Earnings call transcript: Textron beats EPS in Q3 2025, revenue falls short

Textron Inc. reported its third-quarter earnings for 2025, revealing an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.55, surpassing expectations of $1.46. The company faced a revenue shortfall, bringing in $3.6 billion against a forecast of $3.7 billion. This mixed performance led to a 1.1% drop in Textron’s stock during premarket trading. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains strong financial health with a FAIR overall rating, supported by robust liquidity metrics and consistent dividend payments spanning 55 years.

Key Takeaways

• Textron’s EPS exceeded expectations by 6.16%.
• Revenue fell short of forecasts by 2.7%.
• Stock declined 1.1% in premarket trading.
• Strong year-over-year growth in segment profit and cash flow.
• Leadership transition announced for January 2026.

Company Performance

Textron’s overall performance in Q3 2025 demonstrated robust operational efficiency, with a notable increase in segment profit by 26% year-over-year. The company’s manufacturing cash flow also improved significantly, reaching $281 million compared to $147 million in the same quarter last year. InvestingPro analysis shows the company operates with a moderate debt level and maintains a healthy current ratio of 1.84, indicating strong short-term financial stability. Despite these gains, the revenue miss may indicate challenges in sales growth, prompting investor caution.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $3.6 billion, up 5% year-over-year
• Earnings per share: $1.55, up from $1.40 in Q3 2024
• Segment profit: $357 million, a 26% increase from Q3 2024
• Manufacturing cash flow: $281 million, up from $147 million in Q3 2024

Earnings vs. Forecast

Textron’s EPS of $1.55 beat the forecast of $1.46, marking a positive surprise of 6.16%. However, the revenue came in at $3.6 billion, falling short of the $3.7 billion forecast, a negative surprise of 2.7%. This discrepancy between EPS and revenue performance could suggest strong cost management amid softer sales.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Textron’s stock fell by 1.1% in premarket trading to $81.67. The decline reflects investor concerns over the revenue miss, despite the positive EPS result. Based on InvestingPro Fair Value analysis, Textron appears undervalued at current levels, with additional ProTips and detailed valuation metrics available to subscribers. The stock trades with relatively low volatility and has delivered a strong return over the past five years, suggesting resilient long-term performance despite short-term fluctuations.

Outlook & Guidance

Textron’s full-year adjusted EPS guidance remains between $6.00 and $6.20, with manufacturing cash flow projected at $900 million to $1 billion. The company trades at a P/E ratio of 18.58, with analysts maintaining positive profit forecasts for the year. Looking ahead, the company anticipates increased aviation volume and improved margins in 2026, focusing on growth in unmanned systems. For comprehensive analysis including growth scores and detailed financial metrics, investors can access the full Pro Research Report on InvestingPro.

Executive Commentary

CEO Scott Donnelly remarked, "The industry right now probably is as healthy as we’ve ever seen it," reflecting optimism despite the revenue shortfall. He also emphasized the leadership transition, stating, "She’s going to be running the company," in reference to Lisa Atherton’s upcoming role as President and CEO.

Risks and Challenges

• Revenue growth challenges: The Q3 revenue miss highlights potential sales issues.
• Leadership transition: Changes in top management may create uncertainty.
• Supply chain constraints: Could affect future production and sales.
• Market competition: Intense competition in the aviation and defense sectors.
• Economic conditions: Macroeconomic pressures could impact demand.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts questioned the execution of the MV-75 program and explored demand in the aviation market. Concerns about supply chain challenges and potential portfolio reevaluation were also addressed, providing insights into Textron’s strategic priorities.

Full transcript - Textron (TXT) Q3 2025:

Rob, Conference Call Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Textron third quarter 2025 earnings release. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. You will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer portion of this call. You may register for a question at any time by pressing followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing followed by 1 again. If anyone needs assistance at any time during the conference, please press the followed by 0. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott P. Hegstrom. Please go ahead, sir.

Scott P. Hegstrom, Financial Executive, Textron: Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I’d like to mention we will be discussing future estimates and expectations during our call today. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risk factors, which are detailed in our SEC filings and also in today’s press release. On the call today, we have Scott Donnelly, Textron’s Chairman and CEO, and David Rosenberg, our Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings call presentation can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. Revenues in the quarter were $3.6 billion, up 5% or $175 million from last year’s third quarter. Segment profit in the quarter was $357 million, up 26% or $73 million from the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted income from continuing operations was $1.55 per share, compared to $1.40 per share in last year’s third quarter.

Manufacturing cash flow before pension contributions totaled $281 million in the quarter, compared to $147 million in last year’s third quarter. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Scott.

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everybody. Let me just start with yesterday’s announcement. I’m sure you’ve all read by now that yesterday we elected Lisa Atherton to become our new President and CEO, effective at the beginning of January. At that point in time, I’ll transition to be the Executive Chair. This is the result of a long, thorough process that we worked with on the board. I think Lisa, who’s been with our company for about 18 years, is an outstanding leader. She’s had a number of really important roles in the company over the years. She was the President and CEO of our Textron Systems business for about five years. Most recently, obviously, she’s the President and CEO of Bell, where she’s been very involved in both the capture, the win, and now the execution of the ramp on MV-75. She’s a fabulous leader. She knows the teams.

She’s surrounded by a great team at the business level across the company. We’re proud of the fact that we had a great internal promotion, and I think she’ll just do a fabulous job leading the company into the future. With that, let me go ahead and talk about the quarter. Overall, revenue was higher, driven by strong growth across our aerospace and defense businesses. Aviation had higher segment revenues and profit compared to the third quarter of last year. We delivered 42 jets and 39 commercial turboprops, compared to 41 jets and 25 commercial turboprops in last year’s third quarter. Textron Aviation’s fleet utilization remained strong in the quarter, contributing to an aftermarket revenue growth of 5% as compared to last year’s third quarter. Aviation’s backlog ended the third quarter at $7.7 billion as demand remained strong.

Earlier this month, Textron Aviation completed the certification of the CJ3 Gen 2 and auto throttles on the M2 Gen 2. Also this month, the Citation Ascend made its debut as it landed in Las Vegas for the NBAA exhibition. We are nearing completion of the certification process and continue to expect deliveries this quarter. During the quarter, the Latitude received FAA certification for new features of the Garmin 5000 Avionics Suite. These features include synthetic vision guidance systems and improved approach capabilities down to 150 feet and a new taxiway routing feature. We continue to implement Starlink high-speed internet connectivity onto our aircraft. With the recent announcement of the Latitude and Longitude supplemental type certifications, Starlink is now available on 14 platforms across Textron Aviation’s product portfolio. On the defense side, Textron Aviation announced a partnership with Leonardo to launch the Beechcraft M346N as a solution for the U.S.

Navy undergraduate jet training system competition. Throughout the quarter, Textron Aviation participated in a nationwide demo tour to highlight the capabilities of this aircraft. At Bell, increased revenues are driven by higher military volume, reflecting the continued ramp and acceleration of the MV-75 program. In the quarter, Bell exceeded their 90% engineering release milestone, enabling continued fabrication and procurement activity for the prototype aircraft. Fabrication and assembly work of the program has continued across numerous sites, including wing assembly at our Amarillo, Texas site, fuselage assembly at our Wichita, Kansas site, in addition to ongoing fabrication of critical rotor and drive system components in our Fort Worth operations. On the commercial side of Bell, we delivered 30 helicopters, down from 44 in last year’s third quarter. Bell continues to see strong demand across its commercial product portfolio.

Bell announced a purchase agreement with Global Medical Response for seven Bell 429s and an option for eight additional helicopters, with deliveries expected to begin in 2026. Moving to systems, revenues were up as compared to last year. During the quarter, Textron Systems received new contract awards for several programs, leading to an increase in backlog of about $1 billion in the quarter. These awards included ATAC awards for both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, a new contract award for the U.S. Army to provide 65 mobile strike force vehicles in support of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and increased quantities for the Ship-to-Shore Connector program. In the weapons business, Textron Systems completed delivery of the first production lot of XM204 anti-vehicle terrain shaping systems to the U.S. Army in support of operations in Europe.

Moving to industrial, we saw lower revenues reflecting the divestiture of the power sports business. At Textron Aviation, we continue to make progress on several of our core development efforts. The team completed the hover flight test envelope for the Nuva V300 and set the stage for Air Vehicle 2 to enter the flight test program. As disclosed in our 8K filing, Textron will be eliminating the Textron Aviation segment as a separate reporting segment, realigning the aviation business activities across Textron Aviation and Textron Systems to leverage our existing sales and business development capabilities. This change will be effective at the beginning of fiscal year 2026. With that, I’ll turn the call over to David.

Rob, Conference Call Operator: Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Let’s review how each of the segments contributed, starting with Textron Aviation. Revenues at Textron Aviation of $1.5 billion were up 10% or $138 million from the third quarter of 2024, reflecting higher aircraft revenues of $116 million and higher aftermarket parts and service revenues of $22 million. The increase in aircraft revenues was largely due to higher volume mix, which included higher Citation jet and commercial turboprop volume, partially offset by lower defense volume. Segment profit was $179 million in the third quarter, up 40% or $51 million from a year ago, largely due to higher volume and mix. Backlog in the segment ended the quarter at $7.7 billion. Moving to Bell, revenues were $1 billion, up 10% or $97 million from the third quarter of 2024.

The revenue increase was driven by higher military revenues of $128 million, primarily due to higher volume from the U.S. Army’s MV-75 program, partially offset by lower commercial volume of $31 million. Segment profit of $92 million was down $6 million from last year’s third quarter. Backlog in the segment ended the quarter at $8.2 billion, an increase of $1.3 billion from the prior quarter, primarily reflecting the award for the prototype testing and evaluation phase of the MV-75 program. At Textron Systems, revenues were $307 million, up 2% or $6 million from last year’s third quarter, which included higher volume on the Ship-to-Shore Connector program. Segment profit of $52 million was up $13 million, compared with the third quarter of 2024, largely due to a gain resulting from the early termination of a vendor contract.

Backlog in the segment ended the quarter at $3.2 billion, an increase of $980 million from the prior quarter, reflecting new contract awards for the Ship-to-Shore Connector, land vehicles, and the Adversary Air Services business. Industrial revenues were $761 million, down $79 million from last year’s third quarter, driven by Textron Specialized Vehicles. This reflects $88 million in lower revenues related to the divestiture of the powersports business. Segment profit of $31 million was down $1 million from the third quarter of 2024. Textron eAviation segment revenues were $5 million in the third quarter of 2025, as compared to $6 million in last year’s third quarter, and segment loss was $15 million, as compared with a segment loss of $18 million in the third quarter of 2024.

Finance segment revenues were $26 million, and profit was $18 million in the third quarter of 2025, as compared to segment revenues of $12 million and profit of $5 million in the third quarter of 2024. The increase in revenues and segment profit was largely due to gains on the disposition of non-captive assets. Moving below segment profit, corporate expense was $26 million, net interest expense for the manufacturing group was $26 million, LIFO inventory provision was $48 million, intangible asset amortization was $8 million, and the non-service components of pension and post-retirement income were $67 million. As expected, our adjusted effective tax rate for the third quarter of 2025 was 25.5%, largely reflecting the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We now expect our full-year adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 21%.

During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.6 million shares, returning $206 million in cash to shareholders. Year to date, we have repurchased approximately 8.4 million shares, returning $635 million to shareholders. To wrap up with guidance, we are reiterating our expected full-year adjusted EPS to be in the range of $6 to $6.20, and maintaining our expected full-year manufacturing cash flow before pension contributions to be in the range of $900 million to $1 billion. That concludes our prepared remarks, so operator, we can open the line for questions.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. If you find your question has already been asked and you would like to be removed from the queue, you may press 1 again. One moment, please, for the first question. Your first question today comes from the line of Peter Arment from Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah, hey, thanks. Good morning, Scott, Dave. Congratulations, Scott. Appreciate all the help over the years. Hey, on the MV-75, could you give us, there was an announcement by the Army here recently regarding accelerating the fielding of the version two, just how that would impact any of the cost profile, or does it change anything?

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: It won’t change anything in the near term, Peter. Obviously, part of the strategy on the program, which has been there all along, was to start with a very basic aircraft, you know, and focus on the critical parameters around speed and range and, you know, basic air structure. As you know, part of the incorporation of MOSA in terms of the architecture of this aircraft allows you to do that and then build out variants and derivatives and capabilities in different variants going forward. Our focus, obviously, right now is very much around the acceleration, getting the first prototype aircraft going. Those will be the first variant. There’s already a lot of work clearly going on in the U.S. Army around what future capabilities they’ll want to put on the aircraft, but that’s enabled by the MOSA architecture.

It doesn’t affect or impact the work that’s going on around the basic aircraft today.

That’s helpful. Thanks for that. Just a quick one on aviation, you talked about the demand remains strong. Maybe any highlights you would call out just regarding whether it’s regionally or just in general on the jet market?

It’s really across the whole portfolio, Peter. I mean, we continue to see strong retail demand. People are flying. The end market industry remains robust, I would say, everywhere that we see it. The performance of the business is improving, obviously, as we talked about every quarter, improving margins. We had a lot of certification activity, obviously, in the quarter. We would have originally planned probably to get the M2, the CJ3 Gen 2, and the Citation Ascend in Q3. It’s turned out, of course, we now have the M2 and the CJ3 Gen 2, but those happened right at the beginning of Q4. Citation Ascend, we should have wrapped up here by the end of the month. The FAA, despite the shutdown, is supporting us in that effort, which is great. I think the market is strong. Our product portfolio is in a good place.

We feel pretty good about where things are.

Appreciate the details. Thanks, Scott.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Sheila Kahlu from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Good morning. Congratulations, Scott, on a great run in promoting both David and Lisa internally. I think that says a lot. Maybe if I could follow up on the MV-75 question, if that’s okay from Peter. Can you provide additional color on what’s the update on the program? You’ve completed 215 flight hours. I think you’re scheduled to deliver six test articles over the next year and a half. What happens from there with the U.S. Army? How do we think about a contract being signed on?

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: Sure. The current program, it’s actually, Sheila, it’s a good question. I think there are some misunderstandings about this program and sort of where it is and what’s going on. I’ve heard a lot of people said, "Hey, is this going to be one of these programs as we’ve seen with a lot of defense contractors around these big fixed price programs?" We’re familiar with those. We had that, as you know, on Ship-to-Shore Connector. It’s a healthy program today, but went through a very difficult phase given the nature of the fixed price development and production at the beginning. As you know, we don’t have that. This is a very large program, obviously. It’s mostly cost-plus development. There are some fixed price elements. We’ve already put the fixed price LUT aircraft into our program estimates to complete.

We will at some point add the LRIP-8 once that is exercised by the government. I think that the program as it’s laid out today covers all of that development, which is largely cost-plus. It does have LUT as a fixed price. It does have LRIP as a fixed price. That’s kind of where the current program stops. The discussions around acceleration are really bringing forward that LRIP. We, collectively with the U.S. Army, believe this is something that we can do with low risk. That’s in part by, as you referenced, the fact that we flew 200 and some, 300 hours on the Bell V-280 Valor. The team is already building a lot of the key components and fabrications, getting ready to build the first prototype test aircraft. There will be six of those, and then the two LUTs.

The risk of bringing that LRIP in rather than having a big gap is pretty minimal. People need to keep in mind that the first LRIP aircraft is really sort of serial number 10 if you count the initial Bell V-280 Valor plus the six EMDs, which are cost-plus, and then those first two LUTs that are fixed price. I think the team is doing a great job on executing. Obviously, we work very, very closely with the U.S. Army on the acceleration process. It’s going very well. We’re building wings. We’re building fuselages. We’re building gearboxes. It’s all going quite well. I think there is a little bit of a misconception around how this works. It is a big performance obligation.

As you guys saw last year when we did the LUTs and added those to the mix, we took our booking rate down, and that resulted in a cube catch. It did result in a cube catch that was a bad guy. On the other hand, this quarter, they exercised one of the large cleans for the cost-plus side. We actually increased our booking rate and took a modest cube catch good guy. This is something to expect through the course of the program. Unlike these big fixed price development, fixed price production programs, we certainly don’t see this thing entering into lost territory. It will continue to book at a low margin, which we’ve said from the beginning. I think we’re in a pretty good place, and it’s a program I think that’s executing well and obviously is hugely important to the future of the company.

Thanks for the additional color. I’ll leave it there.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Gavin Parsons from UBS. Your line is open.

Hi, this is Joel Santos on behalf of Gavin Parsons. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. You have talked before about improving aviation profitability. What is the long-term margin target that you are aiming for, and what are the main levers you gathered? Volume, pricing, or more of a mix?

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: These dynamics are different in each one of the businesses, but generally speaking, across all of our product lines, we have good gross margins. The biggest lever is around volume and what that does in terms of conversion to the bottom line in terms of performance. Most of the investments that we make around product are around making sure that we have products that have high demand and can command good volume and obviously solid pricing, which again, we’ve seen that in the last number of years where we’ve had very positive price feedback as well.

Aviation bookings have been fairly steady each quarter this year, even through the Q2 tariff uncertainty. Do you think long lead times are holding back new orders, and if production ramps, could that actually drive bookings higher?

There is some connection between these. There’s no doubt. You get up too far out in the timeline that it’s difficult for people to, you know, to make that commitment. As you said, I think that the market demand remains strong. It has been pretty steady. We’ve guided a one-to-one, you know, book-to-bill through the course of the year. I still feel good about that. Certainly, we do have plans, you know, where you’ll see incremental, you know, volume in 2026 as opposed to 2025. We’re not obviously quite ready to guide the 2026 year, but we certainly expect, you know, as manufacturing continues to ramp, that we will see, you know, additional output in terms of the number of aircraft.

Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Robert Stollert from Vertical Research. Your line is open.

Thanks so much. Good morning.

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: Morning, Robert.

Congratulations, Scott, on the move up. The first question is actually in relation to that and how you and Lisa expect to divide the role going forward because you will be Executive Chairman.

Sure, Robert. I mean, this is, I think, a fairly standard transition in our business. I’ve been working with Lisa for a very long time in her capacity and key program jobs. She worked for me directly for the last eight years running the systems business and then the Bell business. I want to be really clear. If she becomes the President and CEO, she’s running the company, and she’s ready to do that, by the way. I’ll be there to help with some of the processes that just haven’t gone through around regulatory stuff and closing out the year and things like that. I fully expect she’s ready to run the company, and she’ll start doing that on January 4th. I’ll be there to help and do whatever it is that she needs me to do and obviously run the board. I think it’ll be a normal transition.

I expect it’ll be very, very smooth. Again, we’ve been working together for a very long time. I’ll be around, but no one should have any questions. She’s going to be running the company.

Okay. As a follow-up on aviation, we’ve seen some recent signs of business jet activity actually picking up in terms of year-on-year growth. Are you starting to see this flow through in terms of your aftermarket activity?

Yeah, we had a good quarter on the aftermarket side. There’s no doubt utilization is strong. People are flying, which is a great indicator. It’s really important in terms of helping to continue to drive growth in the aftermarket side of the business. I think it also bodes well just for demand for aircraft, which again, we’re seeing. The retail, the level of interest, inquiries, orders, bookings, remain strong. I think the industry right now probably is as healthy as we’ve ever seen it.

Okay, that’s great. Thank you very much.

Sure.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Miles Walton from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning and congrats, Scott, on the retirement or move to Executive Chairman. You’re not retired yet.

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: Yeah.

You got work to do. On the aviation side, can you comment on the supply chain and how that’s coming along and whether or not that’s an impediment to hitting the $6.1 billion revenue placeholder within the forecast?

There are still supply chain issues, as we’ve kind of talked about. It’s not as many part numbers, for instance, as it used to be, but there are still some critical suppliers that are struggling. Yes, it does impact us on different models at different times. It continues to create a little more problems in production efficiencies and flow doing out-of-station work. It’s not as bad as it was. We are seeing improvements in that area. There are some critical things that are sort of a little bit of hand-to-mouth, and we keep a close eye on them with a relatively small number of suppliers, but they’re critical suppliers. Overall, it’s improved, but it’s one that we, I mean, the team works this stuff every day. There are still some problem children out there, and that’s been the sort of the nature of where we are.

Okay.

I don’t believe, just to be clear, I think everything we look at today, getting to that $6.1, we clearly feel good about our path to get there.

Okay. Great. Just a follow-up on systems, great bookings. Is this the point of inflection for growth after, you know, a long time of relatively flat revenue?

Yeah, look, I think so. The bookings were very strong. You guys know we started the year with a bit of a challenge with things like RCV and FTUS getting restructured and changed. I do still think there’s opportunities there in our participation in those kinds of programs. There’s a lot of interest in a lot of the technology we’ve developed around FTUS, and that stuff will play out. For sure, what you’re seeing, despite not getting those bookings, the growth in the rest of the business has kind of overcome that. Our ATAC business is just doing great. Those guys are performing really, really well. They’ve won a ton of new programs. Ship-to-Shore Connector continues to grow. As I said earlier with Chill, the program is healthy. Volumes are there. The team’s executing really well. We continue to see growth in the Sentinel program.

I think when you look across that business, despite some of the challenges around a couple of those programs, it’s good growth. Absolutely, we feel good about sort of that inflection point you referred to. This business has been executing, performing really, really well for a number of years. The only thing it’s lacked, as you guys know, is growth. I do think we’re hitting that inflection point where we’ll start to see it growing here as we go forward.

All right. Great, thanks.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Seth Seifman from JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: Hey, Seth. You might be on mute.

Thanks. Good morning. Congratulations, Scott. I just wanted to ask, starting off about aviation, you just spoke to the revenue. When we think about the margin, it’s a pretty significant uptick in profitability in the fourth quarter. What enables that?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think as we’ve talked about, Seth, we expected to see a progression as we go through the course of the year. The fourth quarter will be strong on the volume side, which it normally is. I think there are still challenges, but the team is performing better and better every quarter around getting flow. Largely, we’ll see a nice significant bump in volume in the quarter, and that will drive good margin with it.

Right. Okay. Excellent. Maybe one more on MV-75. When we think about the LRIP units and bringing those forward, are there kind of additional contractual provisions that you can get to protect the company from concurrency risk?

The LRIP have always been laid in there. I don’t think there’s anything that would change contractually on that. To be honest, Seth, we’re not that worried about the risk of that. Again, the base configuration of the aircraft is really solid. Obviously, it’s a derivative off of what we did on V-280. There are changes, but we know what those are. We are fabricating right now the first of the prototype aircraft. By the time we are building that first LRIP aircraft, we will have built, obviously, the original V-280, but we will have built eight aircraft, the six EMD aircraft and the two LUT aircraft. Certainly, there’s an enormous amount of ground testing, component-level testing, stuff that’s, we already are fabricating and building parts.

I think we feel very good about the things we need to learn, any issues that we run into, we’re going to run into here on these initial EMD aircraft long before we get to where we’re building that first LRIP aircraft.

Great. Thanks. That’s very helpful.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Ron Epstein from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, David.

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: Ron.

Yeah, maybe just circling back on Systems. How’s the unmanned portfolio doing? When you look across the, you’ve got, you know, unmanned land system stuff and Shadow and Aerosonde and some other stuff. You’ve seen such kind of surging demand for unmanned stuff. Just curious how that’s going for you guys, and do you have anything in the pipeline that you’re working on developing to kind of expand in that market?

I would say that, you know, Ron, the Aerosonde program is going well, right? We went through a bit of a challenge as Afghanistan came out. We had a lot of aircraft that were deployed over there. Those have largely been redeployed to other theaters, other applications, a lot of marine applications. That business is doing very well. That is where the next significant tranche really was going to be around FTOS. With that program not happening, at least in the way it was envisioned, that was a hit. The reality is, these brigades need ISR. What really changed on FTOS is the Chief, understandably frustrated over how long it was taking to get stuff out there, has basically said, "Look, you got to take these systems directly to the brigades, and they’ll drive that demand." That’s what we’re doing right now.

That’s why I say, while FTOS didn’t happen as a program, I do think that we will see a number of opportunities as we go out and sell that technology directly out to the warfighters. There’s also been some international opportunities. There are things out there with Customs and Border Patrol. In terms of our core platform today from Aerosonde and then transitioning into what was basically the FTOS configuration, I believe we’re going to start to see some nice growth in there. In terms of new platforms under development, part of what we did with the eAviation segment is that team in Pipistrel has been developing this unmanned cargo aircraft, what we call the Nuva 300. That’s now into flight test. We’ve already done the flight testing on Article One.

We’re about to do the final build-out on Article Two, which has our own flight control fly-by-wire systems and such. Part of the change here in the segment is that our Textron Systems business, which has always been the developer and sort of leading the business development on Aerosonde and Shadow and those other unmanned platforms, will basically have the responsibility to take that kind of product to market. It’s the Nuva unmanned cargo. We also have a nice niche that Pipistrel has for a long time in high altitude unmanned, sort of long duration surveillance products. That’s a product we already have today. We have some new developments in process there for very long duration aircraft. Those will now start to largely go to market through our Textron Systems business, augmenting our strength in unmanned aircraft.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Sure.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Christine Lueg from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Scott, congrats on your next chapter. Over the years, there’s always been discussions and conversations with you about the broader Textron portfolio and if it should all belong together or if there are other ways to unlock shareholder value. At this point, all reporting segments are fairly stable. The balance sheet is very strong, and the company generates solid free cash flow. I wanted to check with you to see if this management change also signals a reevaluation of the portfolio once again and how you think about it now.

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: I don’t know that we would say that the change is driving that. I do think we are always looking at the portfolio. To your point, look, we don’t have a burning platform, but would we look at, you know, either disposing or acquiring? Of course, we would. That’s a process that has been ongoing for some time. Obviously, we just did the divestitures around the power sports business earlier this year. That was something we thought we really needed to do and wanted to do to help position the company going forward. We continue to look at other opportunities, and I expect we’ll continue to do that regardless of the leadership change.

Great. Thanks, Scott.

Sure.

Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Doug Harnett from Bernstein. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thank you. If you look at the mix of deliveries across business jets, you know, it’s been pretty stable over the last two years. I mean, I would have expected more of a shift toward the Latitude and Longitude, although that might have been an incorrect assumption. Are you seeing demand shifts across your portfolio? Is that, and is that, is the mix in there constrained more by where demand is or where your capacity is?

Scott Donnelly, Chairman and CEO, Textron: Look, it is right now probably more of a capacity issue. I would say in terms of the end market demand, it has been steady, right? The demand for whether it’s a Longitude or Latitude, whatever, has been pretty stable. These things are often influenced by new products. For instance, when we launched the new CJ4 Gen 2, we saw a very strong spike in order activity, which kind of puts that lead time well out there because people were pretty excited in that piece of the market about that product. We’ve seen the same things with things like the CJ3 Gen 2s, certainly the Ascend. I would say the end market is stable. Demand is pretty strong across all the pieces of the product portfolio.

Usually, you see some of these spikes of order activity demand that can be affected by the launch of new product, of which we’ve had quite a bit.

Yeah. When you look, you’ve talked a little bit today about the strength of the demand environment. If you look back to the beginning of the year and then where you are today, how would you characterize demand mix in terms of corporate versus high net worth individuals? Have you seen any shifts there? Obviously, there’s been a lot of, it’s been a very dynamic sort of economic outlook over the last nine months.

Yeah, it’s actually pretty remarkable. Despite all of the noise, of which there’s plenty for sure, we’re not seeing it impact that market. We haven’t seen any piece or segment or interest that has changed because of what’s going on. I think part of that is the fact that you’re out there, whether it’s 18 months or two years, people are kind of looking beyond what current noise is in the marketplace because they’re not going to take delivery of that new aircraft for 18 months or so. I think it’s had a little bit of a muting effect on that. Remarkably, despite all of the noise that’s going around, the demand is stable.

Very good. Thank you.

Sure.

Conference Call Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Textron third quarter 2025 earnings call. Thank you for joining us today. You may now disconnect.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.