Astronics

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

Astronics Corporation (Nasdaq: ATRO, est. founded as a lighting company; HQ 130 Commerce Way, East Aurora, NY; New York-incorporated; ~2,700 full-time employees) is a leading supplier of advanced technologies to the global aerospace, defense, and electronics industries. It builds the unglamorous-but-essential electrical, lighting, power, motion, avionics and test hardware that goes into other people's aircraft and test rigs — a "picks and shovels" supplier, not an OEM.

Two reportable segments:

• Aerospace — $797.3M of FY2025 sales (92.5% of total). Product lines: Electrical Power & Motion (the largest, $410.4M), Lighting & Safety ($208.9M), Avionics ($123.4M), Systems Certification ($29.1M), Structures ($13.6M). End-market mix within Aerospace: 75% commercial transport, 15% military aircraft, 9% general aviation, 1% other.
• Test Systems — $64.8M of FY2025 sales (7.5%). Automated test systems and training/simulation for aerospace & defense, communications and mass transit. Pursues large, often multi-year projects. Revenue fell from $88.7M (2024) — the segment is lumpy and currently a drag (operating loss in FY25, see Lens 4/5).

Customers: airframe OEMs (Boeing, Airbus and their tiers), aircraft operators (airlines), and the U.S. DoD. Concentration: Boeing = 10.4% of total sales in 2025 (10.2% in 2024, 11.0% in 2023) — a single >10% customer, primarily in Aerospace. This is the structural single-name dependency.

Contract structure: Most Aerospace sales are day-to-day purchase orders or single-year procurements, not long-term multi-year commitments — i.e. revenue tracks build rates and airline cabin-retrofit spending, with limited contractual lock-in. Test Systems is the opposite (large multi-year projects). The business is therefore a build-rate / cabin-refresh cyclical with a long-cycle test tail.

Recent M&A (bolt-ons, Aerospace segment): Envoy Aerospace (FAA ODA certification services, June 2025, ~$8.3M) and Bühler Motor Aviation / BMA (German seat-actuation systems, Oct 2025, ~$18.0M). Strategy is explicitly "develop or acquire technology, then sell into targeted markets where our tech is beneficial."

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

Map: raw inputs & electronic components → Astronics design/manufacture (US, Canada, France, Germany; engineering offices in Ukraine + India) → airframe OEMs / Tier-1 integrators / airlines → flying passengers.

• Upstream (inputs): electronic components, semiconductors, connectors, metals/structures, motors and actuators. The 10-K flags component availability and inflation among its risk factors (commodity + electronic-component sourcing). Single-source dependencies on certain specialized parts are a recurring 10-K risk theme. supply-chain.md for the space beat is missing (commercial layer not yet built for this name), so this map is filing-grounded, not commercial-layer-grounded.
• Astronics itself is the value-add node: it certifies and manufactures flight-critical electrical/power/lighting hardware — the certification + qualification barrier (FAA/EASA) is the moat node (see Lens 3).
• Named downstream stakeholders:
• Boeing — the one >10% customer (10.4% FY25); ships into 737 / 787 programs primarily via Aerospace.
• Airbus and its supply chain — implied large customer (commercial transport is 75% of Aerospace; A320/A350 families).
• Seat & cabin integrators — Safran Seats GB, Collins/RTX, Panasonic Avionics appear as co-defendants in the Lufthansa Technik in-seat-power case, i.e. Astronics' in-seat power supplies are designed into seats those firms build → Astronics is a sub-tier supplier to the cabin integrators as well as a direct OEM/airline supplier.
• Airlines — buy lighting, IFEC, in-seat power directly for retrofit/cabin-upgrade programs.
• U.S. DoD / prime contractors — buyers of the military Aerospace (15%) and Test Systems output.
• Chokepoints: (1) Boeing's own production health — when Boeing rate-limited 737 MAX, Astronics felt it; (2) electronic-component lead times; (3) FAA certification throughput (which is why Astronics bought Envoy, an FAA ODA provider — vertically integrating the certification chokepoint).

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

The moat is mid-grade and niche-specific, not a TransDigm-style fortress. Honest read:

• Certification + qualification barrier (real): flight-critical electrical/power hardware must be FAA/EASA-certified and qualified into specific airframes. Once Astronics' power/lighting is designed into a platform, it tends to stay for the platform's life (high switching cost mid-program). The Envoy ODA acquisition deepens this — owning a certification-services provider.
• Aftermarket / retrofit pull: cabin lighting, IFEC and in-seat power get refreshed across an aircraft's life, giving a recurring retrofit stream on the installed base. Not as rich as TransDigm's proprietary-spares aftermarket, but real.
• Breadth within the cabin/power niche: Electrical Power & Motion + Lighting & Safety + IFEC lets it bundle cabin electrification content per aircraft — content-per-aircraft can grow even if build rates are flat.
• IP: holds the patent estate but is also a defendant in a long-running patent fight (Lufthansa Technik, Lens 10) — IP cuts both ways here.

Bargaining power is weak-to-balanced, and this is the key honest qualifier:

• Vs. customers (weak): Boeing/Airbus are vastly larger and concentrated; most Astronics revenue is non-contractual single-year POs. Astronics is the price-taker. Boeing alone is 10.4%.
• Vs. competitors (contested): Safran (via Zodiac Aerospace) is a dominant, far larger rival in cabin lighting/seating-power; Collins Aerospace (RTX), Panasonic Avionics, Thales and Anuvu compete in IFEC/connectivity. Astronics is a focused specialist surrounded by primes with deeper pockets.
• Vs. suppliers (weak): exposed to component/commodity availability and pricing.

Net: a defensible niche specialist with switching-cost stickiness once designed-in, but no pricing dominance and no scale moat against the primes. positioning.md / bottlenecks.md for the beat are missing, so this is filing + web grounded.

Lens 4 · Segments

Revenue by segment & market, FY2023–FY2025, all ``:

Product lines (Aerospace) ``: Electrical Power & Motion $410.4M (+14.3%), Lighting & Safety $208.9M (+16.4%), Avionics $123.4M (+2.7%), Systems Certification $29.1M (+71%, Envoy-aided), Structures $13.6M.

Reading the trend:

• Commercial transport is the engine — accelerating (+14.3%), now $599M / 70% of total. Driven by recovering OEM build rates + airline cabin-refresh spend.
• Military aircraft is the surprise grower (+32%) — small but high-velocity, diversifying away from pure commercial cyclicality.
• General aviation softening (−6%) and "Other" collapsing (−40%) — mix shift, not a red flag at this scale.
• Test Systems is the problem child — down 27%, and carried an operating loss in FY2025 (program timing/lower percentage-of-completion estimates). It's 7.5% of revenue but drags consolidated margin.

Segment operating profit ``: Aerospace operating profit $113.2M (14.2% margin); Test Systems operating loss ~$(7)M. Bridge to consolidated $76.4M op income → ~$30M corporate/unallocated. The whole margin story is Aerospace volume leverage; Test Systems is a millstone management needs to fix or shrink.

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Phase B — Measure performance

Lens 5 · Earnings Result (latest print: Q1 FY2026, period ended 2026-04-04)

Consolidated income statement, three months ended 2026-04-04 vs 2025-03-29, all ``:

This is a strong print and the operating-leverage thesis in one quarter. Quarterly net income ($25.5M) nearly equalled the entire FY2025 net income ($29.4M) — i.e. profitability inflected hard. Margin drivers per the call: higher Aerospace volume, productivity gains, and lower litigation costs (the Lufthansa drag easing). Interest expense fell on the deleveraging refinancing.

Vs. consensus: results "aligned with estimates" — revenue and EPS roughly in line, and the stock actually slipped ~5–6% on the print despite the beat-vs-prior-year — a classic "priced for perfection" reaction (see Lens 8/12). Leading indicators (the real story):

• Bookings $290.4M → book-to-bill 1.26 — demand outrunning shipments.
• Record backlog $734.3M at 2026-04-04 (vs $600.8M at YE2025, +22%); Aerospace backlog $651M, Test Systems $83M. ~81% expected to convert within 12 months.
• Commercial transport sales +13.7% to $156.4M; Aerospace +11.7% to $213.8M, segment operating margin 16.5%.
• 2026 guidance RAISED on the call to $970M–$1.0B (~+14% at midpoint over 2025; initial FY26 guide had been $950–990M), with record Q2 guided to $245–250M. Astronics historically gives only top-line guidance, not detailed EPS.

Balance-sheet flags (Q1, ``): cash $11.9M; long-term debt $334.9M (flat); net debt ~$323M vs equity $161.7M → ~2.0x net-debt/equity. Working-capital build is the watch item — inventories rose to $211.9M (from $196.9M) and receivables to $217.0M (from $204.7M) to support the backlog ramp; together $429M of working capital against ~$925M run-rate sales. If the ramp stalls, that capital is stranded.

Lens 6 · Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

No transcripts/ on disk (transcripts=0), so this is ``-grounded from the Q1 FY2026 call and recent coverage.

• Current tone (Q1 FY26 call, 2026-05-13): confident, momentum-forward — "continuing the margin improvement trajectory we've been focused on over the last several quarters," record bookings/backlog, raised full-year guide and a record Q2 guide. Management is leaning into operating leverage and demand strength.
• Shift over time: the multi-quarter arc is trough → recovery → leverage. 2020–2021 calls were survival/cost-out (restructured to be FCF-positive at −30–35% sales; covenant relief). 2023–2024 calls were "demand recovering, working through it." 2025–2026 calls flipped to "raising guidance, record backlog, margins expanding." Recurring new phrases: record backlog, book-to-bill, margin trajectory, productivity. Phrases that disappeared: covenant, liquidity, cost reduction as the survival framing.
• Credibility check: they raised the FY26 guide one quarter in — and the stock fell anyway, which says the market is more skeptical than management. Management's tone is bullish; the tape is cautious. That gap is the whole debate.

Lens 7 · Comps

Peer set: aerospace/defense components & specialty suppliers. ATRO is the smallest, lowest-margin, most-levered, and most-cyclically-recovering name in the set. Multiples are `` with date or "n/a." Do not read these as precise — they are point-in-time pulls from different dates around May–June 2026.

5-yr avg ROE: n/a (and structurally distorted for ATRO by two loss years 2023–2024 plus the equity collapse from the convertible repurchase — a clean ROE series isn't meaningful through the trough; FY25 net income $29.4M on ~$140–162M equity ≈ ~18–20% spot ROE, but that equity base is artificially low post-buyback).

Read: on EV/EBITDA (~26–31), ATRO is at the low end of the niche-supplier pack (below HEICO ~32 and Curtiss-Wright ~35) — which is the bull's "it's cheaper than the compounders" argument. But on **trailing P/E (~64) and P/S (~2.8x vs peer ~2.5x and a "fair" ~1.2x per Simply Wall St) **, it screens expensive, because ATRO's net margin is still thin (FY25 net margin only 3.4%) — EBITDA flatters it relative to bottom-line. The honest synthesis: ATRO is priced like a quality compounder on EV/EBITDA while still being a low-margin, levered, cyclically-recovering small cap on the bottom line. The multiple bakes in the margin expansion continuing.

Lens 8 · Stock-Price Catalysts (>5% moves, ~5-yr pattern, ``)

The 52-week range tells the story: $27.27 → $90.65, with the stock ~3x in a year to ~$81 (June 2026) and an all-time-high close $88.17 (2026-05-28). Pattern of what moves ATRO:

• Earnings prints + guidance are the dominant catalyst. The 2024→2025→2026 re-rate is the market repricing the turnaround from "survivor" to "grower" as each quarter beat and guidance rose.
• Book-to-bill / backlog records — order momentum is treated as the leading tell; the >1.0 book-to-bill inflection in 2021 and the record backlog in 2026 are repeatedly cited.
• Boeing's production health — as a 10%+ customer, Boeing's 737 MAX rate cuts and recoveries move ATRO.
• Convertible refinancing events (2024 $165M issue; 2025 $225M issue + repurchase) shifted the capital structure and interest-expense trajectory.
• A ~5-for-1-style Class B distribution (1 Class B per 5 shares, record 2026-06-15, distribution ~2026-06-29) — a mechanical event in the recent tape.
• Litigation headlines — the Lufthansa damages ruling ($11.9M) is a recurring negative catalyst.
• Tellingly, Q1 FY26's in-line beat produced a ~5–6% DROP — the clearest signal that expectations are now demanding, not depressed.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

• Peter J. Gundermann — President & CEO since March 2003 (~23 years), Chairman since 2019. A long-tenured operator who has run the company across multiple cycles (2008–09, the 2010s growth, the COVID near-death, and now the recovery). Archetype: owner-operator / long-tenure professional CEO (not the founder, but functionally founder-like in tenure and ownership).
• Skin in the game: Gundermann owns 2.35% ($72M) directly; aggregate insider ownership ~5–7%. Dual-class structure (Common + Convertible Class B, each $0.01 par) concentrates voting with insiders — a control structure to be aware of.
• Compensation: ~$4.56M total, ~86% variable (bonus/stock/options), described as below-average for similar-size US companies — reasonable, performance-weighted.
• Capital-allocation history (mixed-to-improving):
• Through the trough: navigated COVID by restructuring to FCF-positive at −30–35% sales, amending the credit facility, and curtailing buybacks/acquisitions — competent survival management.
• Financing: the 2024–2025 convertible saga — issued $165M 5.5% 2030 notes, then issued $225M 2031 notes and repurchased 80% of the 2030 notes at a premium (a $32.6M loss on debt settlement hit FY25 net income) and paid $26.9M for capped-call anti-dilution. This deleveraged and pushed maturities but was expensive and crushed book equity (APIC fell from $144.1M to $4.9M; total equity $256.1M → $140.1M).
• M&A: small, disciplined bolt-ons (Envoy $8.3M, BMA $18.0M) in 2025 — sensible, tuck-in, not empire-building.
• Capex: stepped up 4x to $31.7M in FY25 (from ~$8M) — investing into the demand ramp.
• Red flags: the dual-class control structure; the expensive convertible gymnastics; no insider buying in the last 3 months (at all-time highs, not damning, but not a vote of confidence either). No related-party or promotional-behavior flags surfaced.

Net: a credible, deeply experienced operator who steered the ship through COVID and is now harvesting the recovery — but the equity-destructive convertible engineering and the still-levered balance sheet temper the grade.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Filing-grounded accounting review, all `` unless noted:

• Earnings quality (FY25): net income $29.4M was depressed by a $32.6M loss on debt settlement and FY25 OCF ($74.8M) comfortably exceeded net income — i.e. cash earnings are better than GAAP net income, the benign direction. FCF ~$43.1M. Non-cash add-backs are ordinary (D&A $21.8M, SBC $6.8M, inventory/receivable provisions $10.0M). No aggressive non-GAAP flattering of a cash shortfall.
• Working capital — the thing to watch: receivables $217.0M and inventory $211.9M at Q1 FY26 are large relative to sales (~$429M combined vs ~$925M run-rate). They are growing with the backlog, which is defensible, but receivables/inventory outrunning revenue is the classic place a build-rate cyclical hides a future writedown if demand softens. Inventory provisions ($10.0M in FY25) are recurring — appropriate for an aerospace supplier but a line to monitor.
• Revenue recognition: Test Systems uses percentage-of-completion on long programs; FY25 saw negative revenue revisions from lower estimates of work completed — the segment's operating loss is partly estimate-driven, the area most exposed to recognition judgment. Aerospace is mostly point-in-time POs (lower rec risk).
• Balance sheet: leverage is the real flag — net debt ~$323M against $161.7M equity (~2.0x), $334.9M long-term debt, only $11.9M cash, on a $300M revolver with a SOFR + 1.25–2.125% margin tied to a net-leverage covenant. Goodwill $64.3M + intangibles $52.3M = ~16% of assets — modest, low impairment risk. Convertible dilution (the 2031 notes + remaining 2030 notes) is a real share-count overhang partially offset by capped calls.
• SBC: $6.8M FY25 — small, not a non-GAAP distortion lever here.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section):

• SEC Litigation Releases / AAERs: None. "No LR found" and "No AAER found" for Astronics, 2021-06-23 → 2026-06-23, per SEC EDGAR EFTS.
• Non-SEC enforcement (web): no material FTC/DOJ/FDA/CFPB enforcement actions surfaced.
• Material litigation (the real item) — Item 3 / Legal Proceedings: the Lufthansa Technik v. Astronics Advanced Electronic Systems (AES) patent dispute. Lufthansa sued in 2010 across multiple jurisdictions over the EmPower in-seat power supply (ISPS) technology (EP(UK) 0,881,145 B1). Outcomes: Germany — Astronics ordered to pay ~$4.5M (incl. interest, by end-2019); UK — patent held valid and infringed (2020, Morgan J), co-defendants Safran Seats GB and Panasonic Avionics, with a $11.9M damages ruling and a costs hearing in March 2025. Litigation cost was a real drag on prior years and its easing is explicitly cited as a Q1 FY26 margin tailwind. This is a live, multi-jurisdiction overhang — material to monitor for further damages/costs, though not company-threatening at the dollar amounts disclosed.

Net forensic read: no fraud signals, clean SEC record, decent cash-conversion — the legitimate concerns are balance-sheet leverage, working-capital build, Test Systems POC estimate risk, and the Lufthansa overhang. Quality-of-earnings is acceptable; the risk is cyclical/financial, not accounting-integrity.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · Forward Projection (FY2026 / FY2027 / FY2028 EPS, `` with arithmetic)

Built bottom-up from FY2025 actuals + the raised FY26 guide. Share count: the recent Class B distribution and convertible dilution complicate the count; I use ~38M diluted shares as a working base. All figures `` unless tagged.

FY2026 (base):

• Revenue: $985M.
• Gross margin: 31.5% → gross profit ~$310M.
• Op margin: ~12.5% → op income ~$123M.
• Interest ~$10M; tax ~12% (FY25 effective tax was abnormally low at 8%; normalize up).
• → Pretax $113M; net income **$99M**; base EPS ~$2.60.
• Bull EPS ~$2.95 (revenue $1.0B, op margin 13.5%, lower tax). Bear EPS ~$2.05 (revenue $945M, op margin 10.5%, Test Systems stays loss-making, working-capital/interest drag).

FY2027 (base): revenue ~$1.10B; op margin ~13.5%; net income ~$115M; EPS ~$3.00. Bull ~$3.50 / bear ~$2.40.

FY2028 (base): revenue ~$1.21B; op margin ~14%; net income ~$130M; EPS ~$3.40. Bull ~$4.10 / bear ~$2.60.

Valuation cross-check: at ~$81 and base FY26 EPS ~$2.60, forward P/E ~31 — consistent with the web's "forward P/E ~27". Even on FY28 base EPS ~$3.40, the stock is at ~24x two-years-out. The multiple already capitalizes the recovery as durable. For ATRO to re-rate higher from here you need both the top-line ramp and the margin expansion to beat the (already raised) plan — the easy turnaround money has been made.

(No forecast.ts create in --watchlist per skill rules; logging the Brier forecast is deferred to a human-gated pass.)

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. A genuine, durable post-COVID aerospace recovery with the cleanest leading indicators a supplier can show: book-to-bill 1.26, record $734M backlog (81% converting <12mo), raised FY26 guide to ~$1B (+14%), and an operating-leverage flywheel finally turning (Q1 op margin 11.8% vs 6.4%, gross margin 32.6%). Commercial transport (+14%) and military (+32%) both grow; content-per-aircraft (cabin electrification, IFEC, in-seat power) rises structurally even if build rates plateau. The Lufthansa litigation drag is easing (a margin tailwind), the balance sheet is deleveraging (interest expense −26% YoY), and bolt-ons (Envoy/BMA) add capability. On EV/EBITDA (~26) it's cheaper than HEICO/Curtiss-Wright. Consensus "Strong Buy," avg target ~$86–88.

Bear case (2–3 things that could permanently impair / re-rate down):

1. It's priced for perfection on a cyclical, low-margin, levered small cap. Trailing P/E ~64, forward ~27–31, P/S 2.8x vs "fair" ~1.2x; GF Value model pegs fair value ~$23 vs ~$80 price. The stock fell ~6% on an in-line Q1 beat — expectations are now the enemy. Any guide-down, Boeing rate cut, or margin stall could compress the multiple hard.
2. Margin durability is unproven across a full cycle. FY25 net margin was only 3.4%; the bull case requires today's 11.8% op margin to hold and expand. Astronics has a history of thin/negative margins in downturns (two loss years 2023–2024). This is a 14% op-margin valuation on a business that has repeatedly been a single-digit / loss-making margin business.
3. Balance-sheet + working-capital fragility. ~2.0x net-debt/equity, $11.9M cash, $429M tied up in receivables+inventory built ahead of the ramp. A demand air-pocket strands that capital and pressures the leverage covenant. Boeing concentration (10.4%) is the trigger.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke): Boeing/airline build-and-retrofit demand cooled, book-to-bill dropped below 1.0, the backlog stopped growing, Test Systems stayed loss-making, working capital didn't convert to cash, and the market re-rated a richly-priced small cap from ~30x forward to ~15x — a 40–50% drawdown — without any operational disaster, purely on multiple compression of an over-loved recovery name.

Are multiples too high? Yes, on most lenses (P/E, P/S, the recovery being priced as permanent) — the easy turnaround re-rate is done. The defensible multiple is EV/EBITDA, where it's mid-pack.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see): Either direction. Bull contrarian: the market is anchored on ATRO's ugly trough margins and underestimating that content-per-aircraft + aftermarket retrofit can make this a structurally higher-margin business than its history implies — in which case ~$1B revenue at 15%+ op margins makes today's price reasonable. Bear contrarian (the more likely under-appreciated risk): everyone is extrapolating a one-quarter margin spike and a litigation-cost tailwind into permanence, ignoring that this is still a 3.4%-net-margin, levered, single-customer-concentrated cyclical that has triple-bagged on sentiment.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case:

• What structurally breaks the model: revenue is non-contractual single-year POs tied to Boeing/Airbus build rates and discretionary airline cabin-refresh budgets — both cyclical and outside Astronics' control. There is no take-or-pay, no long-term backlog lock beyond ~12 months for most Aerospace. When the cycle turns, revenue falls fast (it did: −40% in 2020).
• Revenue concentration: Boeing 10.4%; Aerospace 92.5% of revenue, 70% of total from commercial transport alone. A Boeing 737/787 rate cut or an airline capex pullback hits the whole P&L. Test Systems (the would-be diversifier) is shrinking and loss-making.
• Why the moat is weaker than bulls think: Safran (Zodiac), Collins/RTX, Panasonic, Thales are all bigger and compete directly in cabin lighting, IFEC and in-seat power. Astronics is a price-taker sub-tier supplier, not a TransDigm-style sole-source aftermarket monopolist. Its own marquee IP (in-seat power) is the subject of a patent it lost on in UK/Germany (Lufthansa).
• Most dangerous competitor bulls underestimate: Safran — a cabin-interiors powerhouse with vastly more scale that overlaps Astronics' two biggest product lines (lighting/safety, power/motion).
• Worst capital-allocation moves: the convertible repurchase that booked a $32.6M settlement loss and helped collapse book equity from $256M to $140M, plus $26.9M on capped calls — expensive financial engineering. Dual-class control structure.
• Assumptions that must hold for today's price: (1) ~14% revenue growth sustains for years; (2) op margin holds/expands to ~14%+ (vs a single-digit/loss history); (3) Boeing stays healthy; (4) working capital converts to cash; (5) no further material Lufthansa damages. Several are cycle-dependent and not in management's control.
• If growth disappoints 20–30%: revenue ~$700–750M (back to ~2024) likely pushes op margin back toward high-single-digits, EPS toward ~$1.00–1.50, and a richly-valued small cap re-rates to ~12–15x → 50%+ downside.
• Single scenario that permanently impairs: a sustained Boeing production crisis + airline capex recession hitting simultaneously, while ~$429M of working capital and ~$323M net debt sit against a thin equity base — forcing a covenant breach / dilutive raise at the bottom. Plausibility: moderate (it's a cyclical; this is what cyclicals do), but "permanent impairment" is unlikely given the franchise survives — the realistic short thesis is multiple compression, not bankruptcy.

Lens 14 · Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. Your FY25 net margin was 3.4% and Q1 FY26 op margin was 11.8% — what is the through-cycle operating margin you believe this business now structurally earns, and what specifically changed to make it durable vs. the single-digit/loss margins of 2020–2024?
2. ~81% of the $734M backlog converts within 12 months, but most Aerospace revenue is non-contractual single-year POs — how much of the backlog is firm vs. cancellable, and what's your visibility beyond 12 months?
3. With Boeing at 10.4% of sales, how exposed is your 2026–2027 plan to Boeing's 737/787 production rate, and what's your sensitivity if Boeing rates are cut 20%?
4. Net debt is ~2.0x equity with $11.9M cash — what's your target leverage, and at what point does deleveraging take priority over M&A and capex?
5. Receivables + inventory are ~$429M and growing faster than nothing — when does the backlog ramp convert to free cash flow, and what's your FY26 FCF target?
6. Test Systems is shrinking (−27%) and loss-making — fix, shrink, or divest? What's the timeline to segment profitability?
7. What is the remaining financial exposure on the Lufthansa Technik litigation (further damages, costs, other jurisdictions, design-arounds), and is it now fully reserved?
8. The 2024–2025 convertible repurchase booked a $32.6M loss and collapsed book equity — walk through that decision; would you do it again, and what's the go-forward dilution from the 2031 and remaining 2030 notes net of capped calls?
9. How much of FY25–26 growth is content-per-aircraft gains vs. build-rate recovery vs. price — i.e. how much is structural vs. cyclical?
10. Where is Safran the most dangerous to you across lighting, power/motion and seating, and where are you actually winning share against them?
11. What's the margin profile and strategic logic of the Envoy and BMA acquisitions, and what's your bolt-on M&A pipeline and return hurdle?
12. Military Aerospace grew 32% off a small base — how big can defense realistically become as a share of revenue, and does it structurally smooth your cyclicality?
13. Capex stepped up 4x to $31.7M — what capacity/automation are you funding, and what's the normalized capex-to-sales going forward?
14. With the dual-class structure and ~5–7% insider ownership, how do you think about minority-shareholder alignment, and why no insider buying at these levels?
15. If we revisit this in three years, what's the single metric you'd want to be judged on, and what would tell you the thesis broke?

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