Ducommun (NYSE:DCO) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Ducommun Incorporated reported Q3 2026 revenue of $227 million, marking a 6% growth over the previous year, driven by a 28% increase in commercial aerospace, particularly from Boeing and Airbus platforms.
The company highlighted the success of its Vision 2027 strategy, noting record gross margins of 28.9% and achieving adjusted EBITDA margins close to its targets a year early.
Ducommun’s defense segment saw a 7% revenue decline due to timing issues, but achieved record bookings, indicating strong future growth potential, especially in missile programs.
Management expressed optimism about the Vision 2032 strategy, aiming for revenue growth to $1.6-$1.7 billion and increasing engineered products to 40% of revenue.
The company reported a strong cash flow generation of $32.7 million and maintained a high book-to-bill ratio of 1.6, reflecting robust demand across its business segments.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2026 Ducommun Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded.
I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ducommun Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Suman Mukherjee. Please go ahead.
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you and welcome to Ducommun’s 2026 third quarter conference call. With me today is Steve Oswald, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. I’m going to discuss certain limitations to any forward-looking statements regarding future events, projections, or performance that we may make during the prepared remarks or the Q&A session that follows. Certain statements today that are not historical facts, including any statements as to the Company’s progress and value creation opportunity for shareholders under our Vision 2027 game plan for investors; beliefs about the Company’s ability to attain the goals stated in our Vision 2032 strategic plan; potential destocking headwinds and their impact on the Company’s business for the remainder of 2026; expectations related to the U.S. Department of Defense’s long-term framework agreements for key missile programs with defense primes, our share of potential orders from those primes, the increase in production on many of those missile programs and their impact on the growth of our defense business; estimated synergies to be realized under the Company’s facility consolidation projects; and the outlook for the Company’s revenue and commercial aerospace and defense businesses for the full year 2026 are forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are therefore prospective. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from the future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
Although we believe that the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. In addition, estimates of future operating results are based on the Company’s current business, which is subject to change. Particular risks facing Ducommun include, amongst others, the cyclicality of our end-use markets; the level of U.S. government defense spending; our customers may experience changes in production rates or delays in launch and certification of new products; timing of orders from our customers, which are subject to cancellation, modification or rescheduling; our ability to obtain additional financing and service existing debt to fund capital expenditures and meet our working capital needs; legal and regulatory risks, including pending litigation matters generally, as well as any potential losses arising from third-party subrogation claims related to the Guamis performance under fire that may become material; the cost of expansion, consolidation and acquisitions; competition; economic and geopolitical developments, including supply chain issues; our ability to successfully implement restructuring, realignment and cost reduction initiatives that could adversely impact our ability to achieve our strategic objectives; international trade restrictions and our ability to obtain necessary U.S. government approvals for proposed sales to certain foreign customers; impact of tariffs and elevated interest rates; risks associated with a prolonged partial or total U.S. federal government shutdown; the ability to attract and retain key personnel and avoid labor disruptions; the ability to adequately protect and enforce intellectual property rights; pandemics, disasters, natural or otherwise; and risk of cybersecurity attacks. Please refer to our Annual Report on Form 10-K, our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and other reports filed from time to time with the SEC, as well as the press release issued today, for a detailed discussion of the risks. Our forward-looking statements are subject to those risks. Statements made during this call are only as of the time made, and we do not intend to update any statements made in this presentation except if and as required by regulatory authorities.
The call also includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our filings with the SEC for a reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures referenced on this call. We filed our Q3 2026 Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q with the SEC today. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Oswald for a review of the operating results. Steve.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Okay, thank you, Suman. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today for our third quarter conference call. As usual, I will give an update on the current situation of the company. Afterwards, Suman will review our financials in detail. To start, I want to thank everyone that attended the launch of our Vision 2032 strategy in September, either in person in New York or virtually. It was over 1,300 days since our last investor day in 2022. We were excited to share our game plan for continued growth. The highlights were new revenue and margin expansion targets along with plans for a significant increase in the percentage of engineered products for the DCO P&L. The feedback we have received since then from our shareholders has been very positive, so again thank you.
As in previous calls, I will reiterate Ducommun’s Vision 2027 strategy as we continue to make great progress heading to our fifth and final year starting this January. Strategy and vision were developed coming out of the COVID pandemic over the summer and fall of 2022, unanimously approved by the Ducommun board in November 2022, and then presented the following month in New York to investors, where we got excellent feedback. Since that time, Ducommun’s management has been executing the strategy by increasing the revenue percentage of engineered product content, which was 24% in Q3, a record; consolidating our rooftop footprint in contract manufacturing; continuing our focused acquisition program; executing the offloading strategy with defense primes in high-growth segments; driving value-added pricing; and expanding content on key commercial aerospace platforms. All of us here are thrilled about Vision 2027 and the many accomplishments to date. The Q3 2026 results show again the strategy initiatives are working, with record gross margins.
I’m happy to report our adjusted EBITDA margins and engineered product revenue mix are very close to our final Vision 2027 targets a year early. Wonderful news. Our Vision 2032 strategy continues that momentum and will take DCO to the next level. We are doubling down on engineered products to build that to at least 40% of revenue, both organically and by increasing our acquisition activity. We expect to grow total revenue to the range of $1.6 to $1.7 billion and expand adjusted EBITDA margins to 23% of revenue. We’ve got the right team in place, and the plans to execute these targets are already in motion.
For Q3, we achieved a new record of $227 million in revenue, 6% growth over last year, and our sixth consecutive quarter of over $200 million in revenue, and now 22 consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth. In Q3, Commercial Aerospace performed extraordinarily well, growing 28% over last year, with narrow-body platforms for both Boeing and Airbus growing significantly as we’re working through the final stages of destocking, and that is coming to an end in December.
We’re also benefiting on the commercial side from a major new program for BA supplying proprietary switches we talked about last quarter. This is an engineered product designed by DCO engineers and is driving retrofit and new build revenue at significant margins for us, and DCO has received bookings in excess of $30 million, a first for us at this level. Military and space revenues came in at 7% lower this quarter versus prior year due to the timing of orders and production on certain programs, including some pull-forward into the first half of the year that we discussed previously. We closed on $263 million in military and space bookings in Q3, an all-time record which represents a book-to-bill of 2.2 and takes our military and space revenue performance obligation to an all-time high of $868 million.
This record level of order activity sets us up well for strong growth in our military and space business. Missiles continues to outperform other areas of our defense portfolio with another quarter of double-digit growth, as well as continued strength in fixed-wing aircraft, which was offset by temporary softness in our rotary wing, ground vehicle, and radar platforms. Overall for DCO, we closed on $354 million of new bookings during the quarter, at a book-to-bill of 1.6. This increases our remaining performance obligations for the company to a record $1.3 billion, $255 million higher than prior year and $127 million higher than Q2. All outstanding. Our defense business RPO grew $275 million year over year, highlighted by a $90 million order on the SPY-6 Navy radar from RTX. This is the offload of CCAS from the Andover, Massachusetts facility that I’ve talked about over the past few years that is now really paying off in a big way, but it did take time. $54 million in bookings as well for the MESA Airborne Surveillance for Northrop Grumman that supports the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and that number is for five planes. I am thrilled with the current state of our radar business, which is now becoming a franchise like the DCO missile business. To put this segment in perspective and context, in 2024 we booked $65 million for five radar programs; in 2025, only $11 million for three programs; and year to date in 2026 we booked over $150 million for seven programs.
And that is just in the first nine months. Such wonderful news. Overall in 2026 we have booked $535 million in defense orders through Q3 of this year. And I want to point out that does not include any orders under the seven-year missile framework agreements for RTX and Lockheed. For clarity, the framework agreements announced have resulted in contract awards, but not orders to defense primes, and will eventually turn into purchase orders that get flowed down the supply chain.
While the timing of such orders is hard to predict, our current expectation is for that to happen starting in late Q1 and Q2 of next year, but we’re beginning OEM commitments to start ordering material in Q4. In addition, we’ve been adding staff and floor space. As we speak, production on many of these missile programs—such as the PAC-3, AMRAAM, Standard Missile 3, Standard Missile 6, and Tomahawk—are expected to grow several fold, and this will be a big driver of growth for DCO and the industry over the next several years.
Gross margins grew by $7 million in the quarter to 28.9%, a 140 basis point improvement, another record, from 27.5% last year in Q3. The benefits of our Vision 2027 strategy continue to flow through the P&L with expansion from DCO’s engineered product portfolio, which again includes the new major BA application I mentioned earlier, and we have now reached 24% of revenue. This, along with strategic value-added pricing, restructuring actions, and productivity improvements, are all reading through to the P&L. Our cost-saving expectations of $13 million annually from our facility consolidation program have also been realized at this time. For adjusted operating income margin in Q3, the team delivered 12.3%, 40 basis points below the prior year of 12.7%. This is mainly due to timing of stock-based compensation expense during the year. Adjusted EBITDA continues to improve towards our Vision 2027 goal of 18% in 2027 from 13% in 2022. DCO achieved 17.5% in the quarter, or $39.7 million, up $2.4 million from Q3 2025.
This puts us in great shape to achieve our 2027 target. GAAP EPS was $0.89 per diluted share in Q3 2026 versus a loss of $4.06 per share for Q3 2025 from litigation settlement. With adjustments, diluted EPS was $1.21 a share in Q3 versus $1.22 in the prior-year quarter. Higher operating income drove the higher GAAP EPS during the quarter, while adjusted net income was essentially flat to prior year. As I’ve touched on earlier, we’ve had some significant orders in the quarter with over $354 million of bookings and a book-to-bill of 1.6. Over the last 12 quarters we’ve closed in over $1.1 billion in bookings, a trailing 12-month book-to-bill of 1.3. With increased defense spending and positive momentum in commercial aerospace, we have strong tailwinds in both our primary end markets. It is the best I have seen since joining Ducommun in 2017.
On the outlook for the fourth quarter, I expect to see continued growth, especially in our commercial aerospace business. In September during our investor day, we narrowed our revenue guidance for 2026 to a range of $880 million to $890 million. We continue to track to that and further refine that range to $885 million to $890 million. This is also in line with our original guidance from February of this year of mid- to high-single-digit revenue growth for the full year 2026.
Now let me provide some color on our markets, products, and programs, beginning with our commercial aerospace operations. Third quarter revenue increased 28% year over year to $97 million with strong growth in production and deliveries on single-aisle platforms for both Airbus and Boeing, in particular the 737 MAX platform. We benefited from the shipments of the proprietary switches, and overall our aerospace business grew across all platform groups: single-aisle, wide-body, commercial rotorcraft, business jets, and engines.
Now that Boeing received FAA certification of the 737 MAX 10 in October, the company has cleared another hurdle in their recovery. The new production line in Everett is also up and running, and the company is working to stabilize at 47 MAXs a month on the way to 52 in the second half of next year. While this is slower than the prior expectations, this still represents great progress for our second-largest customer, and with internal and external destocking largely coming to an end, we are set up very well for good growth going into 2027 and beyond.
I will also add that the 787 build rate increases will be good for Ducommun. We have limited exposure as well on 777 production delays and don’t expect those to affect revenue in Q4 and in 2027. Airbus has an aggressive Q4 goal for shipments, and DCO is fully supporting the production needs with capacity available to meet the demand. The other item I want to cover in commercial aerospace is our seven-year LTA expiration for Airbus at the end of 2026. I’m happy to report we have now finalized a new two-year agreement to continue supplying superplastic formed and hot formed titanium products for the A320 family, and in addition, we received the purchase orders today from Airbus. Such great news. This content is for both Pratt engines and CFM engines and will be in effect starting in January.
We will now see significant double-digit price increases for both Pratt and CFM components, which shows our strategy of high value-add, niche contract manufacturing—which has been developed over the decades—is a winner and very effective. Ducommun, for those who do not know, is a worldwide market share leader in titanium SPF and hot formed outside of the OEM Toulouse operation and one of the very few companies in that space. This is a big deal for our P&L, shareholder value, and will make a difference in DCO Structures, gross margin, and profitability in 2027 and 2028 starting in January.
In our military and space sector, we saw revenues of $119 million compared to $128 million in Q3 2025. This represents a 7% decline as related to timing, as we built more military and space in the first half to level load production for the year. Our missile franchise continues to perform well, up 25% year over year in Q3, as well as double-digit growth in fixed-wing platforms. This was offset by temporary declines in radar, ground vehicles, and rotorcraft due to timing of orders and production schedules.
As I’ve noted earlier, we had robust bookings in our defense business with a book-to-bill of 2.2 and with the RPO at record levels positioning us for growth in the future. Our missile franchise continues to perform at a double-digit growth rate at Ducommun, and Ducommun expects orders for the seven-year agreements to come in starting in late Q1 and Q2 of 2027. DCO is a key supplier on the PAC-3 and SM-3, SM-6, Tomahawk, THAAD, and AMRAAM, and we continue to work with defense primes on multiple opportunities.
DCO is also in great shape on capacity at our operations to fully support the required ramp-up with minimal capital. Overall, our missiles, radar, and electronic warfare franchise grew 12% during the quarter, and on a year-to-date basis represents 39% of our military and space segment and more than 21% now of our total company revenues. This is a great platform that I expect to drive growth for us for multiple years going forward. In summary, the outlook for the next few years continues to be exciting for the company and our shareholders. We like the balance of defense and commercial aerospace and, like I said earlier, this is the best position I’ve seen the company in for future growth since I joined Ducommun in 2017. With that, I’ll have Suman review our financial results in detail.
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you, Steve. As a reminder, please see the company’s 10-Q and Q3 earnings release for a further description of information mentioned on today’s call. As Steve discussed, our third quarter results reflected another strong quarter of revenue with strong growth in commercial aerospace offset by temporary decline in our military end market. Gross margins and adjusted EBITDA margins both showed continued improvement over the previous year and hit new records.
The synergies from our facility consolidation projects completed last year are now fully in our P&L and, along with our value-based pricing approach and the pickup from operating leverage, position us well to achieve our Vision 2027 goal of 18% adjusted EBITDA percentage of sales. Now turning to our third quarter results, revenue for the third quarter of 2026 was 227 million versus 214.4 million for 3Q25. The year-over-year increase of 6% reflects strong growth in commercial aerospace of 28% driven by growth on single-aisle platforms including the 737 MAX and A320, as well as growth on widebody platforms and business jets. The strength in the commercial aerospace business was supported by higher production and deliveries for OEM customers and new aftermarket business on the 737.
Our defense business experienced a temporary decline of 7% year over year with continued strength in missiles and fixed-wing platforms offset by temporary declines in ground vehicles, rotorcraft, and radar platforms. As Steve mentioned earlier, our missiles business saw another quarter of double-digit growth with our missile, radar, and electronic warfare programs combined now representing 39% of year-to-date defense revenues and more than 21% of total DCO revenue.
It’s a strong franchise with great platforms to drive significant upside for Ducommun in 2027 and beyond as the framework agreements start converting into orders on these missile platforms vital to the country’s defense. Overall, Q3 was a strong revenue quarter for us even with the pull-forward of production and related revenue from the second half into the first half of the year and level-loaded activity at our factories. We posted total gross profit of 65.6 million, or 28.9% of revenue for the quarter, versus 59 million, or 27.5% of revenue in the prior-year period. The record gross margin was driven by an improved mix of our engineered product business, realization of our planned synergies from the facility consolidation program which are now at their full run rate, as well as the benefit of higher manufacturing volume.
Operating income for the third quarter was $25.8 million, or 11.4% of revenue, compared to an operating loss of $75.3 million, or minus 35.1% of revenue, in the prior-year period. Last year’s operating income was negatively impacted by the one-time litigation settlement in the quarter. Adjusted operating income was $28 million, or 12.3% of revenue, this quarter compared to $27.2 million, or 12.7% of revenue, in the comparable period last year. The adjusted operating income benefited from higher volume and gross profit, offset by higher SG&A spending driven by a change in the calendarization of stock-based compensation expense during the year.
The company’s net income for the third quarter of 13.9 million, or $0.89 per diluted share, compares to a loss in the prior year of 60.8 million, or negative $4.06 per share. On an adjusted basis, the company reported net income of 18.8 million, or $1.21 per diluted share, compared to an adjusted net income of 18.8 million, or $1.22 in Q3 2025. Now let me turn to our segment results. Our Structural Systems segment posted revenue of $97.4 million in the third quarter of 2026 versus $89 million last year. The year-over-year change reflected $8.6 million higher revenue in our commercial aerospace business driven by single-aisle platforms including the 737 MAX and the A320, as well as business jets. The military and space business within this segment was down $0.4 million on a year-over-year basis, with production lower in military rotorcraft and ground vehicles, partially offset by growth in missiles and fixed-wing aircraft.
Structural Systems operating income for the quarter was $11.9 million, or 12.3% of revenue, compared to $12.2 million, or 13.7% of revenue, for the prior-year quarter. Excluding restructuring charges and other adjustments in both years, the segment operating margin was 14.2% in Q3 2026 versus 16.4% in Q3 2025. The decrease in year-over-year margin was primarily due to product mix and other manufacturing costs. Our Electronic Systems segment posted revenue of $130 million in the third quarter of 2026 versus $125 million in the prior-year period. An increase of 3% year-over-year change reflected $12 million growth in commercial aerospace, primarily in Boeing and Airbus platforms. Military and space applications declined in the quarter by $9 million with lower production on radars and other miscellaneous platforms. Our industrials business also grew $0.8 million during Q3 due to timing of production orders.
Electronic Systems operating income for the third quarter was $28.7 million, or 22.2% of revenue, versus $23.3 million, or 18.6% of revenue, in the prior-year period. Excluding restructuring charges and other adjustments in both years, the segment operating margin was 22.5% in Q3 2026 versus 18.9% in Q3 2025. The year-over-year increase was driven by higher manufacturing volume and our value-based pricing approach. Turning now to liquidity and capital resources, in Q3 2026 we generated $32.7 million in cash flow from operating activities compared to $18.1 million in Q3 of last year. Our strong cash generation was driven by higher net income partially offset by higher working capital. During the quarter, year-to-date cash flow from operating activities is 77.5 million and year-to-date free cash flow was 65.2 million, representing year-to-date free cash flow conversion of 134% of adjusted net income.
In Q4 of last year, the company amended its credit agreement which now includes a $200 million term loan and a $450 million revolver. The new $650 million facility lowers our cost of capital and gives us incremental capacity to execute on our acquisition strategy. As of the end of the third quarter we have available liquidity of $434 million comprising the unutilized portion of our revolver and cash on hand. Interest expense in Q3 was $3.1 million compared to $2.9 million in Q3 of 2025.
The year-over-year increase in interest cost was primarily due to higher debt balances, offset by lower interest rates on our debt due to more favorable terms in our new credit agreements. Also, as a reminder, in November 2021 we put in place an interest rate hedge that went into effect for a seven-year period starting January 2024 and pegs the one-month Term SOFR at 170 basis points for $150 million of our debt. The hedge is still in place and will continue to drive significant interest cost savings for the rest of 2026 and beyond.
To conclude the financial review, I would like to say that the third quarter results continue to affirm that our Vision 2027 strategy is working and we are not only on track to achieve those targets, but well positioned to deliver on our new Vision 2032 strategy as well. I’ll now turn it back to Steve for his closing remarks. Steve,
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Okay, thanks, Shimon. Just in closing, just a few things. First, you know, Q3 was another record quarter for DCO and, frankly, I could not be happier. This year we achieved record revenues, record EBITDA margins, record bookings, and strong cash generation. The strong book-to-bill will also be a tailwind for us going into 2027. It was also our sixth consecutive quarter of revenue over 200 million and gross margins and adjusted EBITDA margins were 28.9 and 17.5%, respectively, and ahead of schedule to meet our Vision 2027 goals.
In addition, the company’s engineered product revenues were at 24% in Q3, as we drive higher OEM and aftermarket products through the P&L. As everyone knows, driving this percentage as high as possible is our number one strategic focus with 100% commitment. Finally, let me again go back to the beginning of my remarks and thank you all again for your strong support for the Vision 2032. It means a lot to us at Ducommun. We all look forward to a great future for our company and shareholders with the finishing of Vision 2027 and the launching of Vision 2032 in January 2028. I’m excited for the future of Ducommun over the next six plus years and I’m proud to be leading this company as we drive DCO to new highs.
Okay, with that, now let’s go to questions. Thank you for listening.
OPERATOR
Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of John Godden with Citi. Your line is now open.
John Godden (Analyst)
Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. Maybe a good place to start is just talking a bit about the outlook for missiles at large. And Steve, you know, it’s not about reading the tea leaves on politics; obviously the market is sort of saying that it’s concerned about the defense outlook. I’m more curious — you guys are a principal supplier into the missile supply chain. You’re not necessarily having the same kind of conversations with the government and contracting that the primes have.
How do you protect yourself? How do you look at a situation like this to make sure that you’re kind of insulated from any potential policy changes in the future and just position the company to really kind of benefit from this runway? Any general thoughts would be helpful.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, great, John, good to be with you. Thank you. So look, first of all, like I mentioned in my remarks about titanium earlier in commercial aerospace, same thing goes for defense electronics. We’re really sort of, you know, very niche oriented. You know, a lot of things that we do for these missile programs we’ve been doing for a long time, a lot of things are sole sourced. Now, they might be not fully sole sourced because of the volumes, for instance on like a Tomahawk where you go from 80 a year to 1,250, right?
So I feel very good about our situation. Again, it all goes back to our strategy. It all goes back to our manufacturing know-how. It all goes back to our trade secrets that we use to insulate us. So, you know, these missile programs, this is my view, you know, certainly are needed, certainly the next few years. I think, you know, regardless of politics and everything else, there needs to be this replenishment. I see lots of great things with FMS as well, certainly for the PAC-3 and some others.
So our manufacturing strategy fits into, you know, this whole sort of niche and insulated from, you know, maybe some other things that are going to happen. So it’s a good question and we feel very good about our position.
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
One minor thing to add is the fact that we also are not looking to expend a significant amount of capex, so the risk to our company and our shareholders is limited. It’s not like we’re going to put in a lot of money and then the orders don’t come in, right? So unlike others who may have to put in significant amount to build new factories and production capabilities, for us it’s a mix of existing capacity and nominal expansion at existing facilities that will support the higher volume.
So we are more flexible in flexing up and down depending on where the volume comes in.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, John, for us it’s more about manpower and training, you know, maybe a few machines, you know, that type of thing — retrofit, you know, a building a little bit — but nothing. We’re not doing anything that we get nervous about.
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
I would agree we are seeing a number of opportunities come to market here over the past few, I would say past couple of months and even in the past few weeks. So I agree with that characterization. We are actively working and analyzing and working through a number of different opportunities. Yeah, we’re encouraged. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Herbert with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Ken Herbert (Analyst)
Yeah. Good morning. Steve and Suman, maybe just to start, wanted to see if we could drill down a little bit on the defense sales in the quarter. It sounds like there was some timing. Obviously the bookings were really strong. Can you flesh out anything structurally changing in how you view some of the programs you’re on or some of the outlook for defense, in particular on the non-missile piece of the business? As I know in the press release you called out some timing around some of the more ground systems or combat-related markets?
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Ken, great question. The slowdown in the current quarter was really due to both timing of orders and production. We did telegraph earlier that we had pulled in demand into the first half, mainly production into the first half, and so that was part of it. And also the timing of orders where on ground vehicles, on even some of the radars, it was timing of orders. If you look at our remaining performance obligations or backlog for radar, it’s at an all-time high. It’s up 135 million over the previous quarter. That’s the extent to which our radar business RPO has increased even though in the quarter revenue was down. So we do view this as temporary. We expect growth to come back in 2027. I think the back half of this year was expected to be softer versus the front half of the year. It was telegraphed as such and is panning out as we had somewhat expected.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Let me just jump there, Ken. So yeah, just ground vehicles, a few other things. You know, we have nobles, we have other programs that are supporting different, you know, defense programs. There’s no one major program. So one of the great things that we have here is diversification along the defense line. So we have lots of different things. I do want to also mention that, just because we brought up the bookings, and I mentioned in my remarks, this radar thing is a big deal for us. And I know for several years I was talking about moving work out of OEM plants and putting them into Tulsa and other places, and it was how painful but how it was finally going to pay off. And I’m very happy to see that this SPY-6, after many years and lots of hard work, is going to pay off for shareholders big time.
So I do want to mention that as well. So I feel great about where we are. It’s just timing a little bit. The order book is really good.
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
And Steve made the point earlier about our book-to-bill for defense as a whole, which includes a mix of both missiles, radar and the legacy platforms. That was at 2.2 times. 2.2 times book-to-bill ratio. I mean that really shows you the strength of the defense portfolio that we have on a combined basis.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.
Mike Crawford (Analyst)
Thank you. Glad to hear that you’re progressing towards getting these LTAs in place with your framework defense customers. But what about progress on finding more things for them to offload to you guys?
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Can you say that again? Absolutely, yeah. So, yeah, that’s ongoing. Like I’ve said in many calls, you know, OEMs are always nervous about moving things out of their operations because they lose control, okay? Especially the operations people. Supply chain people love it. Not so much on the other side. So it’s sort of a long-term trust-building situation. And I would say we’re working right now with—and this is really on the defense prime side—we’re really working with Northrop now and other operations to do that.
So I’ll have more to say about that in future calls, but that’s ongoing. But the big deal is Raytheon was the numero uno for us and it’s finally really paying off. So we’re really happy.
Mike Crawford (Analyst)
Okay, thanks, Steve. And then just one follow-up on M&A. You did convey your intent to kind of move higher up and take a bigger bite at something. Have you been rebuffed in any of these approaches or any other color on that landscape?
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
We’re continuing to evaluate a mix of opportunities, both that are slightly larger than what we have done in the past, as well as smaller opportunities that are tuck-in acquisitions in line with what we’ve done in the past. We’re not looking to do, again to clarify, something that is a huge transformative acquisition—that was not how we messaged it—but we are looking to do things that are bigger than what we have looked at in the past. So we absolutely have things in the pipeline and things that we are working on that cover that wider range. And as was noted earlier, we are seeing a higher level of activity in the M&A market, so we remain hopeful about getting something done here. We’ve also increased the bench strength of the M&A team. I mentioned earlier about having hired a strong Director of Corporate Development to lead the function for me, and we also have now hired another extremely capable manager-level resource to support him.
So we have much more capacity to process and execute transactions than we have ever had at the company in the past.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, that’s a great point. Really. We’re fully committed, obviously, Mike, as you know, to this. And we’re building capacity both internally with our team, but also now we have the capacity to go up the ladder a bit with a larger buy. So stay tuned, Mike.
Mike Crawford (Analyst)
All right, thanks, guys.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks. Good to be with you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Cirmoli with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open.
Michael Cirmoli (Analyst)
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the call. Maybe Steve or Suman, just really good commercial aerospace growth in the quarter here. How do we think about this rate of growth going forward? I mean, you’re going to have obviously ramping production, you’ve got the destocking coming to an end, you’ve got the switch kicking in and then you’ve got the double-digit pricing from Airbus. I mean, is there any way you can help us kind of calibrate our expectations?
I mean, it was certainly a high watermark, I think, since, you know, pre-COVID, maybe 2019 with these aerospace revenues. But this rate of growth, does it stay into the 20s here as we think about into ’27?
Suman Mukherjee (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
I think we can expect to see strong growth. I wouldn’t say it stays above 20%. That would probably be a bit sporty. But we’re continuing to see the destocking wind down. On the 737, we shipped at around 40 for most of our structural products. On the 737, we shipped at the rate of about 40 during the quarter, which is getting close to, I guess, a range of 42 to 47 that Boeing is producing at. So that’s a good sign. Our revenue recognition was in the mid-30s.
So as you think about growth in our 737 business going from mid-30s to wherever you view 2027 MAX production to be in—right?—somewhere in the low to mid-40s. So that’s what you would expect.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, I think 20 plus, a bit sporty. But Mike, what I’ll tell you though, in February we’ll have a much better view because we’ll have everything sort of locked in by then, okay? But I think it’s going to be good. Maybe not 20 plus, but it’s going to be good.
OPERATOR
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press Star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question comes from the line of Hrishi Kumhokar with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open. I think Mike already asked that; it might have been a duplicate. You can close that line. Yeah, Mike from Guggenheim already. We already have that. This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Steve Oswald for closing remarks.
Stephen Oswald (Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer)
Okay. I want to thank everybody. Really appreciate you listening. Also appreciate the questions. You know, we’ll continue to work together as we move forward. I want to make sure everybody has a real good understanding about where we are and where we’re going. I think, you know, we had a great investor day. Again, thank you for the support of that. I do again want to come back to the defense situation and make sure—reiterate—that we have a lot of insulation around some of the other things that might be happening. We have a lot of diversification in our defense portfolio, so I think that’s going to be great for us going forward. And, you know, the numbers speak for themselves: being a 2.2 book-to-bill. That’s, I think, a wonderful job by our team and also a statement by the industry that they have a lot of trust in DCO and that we’re going to deliver for them.
So on that note, I’ll thank you again for listening and have a great rest of the day.
OPERATOR
Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
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