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Fortune 500

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Industries included in the sector are computers, internet services, IT services, semiconductors, and software companies.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Technology

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CTW 2023-Leidos

John Hindman, a government contractor for a federal energy research laboratory in Pennsylvania, was working at home late one Saturday night in January 2017, when he had a thought. Over the next several weeks, the communications professional put that thought in an email, and sent it to the CEO of his employer with the subject line “A Father’s Request.”<br />
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Hindman works for Leidos, a Fortune 500 company with 46,000 employees. He didn’t personally know Roger Krone, the company’s then CEO, but the message—a call to action, really—felt too important to direct elsewhere. The previous September, Hindman’s 30-year-old son Sean had died of an opioid overdose, a tragic end to his yearslong battle with addiction—details the family had included in his obituary, and shared for a local newspaper series. In his grief, upon returning to work Hindman was stunned by the number of colleagues and complete strangers who shared with him closely held stories of loss and struggle—proof of a nationwide epidemic that at the time few people spoke about.<br />
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That’s what was on Hindman’s mind when he wrote to Krone, calling on Leidos—with all its resources and expertise in technology, science, and defense—to do something. And it has: In the years since, Leidos has implemented Mission for the Mind, a multiprong approach to addressing addiction and mental health issues that impact its workforce and the community. That has included starting new business lines—like providing counseling and mental health assessments to government entities. Leidos is also leading an effort to destigmatize addiction and mental health issues among the broader business community, an effort that 150 CEOs have signed on to so far. The company says these measures have helped reduce employee attrition, while also putting it at the forefront of one of society’s most pressing issues.

Change the World

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The defense, aviation, information technology, and biomedical research company works extensively with the U.S. Department of Defense and Homeland Security.

For an astounding 13th straight year, Apple claims the top spot in Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation, based on a survey of almost 3,800 executives, directors, and analysts.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-289-Leidos

The American defense company headquartered in Reston, Va., provides scientific, engineering, systems integration, and technical services. The company works with the U.S. Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the NSA, and other U.S. civil agencies.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

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Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Leidos is a software, IT services, and engineering company focused on customers in the defense, intelligence, and health care sectors. Its U.S. government work includes supplying computer and sensor systems for uncrewed Navy sea vessels, IT services for military agencies, and cargo support to the International Space Station on behalf of NASA. Leidos also handles logistics and operations for the National Science Foundation’s ships and research bases in Antarctica. The company’s forerunner was founded in 1969.

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

Leidos Holdings (LDOS): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Leidos Holdings

leidos holdings

Welcome to Leidos' first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, Stuart Davis from Investor Relations. Stuart, you may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Joining me on today's earnings conference call are CEO, Tom Bell, and CFO, Chris Cage. Today's call is being webcast on the investor relations portion of our website, where you can find the earnings press release and the presentation slides for today's call. As shown on slide two, our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements based on the environment as we currently see it and thus includes risks and uncertainties. Our press release contains more information on the specific risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. Turning to slide three, we'll also discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures, and today's press release and presentation slides contain a reconciliation between the two. Now let me turn the call over to Tom, who'll begin on slide four.

Thank you, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. Today, I'm pleased to report a very strong start for Leidos in 2026. First quarter revenue was up 4% year-on-year to $4.4 billion. Profitability remained excellent to start 2026 with adjusted EBITDA of 14%. As a result of this strong core performance and the immediately accretive nature of our ENTRUST acquisition, we are raising our 2026 guidance for revenue by $500 million, non-GAAP diluted EPS by $0.05, and operating cash flow by $50 million. Execution of our NorthStar 2030 growth strategy is now in full swing. These strong Q1 results set the stage for our multi-year growth trajectory beginning this year. Chris will go through our Q1 financials in detail later on this call.

What I'd like to spend my time with you on this morning is the story behind these Q1 numbers and the fact that they represent another proof point that Leidos is built to thrive. Our scale, our unparalleled customer understanding, our ongoing corporate investments in our Golden Bolts, our market-leading exploitation of AI, they are all allowing us to quickly adapt to this changing market dynamics and rapidly deploy learnings to all of our customers and all of our businesses. We are driving our business and executing our NorthStar 2030 growth strategy through a few simple principles. The first is increasing our investments in our five growth pillars. Our growth pillars, markets where we see robust revenue growth to deliver superior top and bottom-line results remain Defense Tech, Managed Health, Digital Infrastructure and Cyber, Energy Resilience, and Mission Software.

The second principle is continuing to make Leidos faster, leaner, and more focused, ensuring that speed is king at Leidos. The third principle is leveraging our scale through technology insertion and learning across our whole business. Here are some examples of how we're delivering against this strategy in 2026. In Defense, we're capitalizing on years of technological investment to work with the Department of Defense as one of their key disruptors able to reliably produce at scale. We are currently pursuing accelerated procurement agreements, such as framework agreements, to field a number of Leidos advanced products and capabilities. Let me illustrate a few for you this morning. Munitions is a clear area of focus by the Department of Defense and one of historical strength for Leidos.

Following a string of successful flight tests of our small cruise missile, now designated the AGM-190A by our customer, we are working with the Department of Defense to accelerate production of the SCM itself, progress work on derivatives of this product, and field iterations of this technology for even more challenging warfighter needs. All in all, we can clearly see a path to production runs of thousands of these products in this decade alone. We are also working to respond to the U.S. Navy for a marketplace acquisition approach to produce MUSVs and mission payloads at scale quickly. Our offering combines Leidos Gibbs & Cox expertise, commercial boatyard capability, Leidos proven LAVA software, integrated command and control, our exquisite C5ISR and counter C5ISRT to deliver real-world scaled effects for the U.S. Navy.

Related to this, you probably saw recent press reports about one of Leidos' existing MUSVs, the Seahawk MUSV being operationally, not experimentally, deployed as part of the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group. This is the U.S. Navy's first and only medium unmanned surface vehicle to reach this level of customer confidence, relevance, and actual deployment. We're also conducting advanced discussions regarding scaling production of Leidos' Air Shield high-power microwave counter-UAS technology. That technology consistently outperforms all competitors in range and lethality. In addition to these framework agreements and other agreements, we've begun serial production of our ALPS product under our $2.2 billion ABADS-MD contract. ALPS is a Leidos-developed passive sensing system that delivers persistent wide-area awareness at a fraction of legacy costs.

In fact, you may have noticed last month at a Department of Defense Golden Dome update that our ALPS program was highlighted as a key sensor in forming the Golden Dome architecture. Quoting General Guetlein himself, The testing of the Army's advanced long-range persistent surveillance radar is tangible proof of our progress. This is a powerful customer validation of ALPS' ready-now role in enabling a layered, integrated defense network. All this momentum is translating directly into strong demand across our entire defense tech portfolio. In total, we've earned over $9 billion of awards for our defense tech business in the last 15 months alone. We can see clearly a path to another $8 billion in our next 12-month pipeline. In health, we are injecting real-world digital sophistication into mission-critical care with excellent customer impact.

A standout example here is our recent $456 million Military OneSource award. This program provides confidential counseling, financial planning, tax assistance, career coaching, and more to military personnel and their families. This directed award is a testament to Leidos' superior and repeatable digital innovations. By applying the predictive analytics from our Military and Family Life Counseling program to this customer's Military OneSource needs, we are shifting the focus from reactive care to proactive force readiness. This award is in the wheelhouse of our managed health growth pillar and grows our strategic moat in this market. By harmonizing these programs, MFLC and Military OneSource, we give the customer optionality to sync these ecosystems into a single high-efficiency care delivery model. We are embedding Leidos into the mission's digital DNA, ensuring long-term customer stickiness and proving our disruptive value across the managed health market.

Elsewhere in Health, we've secured a first-of-its-kind award for a pilot program called My Service Treatment Record. Here, we've been selected to exclusively develop an AI-driven tool to automate the medical re-record transfer for service members from the Department of Defense to the Department of Veterans Affairs. As the architects of MHS GENESIS, Leidos was uniquely qualified to aggregate Department of Defense data at speed and scale necessary to expedite this transfer, a transfer that today is manual, paper-intensive, frustratingly slow, and laborious. This new platform acts as another strategic entry point into the broader disability examinations mission. It allows us to further stitch together fragmented legacy systems with a seamless end-to-end digital thread. With the ability to automate everything from record retrieval to claim submission, we are directly advancing both the Department of Defense and the VA's digital-first initiatives.

In turn, this ensures Leidos and our technology are deeply embedded in both our customers' long-term operational roadmap. Also, of note, in our ongoing Veterans Benefits Exam business, I'm pleased to report that our disability exam volume remained high through the first quarter and customer satisfaction, veteran satisfaction with their treatment at Leidos QTC clinics remains best in class. We are very much looking forward to working with the customer on our continued leading role providing these mission-critical services to our nation's veterans, beginning with an industry day later this month. Together, these wins and our robust ongoing business give us confidence in our health growth pillar and its sustainable growth through the decade. I'd like to take a minute to also update you on the three substantial portfolio moves we've undertaken in the last 12 months.

Most recently, I was very pleased to have announced our intent to strengthen our nation's homeland defense by agreeing to combine our SES business into a joint venture with Analogic. Our joint venture will create a focused American leader in this critical global market. Through our significant minority interest in this JV, our shareholders will continue to participate in the market upside this JV will help unlock. Regarding our Kudu acquisition of last year, the non-kinetic effects you probably read about in Operation Absolute Resolve and Operation Epic Fury reinforce just how critical these capabilities are to our customers' missions. That demand is exactly what we foresaw in acquiring Kudu to combine with our existing business. The combination of Kudu's elite offensive cyber tools with our robust signal processing capabilities and our established defensive cyber leadership has created the integrated toolkit that our customers increasingly rely on.

It also aligns directly with the recently published National Cyber Strategy. Leidos' full-spectrum cyber capacity is delivering against surging demand. We currently see a total cyber pipeline valued at $24 billion, a 21% increase since the acquisition of Kudu. The acquisition has also accelerated our use of AI technology to deliver cyber mission software and operations with unprecedented velocity. Speaking of velocity, we executed a quick, clean close of ENTRUST this past March, just two months after we announced the acquisition itself. That speed sets us up to accelerate delivery for our customers at a time when demand for energy infrastructure services is expanding every day. Closing this deal rapidly allows us to quickly gain the top and bottom-line efficiencies we envisioned for this transaction this year.

Integration is ahead of schedule, the cultural alignment is seamless, and the financial upside is already surfacing in our consolidated numbers. This combination expands our business's breadth and depth and is already producing new opportunities. For instance, as a result of our combined prowess, we've received our first energy generation plant RFP, and we've been selected to perform detailed design for Canada's largest battery electrical storage facility. Building on this momentum, our team is focused on targeting a refreshed order pipeline of $10 billion. This represents growth of 230% post-close made possible by rapidly bringing our teams together to prosecute the market as one. On the operational side, we've deployed Leidos' AI tool, Skywire, across the new organization. Teams are already seeing significant opportunity to deliver high-quality services and solutions to more customers faster and cheaper.

This is exactly what our NorthStar 2030 strategy is all about. Our Kudu and ENTRUST acquisitions provide us tremendous accelerants in high-growth markets where scale and technology unite to deliver superior top and bottom-line returns. We aren't just looking at acquisitions to drive growth. I'm also pleased to announce that we are balancing these strategic moves with a surgical venture-stage investment to ensure Leidos stays at the forefront of the market's innovation curve. We have committed a multi-year $100 million investment in a marquee PE firm with a proven track record in the federal technology space. This partnership gives us early access to a vetted pipeline of high-growth disruptors with mission-ready capabilities in AI, advanced cyber, and autonomy, to name a few.

By continuing to be at the forefront of technological breakthroughs of all types, we ensure our customers have the technology they need tomorrow integrated into the Leidos growth pillars today. To close out my prepared remarks this morning, I'd also like to spend a moment on AI and what it means for Leidos. As I've said on past calls, we are not reacting to AI. AI is nothing new to Leidos. We are scaling with AI. AI is not a threat to our business model. It's an accelerant of our business model because at our core, Leidos exists to make customers' outcomes smarter and more efficient, and AI allows us to do just that, work faster at greater scale with higher impact. What AI is doing in very practical terms is simply compressing the bottom of the solution value chain.

It's making it easier to do things that were historically hard to do, but it does not obsolete things that are hard to get. Things like routine development, basic analytics, data integration, AI is compressing the time to deliver these results, and that compression is of great value to us. We welcome it and are exploiting it because it frees up our highly specialized talent to focus where we create the most value, leveraging the multitude of things we have that are the very things that are hard to get. Solving our customers' most complex mission-critical problems with deep customer understanding, the right people with the right specialty security clearances, real-world regulatory permission, Leidos privileged access to our customers' digital infrastructure at scale, et cetera. AI makes us faster, and AI makes us more efficient. All these shifts reinforce, they don't erode the digital advantages that Leidos enjoys.

Our market position in highly cleared environments, our deep regulatory experience, our access to proprietary data, Most importantly, the trust we've built with customers over decades, these are not disrupted by AI, they are amplified by it. In our markets, real costs are not measured in dollars. They are measured in risk, mission accomplishment risk. As AI increases the clock speed of our customers' mission execution, that risk only grows. In turn, this only further strengthens our position as the trusted mission AI experts, the sober, cerebral, experienced, relatable experts deploying AI for our customers' success in ways they know they can trust. As part of this, as I've just alluded to, is an often underappreciated advantage for Leidos in this booming world of AI. The sheer scale of our federal digital infrastructure business.

Our digital infrastructure business, the very large, privileged position we enjoy today in our customer's digital ecosystem, is not a vulnerability in an AI world, it's a strength. Because that ecosystem is foundational to how our customers are and will adopt AI securely and effectively. Every day, more than any other company, we deliver open, secure, repeatable, and mission-critical solutions for our customers. Capabilities we're currently grouping into four offerings. UpHold, our cyber and resilient networks product suite. InSight, our secure cloud and data product suite. ForWard, our customer digital experience product suite, and HeadWay, our information advantage product suite. Taken together, these product suites strengthen Leidos' position as the scaled, trusted integrator of AI-enabled mission systems in our customers' environments for their mission success.

That's why we believe we are uniquely positioned to continue to lead in this market, and that's why we continue to see scalable growth in this business. Leidos is out of the blocks in 2026 playing offense. We are very excited about where we are today and where we are taking this business tomorrow, all guided by our clear NorthStar 2030 growth strategy. I'll now turn the call over to Chris to review our Q1 financial performance and provide an update outlook on the rest of 2026. I'll look forward to your questions. Chris?

Thank you, Tom, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We are off to an impressive start in 2026. Now more than ever, we see our matchless portfolio as a key to driving superior performance and value creation over the coming years. Let's jump right into the results, starting with the income statement on slide five. Revenues were $4.4 billion, up 4% in total and 3% organically year-over-year, with especially robust growth in the Intelligence and Digital and homeland segments. Revenues grew year-over-year as customers accelerated mission execution, especially for innovative products and solutions supporting the intelligence community, commercial energy infrastructure, and domestic and international air traffic management. Bottom line performance remained strong. Adjusted EBITDA was $614 million for the first quarter, up 2% year-over-year, for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 14%.

Non-GAAP diluted EPS grew 5%-$3.13, driven by higher adjusted EBITDA, lower share count, and a lower tax rate. Changes in estimates at completion were a modest headwind in the quarter, yet profitability remained high through prudent cost management, excellent award and incentive fee performance, and a $15 million insurance reimbursement for previously recorded legal expenses. Digging a little deeper, let's turn now to the segment drivers on slide six. Intelligence and Digital revenues increased 7% year-over-year, with 6% coming organically. Revenue growth was driven by recent contract awards and increased volumes for intelligence community mission support, as well as $22 million from the acquisition of Kudu Dynamics. Non-GAAP operating income margin increased from 9.7% in the prior year quarter to 10.2%, which is excellent performance for this portfolio.

For Health, we sustained our excellent performance on the top and bottom line. Revenues were unchanged from a year ago. Profitability was relatively stable across periods. Homeland revenues increased 6% year-over-year, given surging demand for energy infrastructure engineering services and domestic and international air traffic control systems. Non-GAAP operating margin of 8.5% compared to 9.4% in the prior year quarter reflected changing customer requirements on a fixed-price program. Lastly, defense revenues of $883 million were up slightly compared to the prior year quarter, as strong growth in integrated air defense systems offset the wind down of some airborne surveillance programs. Due to a scheduled delay on a fixed-price development program, defense non-GAAP operating margin was 8.3% compared to 9.8% in the prior year quarter.

Turning to cash flow and the balance sheet on slide seven. In the quarter, we generated $301 million of cash flows from operating activities and $270 million of free cash flow. Operating cash performance was exceptionally strong for the first quarter, building off of a record Q4. DSO was 59 days after normalizing for the impact of the ENTRUST acquisition. With strong EBITDA generation, proactive collections, and disciplined working capital management, Leidos is a cash machine, and we are turning that into long-term shareholder value. Our ENTRUST acquisition is a confident move in one of our five strategic growth pillars. We had planned to fund the purchase price of $2.4 billion with $500 million of cash on hand, $500 million in commercial paper, and $1.4 billion of new bonds.

With our robust cash generation over the last two quarters, we borrowed less and have begun to pay it off sooner than anticipated. Our commercial paper balanced to $300 million at the end of the first quarter, which we'll pay off throughout 2026. We were also able to repurchase $200 million of stock in the open market as part of our balanced capital deployment strategy. We ended the quarter with $6.3 billion of debt, $457 million in cash and cash equivalents, and a gross leverage ratio of 2.6x. This provides us with ample capacity to continue to invest in line with our NorthStar 2030 strategy. Finally, on to the forward outlook on slide eight. As Tom mentioned, we're raising our 2026 guidance for revenues, earnings, and cash.

Specifically, we're increasing revenue guidance by $500 million to a new range of $18 billion-$18.4 billion. Maintaining our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance at mid-thirteens, raising our non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance of by $0.05, yielding $12.10-$12.50, and increasing our operating cash flow guidance by $50 million to approximately $1.8 billion. For context, I'll address three major aspects of our forward outlook: the organic view, the quarterly cadence, and the longer-term view. First, the raises to revenue, earnings, and cash guidance primarily reflect our ENTRUST acquisition. After only a little more than a month post-close, we've enhanced our outlook and now expect the deal to be accretive to non-GAAP EPS and cash in 2026, with substantially more accretion as deal synergies are realized in 2027 and beyond.

Our view of the rest of Leidos for 2026 is largely unchanged from where we initially guided in February. Our forward guidance does not incorporate any impact from the pending joint venture we announced in our Security Products business, which we anticipate closing sometime in the back half of the year. Until then, SES and General Automation assets and liabilities will appear as held for sale on the balance sheet, and there will be no change to the income statement as the materiality threshold for discontinued operations will not be met. Once the deal closes, we will no longer show revenue from our minority position, and our share, roughly 40% of the joint venture net income, will be reflected as equity method income within our operating income. Second, we see Q2 as the likely low point this year in revenue growth and margin.

At this point, we view Q1 revenue overperformance as a pull forward from the second quarter as opposed to a notable market re-acceleration, which we still expect in the second half of the year. There are many encouraging signs, like the framework discussions that Tom described, procurement is still recovering from the protracted government shutdown. We're pleased with the solid book-to-bill ratio of 0.8 in the quarter and 1.1x for the trailing 12 months. We expect awards to pick up significantly over the course of the year. On the bottom line, we won't have the benefit of the insurance reimbursement in benefit in Q2.

More important, near-term growth investments will rise given our ability to lock in franchise positions on a number of compelling opportunities, including the Military OneSource award and My Service Treatment Record pilot in the Health segment and the multiple potential product lines within the Defense Business. We're excited about the long-term upside these opportunities can create. Third, we remain extremely bullish on the long-term outlook for the business. As we shape our portfolio towards the growth pillars, we're enhancing the financials of the business, reducing unnecessary complexity while maintaining virtuous diversity. In the case of the security products joint venture, we are preserving significant upside for our shareholders. We've talked about optionality in the past. Now you can see how that looks in action. With that, operator, we're ready to take questions.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please limit yourself to one question before reentering the queue. One moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question is gonna come from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Maybe a lot to digest there. Maybe if we could just talk about profitability and the impact within defense contracting 150 basis points. How much of it was from the fixed price program? How do you expect that to trend? Maybe if you could give us an update on key programs and dynamics within Defense.

Hey, Sheila. Thanks. good morning. It's Chris. Yes, the defense profitability, you know, that was kind of reflecting the development stage program on our space Wide Field of View Tranche 1, which we're all in on getting that program delivered this year and on track to do so. We're really encouraged about the new programs that we've been awarded and are ramping up. When you think of things like our IFTC program, which we're, you know, continuing to win the next slots for our Pounds program, our ABADS program. Those all have superior economic profiles with them, as those programs ramp up in larger quantities this year, you know, you'll see that defense level profitability continue to trend positively over the course of the year. The business is on track.

We're really excited about the growth prospects there and the team's laser-focused on the pricing and bidding strategies to make sure we can deliver solid profitability with that.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of David Strauss with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. This is Joshua Korn on for David. wanted to ask if I think last quarter you discussed a tripling of CapEx this year to $350 million. You talked about some growth investments in the remarks. With only $31 million of CapEx in Q1, is that still the plan? What does that look like as the year goes on? Thanks.

Thanks, Josh. Yeah. We did earmark a sizable increase in our CapEx for this year, anticipating the need to invest. That need hasn't risen in the first quarter to a level that we might have anticipated. Part of our anticipation of a second quarter that is a higher spend rate is a lower profitability because of that. We do anticipate spending more in CapEx this year. Whether or not we spend the whole $350 or not is to be determined based on how these programs layer in. I think what you should take away from this is we continue to be good stewards of our cash. We don't spend money just because we budgeted it.

We earmark it and wait for the, for the trigger to release it. Thanks, Josh.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Tobey Sommer with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I was hoping you could elaborate on the outlook for the health business, both the existing portfolio and exams as well as areas of expansion that you're targeting and how those could change the composition of margin within that business.

Thanks, Tobey. As I said in my prepared remarks, we're very encouraged by the fact that our volume remained high in that business in the first quarter of this year. While we've provisioned for the year outlook that Chris and I gave you last quarter for the effects of the fourth vendor, the fact is our volumes are staying high and remaining robust as we enter this year. The second thing that's happening is the VA, the Veterans Benefits Exam, is challenging the system to continue to burn off backlogs. We're hopeful that those volumes will remain elevated through the rest of this year. We're also encouraged by the fact that the customer is having an industry day later this month to talk about how we perpetuate how we serve veterans in this country.

We are very optimistic that through the investment of technology, through the leaning in of innovative business models, we are going to be able to continue to serve more veterans faster, cheaper than our competitors and make sure that we remain robustly profitable in this business. At the same time, that's a good base. What we are focused on is this Managed Health Business being a growth pillar for Leidos. What you saw in the two awards that we talked about this quarter, the Military OneSource directed award and the My Service Treatment Record pilot program, are indications of how we are leaning into the digital ecosystems of both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to continue to serve them boldly.

We see behavioral health as a major engine within that growth pillar, where we think we can differentially serve veterans and their families in this, in this time. Rural health has always been an area that has been underserved, and again, an area where we think we can lean in to help serve our nation's veterans where they live, as opposed to asking them to come to where we are. We're very, we remain bullish on our health growth pillar, and we remain bullish that it can remain a mainstay of Leidos' top line and bottom line growth story.Thanks, Tobey.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Scott Mikus with Melius Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Morning, Tom and Chris. Tom, you touched on the portfolio moves you made in the portfolio recently. When I look at the Leidos portfolio in aggregate, it does everything from integrated air and missile defense, airport infrastructure modernization, hypersonic missiles, maritime autonomy. A lot of broad offerings. For investors, it can be challenging to actually analyze. You're moving the SES business to a JV, internally, do you think the business would benefit from a more streamlined portfolio? Could we see that over the next, say, 12 to 24 months?

What we did, thanks for the question, Scott. What we did at the beginning of this year was streamline how we're organized for delivery of these effects. You'll recall that the new defense business is a larger defense business focused on the complete suite of how we serve the Department of Defense, as opposed to having it fragmented within Leidos. That management focus and that attention, while the portfolio and the offerings are broad, is bringing the desired effect for execution. We've recently announced a COO in our defense business to help drive execution and drive scaling of the products in the portfolio. We're very excited and encouraged by the activity we have going on in that Defense portfolio.

You're right that this area of our portfolio is one of intense activity right now, but those are activities that are going to pay great dividends for our shareholders in the years to come. As we ramp up these framework agreements, these accelerated purchase agreements, and these traditional purchase agreements to field products at scale. We'll help you continue to understand the portfolio, and we'll help with what the capabilities are that we're focused on. As you will remain cognizant of, while we had defense tech as a broad area of interest, we were focused on maritime and space. We remain focused there.

The fact is, the customer continues to come to us with more opportunities as they look for reliable companies to help them scale production of the effects they need for the battles they see in the future. We're very bullish on our Defense tech business and excited it's a part of the Leidos portfolio.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of John Godin with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to revisit the shape of the year and the comments about kind of revenue and margins around the shape of the year. It sounds like there may be a bit of a dip, at least in revenue in 2Q. I wanted to just make sure we frame that correctly and give you a chance to be a little more precise. Sometimes, those things can just be a bit of an overhang on the stock if they're not kind of clarified in the moment. Maybe you could just kinda discuss the shape on revenue and margins and hopefully we can get there. Thanks.

Hey, John. Thanks. This is Chris. I agree. I mean, we're very pleased with the start to the year we had. As I trailed in my remarks, maybe a little bit of that is pull forward from Q2. As we see the robustness of our pipeline and award activity and, you know, the proposal pits that are very active, we're still expecting a significant amount of that to translate into momentum in Q3 and Q4. As we've gone through all of our planning activity, really see the step function on growth, you know, building in the third quarter and fourth quarter, and with that, you'll see the high margin rates that we've come to demonstrate time and time again.

Q2 itself, just as we look at which programs are in early phases of transition and which programs are winding off a little bit, you know, that is probably more similar to Q1, maybe a small step down on run rate and profitability, building to the back half of the year and then carrying that momentum into 2027. That's how I'd frame it out. We've got a lot of, you know, cash capacity and capital to put to work, and we'll continue to be active on the deployment side over the course of the year. We're really excited about how things are setting up for us.

While it's a little lumpy this year, it's not dimming our outlook on the year as a whole.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

I was wondering if it's possible to attempt to speak to the multi-year or maybe just even next year or directionally beyond this year in the health segment. I guess just as we all look at the VBA exam data, and, you know, you have a few moving pieces here. You've talked about this year revenue kind of being flattish, margins being down a little bit. I guess we're left wondering a little bit, are we looking at a one-year minor reset, or is this a multi-year period where revenue could be down more than just a little bit? How much do the margins reset? If you could give us your latest thinking there. Thank you.

Sure, Noah. Thanks. You know, as we're in May already, and the customer is having his industry day later this month, we'll know more when we go to these industry days and we hear what their plans are for this contract in the future. That said, it's becoming difficult to imagine a seismic shift in how we serve veterans in this nation. I'm remaining very bullish that we'll maintain our ability to serve the most veterans, the most effectively, with the best results. We're leaning in as we've said in past calls to talk about how we use technology to shorten the cycle time of veterans getting the benefits they deserve.

We expect that with leaning into that technology, we'll be able to continue to be a leader in this marketplace. We anticipate that that marketplace will remain largely unchanged in how the Veterans Benefits Administration serves veterans. At the same time, what we're doing, as I alluded to, is leaning into the digital ecosystem of the Department of Defense and the Veterans Benefits Agency to make sure that we're a part of the ecosystem beyond just providing veterans benefits exams. We're also very focused on expanding how we serve veterans in the rural areas of our country. We are bullish on the long-term growth trajectory. I wish I had more definitive things to tell you about exactly how that's going to pan out.

That being said, with time being what it is, I anticipate it's going to continue to be more of what it is today than some radical departure from the status quo.

No, I'd just add, I mean, beyond VBA, which is a very well-run part of the business. I mean, the team has evidenced by the Military OneSource takeaway and looking ahead to $6 billion in expected submits over Q2 and Q3 have a lot of other avenues to scale this business up. The My Service Treatment Record were very small in a pilot phase. I mean, that could turn into a very nice technology-oriented high revenue and profit stream for us over time as we prove out this capability. Yes, our expectations are health is a platform modest reset this year with a growth trajectory in the future, as Tom has talked about, and the team's got a lot of momentum behind building that up on many dimensions.

Appreciate all that, guys. Chris, I guess just on the margin, you sort of described there, interesting and thoughtful ways that you could keep growing. If the mix of the business that's driving the growth changes, does the margin change a lot over a two, three-year window, or can you kinda hang around where you're at right now?

Yeah, no, I see that, you know, staying above that 20% margin threshold and, you know, we're well above that today, and that's absolutely in the zone. Beyond what we're going to win next, we're relentlessly focused on operational improvements, technology improvements to enable our processes. This unified health platform is a capability the team's deploying internally later this year as an example that will take more costs out of our delivery equation. Yeah, Noah, the great thing about this part of the portfolio with how customers contract predominantly fixed price, fixed unit rate, really incentivizes operational efficiencies and, you know, that's where we excel. Very confident we can keep the high margin profile of this business into the future.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Jonathan Siegmann with Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, Tom and Chris. This is actually Sebastian Rivera on the line for Jon today. Maybe one on maritime. You guys have an impressive USV and UUV portfolio, and I appreciate the commentary on Seahawk and the prepared remarks. I was wondering if, yeah, you've seen an increase in demand related to the conflict with Iran, specifically around your Sea Dart that we can be used for demining. Then if you could just kind of maybe frame how you see that opportunity ramping up, that'd be super helpful. Thank you.

Sure, yeah. Our surface and subsurface autonomous programs are seeing increased pull by the Department of the Navy. I can't comment on specific theaters or specific programs when it comes to that, except to say the Navy is moving very quickly now with their MUSV industry program, and we're one of a few companies that we believe can credibly deliver against that need. As I've said in the Pentagon, building boats fast is really not that difficult. Building boats that are autonomous fast is only slightly more difficult.

Building autonomous boats fast that have real mission effects and real mission payloads. That's the secret sauce, that's where Leidos excels because with our Gibbs & Cox, with our philosophy about deploying commercial boat yards, not trying to build boats ourselves, but really leaning into the autonomy package, the design of the vessels, the command and control of the fleet, and the mission effects, especially with our exquisite C4, C5ISR packages and counter C5ISRT packages. That's where we're really getting the attention of the U.S. Navy when it comes to scaled effects quickly for what they see in front of them. I'm very bullish about the maritime portfolio we have under Cindy's leadership, and I'm gonna be very excited to talk about big wins in future conference calls.

I'll leave it there. Thanks for the color.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Arment with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Tom, Chris. Hey, Tom, thanks for your comments on the CapEx earlier. Just thought I'd drill in a little more. How are you thinking about this elevated level of CapEx? Is this something that you expect to continue at this higher rate, just given the investment opportunities that you kinda laid out in terms of your long-term strategy? Or is this kind of do we reset down to kind of a lower level once we get through this period of investment spending? Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks, Peter. No, I don't anticipate continuing at this level in perpetuity. I think this is a fixed finite period of time where investment in these production programs is critical. Whether that's just this year or with a little overhang into early next year remains to be seen, but it's not something that we're gearing up to do in perpetuity. In that regard, I'll mention the SES joint venture. One of the reasons we purposefully formed that joint venture was because that business wasn't one of our growth pillars, we didn't want to start leaning into the capital intensity that that business would require from Leidos if we were going to invest in it to fully grow.

Forming this JV allows us to leverage the money necessary to grow the business and participate in the upside as a minority share of that joint venture, but not lean into it with Leidos cash from the beginning. Again, what I'm trying to point to you, Peter, is a picture of being diligent and focused about where we spend capital, when we spend capital, and how we spend capital, but not get ourselves into perpetual streams of capital spend. Hope that helps.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Seth Seifman with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks very much. Morning, everyone.

You know, it seems like the market, you know, relative to what's going on in products, it seems like the market is taking a more skeptical view of growth potential in services. You know, we see where some of the budget is concentrated and, you know, in some ways that's not super surprising. You know, if we were to see the type of overall budget growth, even if not at the level that the administration has requested, but, you know, say, even half of that or something like that would be a robust, a fairly robust level of overall budget growth.

you know, how do you think about the, you know, the consequences of that for your Intelligence and Digital business and the potential to grow in that type of environment?

Seth, I'm really glad you asked the question. While the $1.5 trillion budget request for the Department of Defense gets a lot of heat and light in the press, the bigger story is the more interesting story for us. You know, our IC budgets in the Intelligence Community for America have grown 4%-5% annually since 2022, and we see that continuing in the future. If you dive deeper into the classified budgets, you see a lot of money going into the digital infrastructure part of the whole ecosystem of our defense and intelligence communities. That's why in my prepared remarks, I spent so much time talking about the fact that AI isn't a disruptor to us.

It's a propellant to our progress in this, in this business, and that's why our digital infrastructure business isn't waiting to be obsoleted by AI, but rather it is our entry point and our foundation from which our customers are going to embrace AI and upgrade their capability. We're very focused on leveraging those two things, our digital infrastructure business and our cybersecurity chops with our AI philosophy of exploiting these tools to move up the value chain in our customer spend and continue to help them have scaled effects at speed in an AI-enabled world. We don't see the negativity of being obsoleted in this market.

We see it as an opportunity to tremendously grow our scale in the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. I mentioned the operations that we all watched over the least recent months, and the effect, the non-kinetic effects that were brought to bear there. That's exactly why we are leaning into this part of our value to our nation. Thanks, Seth.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Gautam Khanna with Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, guys. I was wondering if besides the VBA contract, if you could update us on what are the big upcoming recompetes. I know DHMSM's out there and some others over the next, call it, 12-24 months. Thank you.

Yeah. The, you mentioned, Gautam, the DHMSM recompete. We expect some near-term continuity through an extension mechanism with a longer-term contract still evolving in our customer's mind. We are not exactly sure how they proceed with that program, and we're in deep dialogue with them on that. In the meantime, we expect near-term continuity through an extension mechanism. Also in that portfolio, we have our Antarctic Program and expect continuity of operations while they, the customer there, continues to decide how they're going to prosecute the Antarctic mission in the future. There are other recompetes happening, but again, very buoyed by the two recent wins.

The Military OneSource directed award of being almost a half a billion dollar directed award is tremendous for us, and the opportunity for us to grow that with other aspects of what we're already doing, I mentioned MFLC, and this MySTR pilot, where I think the opportunity to turn this pilot program into something that veterans are going to love, moving from a highly laborious paper-driven process to a digital My Service Treatment Record transfer, is going to be a tremendous benefit for veterans and the Veterans Administration to remove a major pain point. Lots of goodness happening in the health business. Chris?

Yeah, Gautam, I mean, I think Tom nailed it. You know, looking at the list of key recompetes, there's nothing that rises to, you know, our top programs worth noting that you didn't already talk to. In fact, almost 70% of our next 12-month pipeline is focused on new business and takeaway activity. It's very much skewed towards great opportunities to propel growth. Nonetheless, anything that's in the recompete category where we've had great success, above 90% win rates, you know, we're laser-focused on. I wouldn't say there's anything I would highlight that's warranting a note at the major program level at this point in time. Michelle-

It looks like we have time for just one more question.

All right. One moment for our next question. Our last question will come from the line of Ken Herbert with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hey, thanks for squeezing me in. Maybe Tom or Chris, I wanted to just follow up on ENTRUST, if you can give an update on integration there. I think, Tom, in particular, you called out a $10 billion opportunity pipeline or order pipeline. How do we think about timing on that, and what's been the customer reception since you've now owned the business?

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yes, we're very excited about ENTRUST. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we closed almost two months to the day from when we announced it, so a very clean, quick close, reflecting well on our team and the due diligence of the Leidos team. The integration, as I said, is seamless. The cultural alignment is fantastic. The deployment of AI tools into ENTRUST are a big bonus that those engineers are enjoying, and we're enjoying having learned some technology tools that ENTRUST had that we're going to benefit from our electric services business on our side. It is truly a synergistic relationship. As you know, it expands our footprint, and it also expands the valued services we can provide customers. Customers have been very receptive to it.

Leidos Holdings (LDOS) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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