the reasons why I never give you forward margins of telling you know, what margins will be when we grow up, you know, 'cause I don't know. It assumes a level of presience and knowledge I just don't have. Like, in 2019, if I'd have told you we're gonna be these levels of margins, you know, you might have thought I was bullish or overambitious, or maybe I 'cause I had no understanding of there's gonna be a pandemic. I had no understanding there's gonna be a war in Ukraine. I had no understanding about the, I'll say, MAX or 737, 787 issues. You know, there's so many things that happen, inflation, energy inflation right now. There's like so much going on. To say that you know all these things and can accurately forecast what the outcome will be in 2025, I think you're full. Now, I mean, I don't mind you writing reports to say what we're gonna be, but that's your numbers, not mine. I feel as though we keep doing the right things, and which is basically take care of business, which is grow your top line, control your cost structure, deliver a healthy profit, and cash flows out the business, and you use it judiciously. That's why you invest with us. That's it. Now, recession, I don't know. There's a backlog in our truck business that carries us through 2023 and 2024, even with the emissions change. 2025, I don't know what happens in 2025 yet, but I'm confident, you know. In terms of our commercial aerospace business right now, I think the military is pretty solid. I don't see, you know, with all the, whether it's the Finns or Swiss or Germans or Canadians all wanting to buy F-35s, I think that puts a plank under that thing for us. I think the number of howitzers that we're sort of gifting to Ukraine at the moment, everyone that gets gifted, I think, great, because that's another howitzer. By the way, we happen to produce a lot of stuff around the bottom of those howitzers, which is really good. Those are really big structural parts for us. I expect when they've sent a few shells over, they will need replacement as well. That's all good. There's that. I think that's okay. I go commercial aero. You know, we've come off the worst conditions for some time. I worry about the relative angle of growth. Is it this or is it that? According to what's the affordability of people for airline tickets, I don't know. It's gonna grow. People are gonna travel internationally, for sure. You know, Asia's gonna come back. It's all gonna happen. We're only debating the angle amount. And I don't see recessionary pressure causing Boeing to take their 31 down. There's other things that could happen why 31 won't be the right number or pull down, but I don't know. If you look at the backlog for Airbus, it's extraordinary in their narrow- body. You know, I read a report today for the United Airlines guy saying, you know, they're so glad that they bought 150 narrow- body jets last year, or was it 300? It's some number. You know, I can pull my phone out and tell you. You know, so many MAXes and so many A320s, and he's in favor of Boeing. I said, that's gonna be a strategic advantage for them 'cause you can't get planes right now. If you try and go buy a plane from Airbus, you can't get one. You know, join the queue in 2028 or something, you know. That seems to be solid. Oil and gas, heck, can't get any worse than it's been for us. Because I've never told you what my margin is gonna be in 2025, I've not told you what the revenue is, so I don't know. I have good feelings. You can't quantify them, but just assume that if you're gonna place a bet, and maybe HWM is a good place to bet right now, you know. I could tick off all the things I wouldn't invest in, but that's for a different session than this one. You know, I'm invested, so why not you? Is that it, Sheila Kahyaoglu? Yes. Thanks. Hi. Matt Akers from Wells Fargo. Could you touch on pricing a little bit? I think you said you're looking at LTAs out to 2024. Just what's your latest thoughts on kind of the opportunity? I think Ken got ahead of himself, didn't he? No, we do. We look at, 'cause it's all known and. So I don't think the, I'll say percentage changes that much. I think the frequency or cadence of what comes up for renewal every year does change. So we told you well in advance that 2021 was gonna be a big year. We told you that 2022 would be a lower year than 2021. We never calibrated you against 2020. Haven't given you a 2023 number yet at all. At the moment, it's gonna be positive, I tell you that. But how positive, I've not and, you know, choose not to do so today. Maybe that's more for a full discussion or whatever. The important thing, it's gonna be positive, you know. The question is how much. Enough to produce satisfactory margins. Sorry, that was as clear as mud. Thank you. Justin Bergner at Gabelli Funds. If one looks at your metrics on CapEx and R&D, you know, they stack up relatively, I think, low versus your peer group. You know, you've highlighted a lot of compelling technology here today. Maybe you could just give us a sense of sort of what is the ethos behind the organization in terms of how it pushes technology forward, and then how you're able to do that while keeping. Mm. CapEx and R&D at a constrained level. The R&D number we show, I don't believe it's the real number because there's a lot of our R&D hidden in cost of goods sold. It's a bigger number than you see optically. Ken and I have chatted about to what degree do we correct that, but it's not been an impediment for us. You couldn't do the sort of things that we're talking about today. By the way, these are not just paper things, you know. If you wanna give me an order for one of these extremely complex, single- crystal, full wall chambered, you know, non-hole drilled, whatever, yo, we'll sign you up. I think we spend at an appropriate level. You know, we're not trying to invent the next, I'll call, like, autonomous cruise control aspect of a vehicle where that technology is changing rapidly. We're not an electronics guy, so there's a different level associated with this. Aerospace is a longer run cycle industry anyway. You gotta put that into context. At the same time, I think we invest at least as much, if not more. Given our scale, I think as percentage, it's actually very healthy. In terms of capital, my feeling is that in predecessor management, maybe in the former, let's call it Alcoa or Arconic, maybe there's something a little bit of maybe investing too much, particularly in vanity projects. We are very much more focused, and I really am interested in making sure that the capital we've got is working as a high order of productivity before we go and invest in new. I'm really interested in investing in new where I see it giving us the advantages I've already told you about in terms of quality, delivery or fundamental performance, which will also be a form of, you know, improved labor efficiency. It's a really difficult question to answer because you start off with the premise, I think you did, which was that we were low. I wouldn't agree. I think we're actually a full percentage point higher than some other aerospace peers that I see. What I think is really good is that our free cash flow as a percent of EBITDA is 50%. Now, that's something I should focus on because I think that's really meaningful. As a percentage of net income, it's really good. We're investing in the exciting technology we've talked to you about today, and we have no capacity constraints. I mean, what more could you want? We can command good economics with our customers. People don't pay if you don't deliver the levels of technology that we're showing. I mean, you don't. You might go and buy a fancy shirt, but you wanna make sure it's nice Italian material or something, or a Sea Island cotton, I don't know. You don't pay for something which is not good. Applies throughout any B2C, B2B, or even now, the new expression of B2H industry, business to human. New one. One thing I'd add to that, too, so we don't have centralized R&D anymore. Just very targeted in each of the four segments. Everybody up on the stage here has dedicated R&D facilities at their location. Fasteners is unique, no more centralized. John's right, there's a lot of R&D embedded in the processes which are in the COGS line. Trying to find a question I can pass across to my colleagues. They're saying, "Please don't. Yeah, this might be one for Merrick. David Strauss from Barclays. I wanted to touch on Engine Products margins that are, you know, you highlighted are now above where they were pre-pandemic. Your volumes are still a lot lower. I know you've had, you know, structural cost savings, pricing, but how have you gone there? What has allowed the margins to already be much higher? You know, you kinda teased us with the potential, I guess, for higher margins on the more complex airfoils that are coming through. The opportunity that's to come from here. Merrick, do you wanna have a go or do you prefer like? That's a trap. Trap. That's a trap question, but do you wanna go for it or should I go? I'll let you go. Okay. Yeah, I've only been in the job for a few weeks. When I think about the transitions that we've been making in engine by way of, you know, first of all, focus, we've also been able to improve our market shares, and making more of the same is always really good, particularly in an engine business. Making more of the same and with the ability. We've never given you breakdowns of where we move price, but engine's been part of it. We've also seen the ability to reduce our structural costs. It really is a consistent theme. In case of engines, I think the one thing which I see more than anything is making some more of the same is actually being helpful to us. Any time you can do that is good. Now, what I've also said, I think on the last earnings call, is that we would. You know, we have raised it. I don't think you should be planning on anything for the next couple of quarters in the year, 'cause, I mean, that's a big step. Maybe we'll draw breath and we'll, you know, get to the next foothill in 2023. Who knows? You know, I think we're in for hopefully a you know, couple of quarters of consolidation, get ourselves, 'cause we're still recruiting like crazy. We're ahead of our Q2 recruitment plan at the moment, which is all good because that gives us the confidence that tomorrow is gonna be better than today. So, answers a bit of Tim's question in the near term. You know, we you know, we're still growing. You know, there's no recessionary hit on the engine business at the moment. Yeah. No, yeah. When I look at the sophistication of going from a CFM56 to a LEAP, or actually, when I see the sophistication which I talked to you about on the call in, was it May? Early May, this month, where I gave you a loose description of the improvements we're making on the geared turbofan, for example, about what's coming there. Each of those developments, so it's not as though you started in, let's say, 2018 and it's static. You know, we'll be bringing through a level of new turbine blades across the whole of those narrow- body programs. Some which are still yet to come and some which are coming right now. Those are all advancements on what was a CFM blade. Those level of sophistication, plus having come down the learning curve, plus the ability to improve price and share, it's all good. There's nothing that's not good. You know, I like every bit of it. I don't know what else to say. It's just good, David. Yeah. I still think you're getting ahead of yourself. Paretosh Misra from Berenberg. In the engine products business, where does the chunk of your intellectual property sit? Is that on the equipment side or the cooling technology solidification side or the alloy design side? In other words, where is your edge versus the number two in the industry? It's in multiple forms, Paritosh. For example, if you take the equipment that I showed you, we actually either manufacture, for example, our own casting furnaces, or we take somebody else's and then we customize it considerably. The reason why we do that is that we don't want anybody, I mean anybody. First of all, we would not allow you to come into the plant, even if you're a customer. Secondly, we would not want a machine tool manufacturer to know what we do, because then that might be shared by somebody who might be visiting and seeing how that's been changed. Because the gradient, say, temperature gradient control that we employ, the way we cool at different points during that single- crystal formation, the way we place our crystals in the mold, and I'll say the way we extract, and even the way we prep and place the, I'll say, ceramic structures inside the casting, every one of those has unique characteristics which are not seen by anybody in the industry. Seriously, not by anybody. We want to keep it that way, so we try to keep control over that knowledge, in terms of the manufacturing side of the equation. We don't let anybody see the way we have our nesting techniques on the levels of our, I'll say, pathway to go into the cast post formation of the shell. We don't allow anybody to see that because that's again, another level of knowledge which we wouldn't want somebody to know, share. Even how we prepare our cores. Every one of those things is so important to us that we really don't let even our customers into the plant to see it. It's not because we want to be arrogant, it's just that we are really trying to protect that knowledge. Whether it's starting with the design and indeed even the materials that we use to manufacture our cores, that is critical to us because the dimensional control over those gives us the advantage then all the way through the subsequent processes. I'm gonna say it's, it starts in design and goes all the way through the process, and we try to keep it as hidden away as possible. We even don't allow the whole manufacturing process to be done in one manufacturing plant because we don't want anybody to actually see soup to nuts what's done. We put it in different manufacturing plants, so you can't see. You might know what happens here, but you have no clue what happens next or before or so on. Maybe it's a victim of paranoia. I don't know, but I think it's worthwhile to do. Certainly, you know, we try to be totally respectful of things which are, let's call it black programs, which we do as well for the military because they are black and then we don't want people to know, see, how, why, you know, et cetera. I would say we've been very respectful today. We haven't shown you a single part and shows you how the airflow occurs. We've showed you the outsides, but without trying to be, you know, [constant dances], you. It's just the part. You can't see what goes on. It doesn't matter. It's I don't know whether that gets to it. I think. Oh, just do it. There's George afterwards. Hi. Sort of following up on something you mentioned a moment ago. I read recently that 57% of the A320 family aircraft are being delivered with LEAP engines. Then I read a good story explaining why the geared turbofan is actually superior, especially as the A320 gets longer and heavier. I have two questions, I guess. The first is, are you indifferent between which engine is on the A320 as they're delivered? Do you have a guess on how this share will shake out over the next couple of years? I mean, it's a really interesting question. It's not me filibustering to get to form an answer. It's just that when the original geared turbofan was brought out, it was a new engine, brand new concept. There's always gonna be some people say, "Well, let the teething problems, you know, be exposed first." Sure enough, there was some. Particularly, I think if you went at one stage to India and saw the, I think it was the Air India fleet of the turbofan engine, there was a lot of issues which Pratt & Whitney had to step up to and solve. The initial duty cycle for both their engines, both LEAP and CFM, and geared turbofan, wasn't what they originally thought, but maybe it's the case with every new engine, and certainly the GTF was off. Of course, everybody works at it. It's improved. You tend to get a, yeah, I'll say any airline gets embedded in its own maintenance shops of what type of engine it, you know, does. There's probably people in the room know more about it than I do, but my guess is if you're locked into an engine for a period of time, you'll gradually change if you want to. It would appear from the outside that maybe the fuel efficiency of a GTF and maybe the noise efficiency is slightly higher. I don't know, but I think it might be. Against that, I don't know what the acquisition cost is. No clue. I know that for us, the parts we provide, the GTF has a shorter turbine length in terms of number of stages, so that'll be reduced compared to a LEAP. On the other hand, the external fan you see on every GTF application is aluminum-lithium, which is one of those in the back of the room. We supply that 100%. Between the first two, for us, we're like it's the same value. George. Yeah. John Plant, I know you've been asked this before, but at what point does price increases in jet are limited? I mean, you look at Pratt & Whitney investing in a new plant. You make margins already that they could only dream about. At what point do they just sit there and say, you know, "We can't keep paying more money to one of the suppliers out there," or they're gonna do it themselves. Yeah. Is the technology you have that proprietary that you kinda have pretty much unlimited demand in terms of what you can ask? Unlimited is a function of time, isn't it? You know, because everything's limited by time in this world. I feel we provide great value on that engine, great value to Pratt & Whitney, great value to the military. At the same time, I recognize that the announcement that they've made about building a new plant in Asheville, North Carolina. My thought has been, though, from the fact pattern, is that when Pratt & Whitney sold its Polish airfoil turbine capability in 2016, they made the decision that they would reenter, but with their own, rather than something that I think they maybe have bought, 'cause they always had bad results from that. They made that decision in 2017. It's not that decision happened in response to, you know, there was a price move on an F-35. That's not the case at all because the timeline sequence doesn't work. At the same time, could they? Should they? Would they? You know, the answer is I don't know. What I do know is that we have renewed our contract. I know it could come up for renewal again. I know that we've just renewed our commercial aero contract on the PW-GTF Pratt engine, and that goes out till 2030. That's pretty significant. Anyway, I'm not gonna get into, like, what shares or the rest of it, but it's okay as far as I can tell you that. Who knows what the future is, you know. What I can tell you is that the increase in spares alone on the F-35. My guess is that the value of the spares by 2025 or 2026 is double today's delivered value. Now I. When I say double, I'm not actually giving you the dollar figure 'cause I don't want to at the moment, but it's something that I get out of bed for. Now capacity has to be put in for that, you know. Because there is no capacity on that pipe, you know, that left for those dies. You know, either we'll put it in or maybe Asheville will come up. I don't know. The question's gotta be is that, you know, when you've spent $650 million, and you've done it across hole drilling, machining, coating, casting, metal prep, I don't know how much you're gonna make because $650 million doesn't go a lot in an engine business. You guys have to work that out. Second business is, have you yet worked out the tolerances that you'll have to control your cores? Do you know even what your core technology is? By the way, you know, 'cause we do. The answer is, what do you know about the stability of that core, whether you could ever make one? So there's lots of questions to be answered yet, George. The answer is, I don't know. I'm not a soothsayer. All I just tell you is, you know, we're okay. If they make some, great. It may take a bit of a way off the increase that we would otherwise get. Years from now, who knows? I just think they, I would like them to believe that we provide good value. At the moment, for me, it seems to be people want more. I don't think I've satisfied you because I know that it's difficult to satisfy you. Okay, thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Noah Poponak from Goldman Sachs. Your customers continue to cite your section of their supply chain as an area of shortages. Yeah. It's been hard to get the full answer on that. Maybe you can just update us on the latest there. Is that a market share opportunity? Then, John, I know you said on the last earnings call you're still in negotiations and still formulating the full answer related to the industry moving away from VSMPO-AVISMA, but if there's any update you can provide on that today as well, it'd be helpful. Okay. I have tried to answer the structural casting shortfall. Same as I've tried to answer the Asheville, North Carolina question. I never seem to succeed in getting there. On the last call, I did say that I'd heard from a previous earnings call that someone said they were short of titanium castings, which is really good because we didn't provide one. So that couldn't be us. Today I also went a bit further because I got a bit peaky or something like that. I just said, you know, if people needed stuff from us, they would have come and picked them off our dock at the end of the month, so I'll just leave them there. You know, do you really need them or not? I don't think we're a pacing item at all. We're keeping pace for the most part with our commitments. We're not perfect. Nobody is. At the same time, I know that we're also providing at full, if not slightly higher than maybe our contract requirements is. At the moment, we're okay. Now, where exactly will it be? Can we be assured over the next 18 months, two years, that we're gonna be in a, you know, good on everything? I doubt it. We'll have our moments. I've no doubt we'll fail somewhere, but it won't be for lack of trying. It's just by part number across the tens of thousands we provide, it's always difficult because sometimes someone may not schedule it, they drop them in, and then they say, "By the way, you're late." In their book, we're late. We're not, because we haven't accepted the order. You know, they'll say, then they'll announce that, "Well, you're late." There's a lot of stuff that gets said, but this so-called 70 engines missed that maybe Pratt & Whitney commented on, and they're worried about do they keep, you know, in line with Airbus. I can tell you categorically that that's not been us. Okay. That's not been us. Do you know it to be a competitor, or is it a case of once there's supply chain messiness across the whole? I've never spoken to the competitor, so I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I have an idea, but that's just rumor, and I don't talk rumor. All I can tell you is that I don't know, and I'd rather say to you, I don't know. On the second part of your question was titanium. I think it's either August fourth or sixth, whenever Thursday is, we're gonna update you on that, and we'll probably throw out a number for what I think I said a Q4 number might be for this year. Yeah. You know, based upon, you know, I think we bid against RFQs for lots of different opportunities, let's call it. As those are landing, we will give you an update. Bear in mind that, of course, the amount of inventory to be burnt off on titanium is significant. Yeah. I mean, Boeing, either from great planning, they've got quite a stockpile. Or it could be they're not been producing some of the wide bodies, you know, in quite the quantity that they thought. I don't know. But all I'll tell you is that right now there's inventory to be burned off. Some people had maybe predicted reclaims happening. I don't know. But we'll get something, and I'll tell you, give you an update. That will give you 2023 guidance. I'll wait 'til the end of the year to do that. The industry immediately started, you know, putting out RFQs across the board related to. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. We have them from every, let's call it, aerospace company, both airframe and engine manufacturer that surrounds, and to look at potential switchover to looking for additional titanium sources. Meanwhile, I also said to you on the call that some of our customers continue to buy from VSMPO-AVISMA. Would you give a range of how many RFQs you are responding to? All of them. Say again? All of them. How many is it? Oh, I didn't know. I don't know. Quite a few. Because for the part number, but none of it means anything, 'cause it's like part number by part number, you know, it's like. Yeah This, that, and they come in, you know, at random, it seems. Okay. So if- All right. I could ask Ramiro the question, but if he gave you a number, it would be meaningless. Yeah. You know. I'm trying to protect him as well. Fill in a number for something, eventually we can fill in the algebra, but, Yeah That's fair enough. Thanks. At least I gave you a relatively short answer, because when I don't wanna tell you something, I'll give you a very long answer. Fair. Appreciate it. Dammit, Dave. Quiet. I have one question here from the webcast. Can you expand on your isothermal capabilities and the magnitude of improvements and success that you've added? Do you have a pathway to become a number one player, as you are in most of your markets? Well, that's a big ask. I think we are making good strides. It's been a thorn in our side for many years. Both the stability of process, I think, and also the engineering knowledge around this manufacturing. I feel as though we've got on top of it. We are now qualified on two major engine applications, with a shared market share with one of our competitors. All I know is that site has gone from being in the red to being in the black, which is a good thing, 'cause I like profitability, profitable sites. I would like to try to continue to grow that business. You know, I don't know enough yet to know how far we can take it. You know, it's not been. The important thing was to get to what I believed it could be, which was stability, capability, a solid supply situation to also mainline products rather than the odd niche bit here or there. I think we've achieved that. Now we've got to build on it. You know, I don't know. John, this is Scott Deuschle from Melius Research. Going back to Noah's question, the RFQs that you're responding on, should investors expect any deals from those to be accretive to the margins for the overall business? Then a different question. In the past, I think you had mentioned that you had 1.5x the shares of your next closest competitor on airfoils. Where does that stand today. I think it's 1.7x. I'll say it's about the same. That's my guess. Doesn't move that quickly. I don't think that the margin we'll get from titanium plate will be incremental to our... I mean, it'll be incremental to the company, but it won't be incremental to the margin rate of the company because our structures business is our weakest business in terms of margin. You know, ignore the quarter. I think it's like a 14% last year. I think it does not take away from some of the extraordinary level of good work that's been done in the business by way of operating efficiency and commercial arrangements. It's been overshadowed by the 787 and other wide-body issues, plus the downdraft 'cause of the burning off the F-35 inventory. I think my view is that is a more normal high teens business. Could even be more. It's not the average for the company. It'll never be a 25% margin business. It's just not that nature. Whatever titanium we take on, first of all, it's gonna to be beneficial, 'cause I wouldn't do it without improving as a, you know, cost of capital. I don't think you should expect it to be incremental to the 23% margin, no. Neither would you notice it to be detrimental to it either. Here we have another one from online. When we think about future engine combustion technologies such as sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen, hybrid electric, et cetera, how does this impact your engines business? Is this a risk? Well, first of all, if it's any form of SAF, and there's a whole debate around what's the carbon dioxide emission from an SAF fuel, it'd be interesting to see the whole thing from start to finish on it. If you're burning any form of, let's say, hydrocarbon-based fuel, it's gonna be emitting CO2. We're indifferent to whether it's burning, let's say, jet fuel coming from the cracking process of oil, or whether it's an SAF fuel. The turbine blade, the turbine, the engine doesn't know any different. We have to make sure they can perform. I think today there are, you know, SAF fuel's already being pumped through engines which we supply the airfoils and other structural components. I don't think that's changed anything. I think if it's a hydrogen solution, and there's a whole interesting debate to be had around infrastructure, size of tanks on planes. I mean, how many seats can you get on a plane if you got full of hydrogen, etc.? The whole cooling system. There's lots and lots of really interesting stuff. Assuming that you can, and I don't need to weigh whether you can or you can't, but if you can produce a hydrogen plane, again, our turbine componentry doesn't know the difference. It'll just stick it through the turbine, no change. If it's a battery electric plane, that's different. It's a motor, it's not a turbine. In that case, that would be a problem. Having said that, because I would like to go a bit further, is that today you might be able to get an application of a very small plane with three or four seats in it. Maybe, a little transport between Washington and New York on a something like that, or in the Norwegian fields or something, but a hedgehopper. Putting a battery pack in an Airbus A320 doesn't bear thinking about because the, I'm gonna call kilowatt hour capability or fuel density that you have on a battery pack compared to a fossil fuel engine is like, I don't know, a hundredth size or ten. It doesn't really matter. The answer is, it has to be a rather large battery, which also means then you can't get the thing off the ground. Well, if you can't get off the ground, you can only put three people in the plane. Having three people on an Airbus A320 doesn't really make economic sense. I think you've got not only problems regarding battery and motor technology, you've got fundamental problems to be overcome in terms of energy concentration, and therefore molecular technology at the battery level, which is so far off the mark that it's not realistic, not for this decade nor next. I won't have to live with that prediction in two decades time, I don't think. Well, at least I won't be leading Howmet by then. I don't think. I don't know. It's possible. I'm just trying to say to you that it's a lot of really interesting stuff. There's a lot of papers, and I read them and I try to understand it, but then I come to what's the, you know, application and the realism around it. At the moment I can't get there. I'm optimistic that with the deployment of some of the stuff I've told you today about how further forward we can drive the fuel efficiency and emissions of today's generation. There's a lot further to go, you know, without even changing from, I'll say a nickel-based alloy airfoil construction. I happen to be rather optimistic that we've got some really good stuff and there's nothing that I can see that's gonna overtake it at all for a long period of time to come. That doesn't mean to say I'm a climate denier or anything like that. You know, don't go there. It's just, it's not happening at the moment in aerospace. Another one came in. You mentioned the Pratt & Whitney commercial contract through 2030. Can you remind us where we stand on the F-35? I don't think we've given that out, the next renewal date for that, so I don't think I'm gonna do that. One more. Can you talk about your position in aftermarket, and do you have the opportunity to further grow that? We supply the aftermarket through our main OE customers today, whether it's a fastening part or whether it's an engine part. We sell, let's say to a GE Aerospace or a Pratt & Whitney, that's how we go to the aftermarket. It's all wrapped up in the volume variety analysis we do at the time of each LTA renewal of how much we structure to OE versus aftermarket at that time. Spares is growing. The issue has been. I mean, it's not in the defense and oil and gas that's been pretty stable, good, healthy all the way through the pandemic. It's been the commercial aerospace part of the spares market that probably declined 80% during this period. We see it growing back. I think it's gonna be 20%-30% plus this year. You know, could well be much higher than 30%, but it's coming off as a fairly small base, so I don't think it's gonna revolutionize the absolute dollars. If we do that, and if we were to get another 20%, 30%, 40% next year, then that begins to make a difference. To make the biggest difference, we'd like to see wide body come back at that time, you know, real dollars flow, you know, mix improves, life gets better. All right. I think we're there. With that, we'll conclude the Howmet Aerospace 2022. Well, thank you very much everybody for attending. Thank you for the people on the live webcast and those people who've seen the replay. Appreciate it. Thank you.