Fixed Income Quick Look | 5/8/20

FIXED INCOME QUICK LOOK | 5/8/20

Spirit AeroSystems Priority Score: 2 (of 3) Holdings, Inc. CLASSIFICATION: TEMPORARY Author: Brian Dress (Ticker: SPR)

Bond Rating: BBB- RSI: 45.26 Stock Price: 18.77 (YTD: -74.7%) Sector: Industrials Industry: Aerospace & Defense Bond Price: 75.31 (YTD: -29.4%)

Data as of 5/7/20 unless specified

Debt/Equity: 1.42 Debt/EBITDA (TTM): 4.68 Interest Coverage Ratio: 6.14 EBITDA (TTM): $647M Debt/EBITDA (fwd): NM Interest Expense: $105.3M EBITDA (fwd): -$51M1 Market Cap: $2.13B Cash/Cash Eq.: ~$1.3B2 Total Debt: $3.03B Enterprise Value: $3.86B3 Debt/EV Ratio: 0.78 Revenue (TTM): $6.97B4 Asset Coverage: 0.86 Free Cash Flow (TTM): +$127M Insider Transactions (2020): None OAS Spread: 832 YTM: 8.95% Spread/Turn Leverage: 1.91

(Report based on 4.6% 6/15/2028 bond with $700 million outstanding; CUSIP: 85205TAK6)  SUMMARY OF THE BUSINESS Spirit AeroSystems Holdings designs and produces commercial aerostructures, including jet bodies, wings, and propulsion systems, for both military and commercial aerospace applications. Spirit was formed in 2005 when Boeing sold its Wichita division to investment management firm, Onex, which divested  fully in 2014. The company came public in November 2006. CEO Tom Gentile has Grab-and-Go held the position since September 2016 and previously spent nearly a decade as an THESIS executive at various General Electric business units, most recently serving as President and COO of GE Capital. “An investment in Spirit AeroSystems is a play on a quick recovery in jet Spirit reports its revenues in three major segments: Fuselage Systems (54% of 2019 manufacturing in the wake of both the revenue), Propulsion Systems (26%), and Wing Systems (20%). As stated in the 737 Max grounding and the 2019 10-K, SPR has extreme concentration in its end markets, with 79% of 2019 Coronavirus. SPR is the world’s largest revenue coming from Boeing and 16% from Airbus. SPR has two pending aerostructures manufacturer, providing transactions, slated to close in 2020, to purchase Belgium-based Asco Industries (a fuselages, wings, and propulsion systems, steel and titanium components manufacturer), along with the aerostructures mainly to Boeing and Airbus. Success division of Bombardier Aviation. The combined value of these two deals is on the for SPR will depend on management’s deft handling costs and debt, as Spirit order of $1.5 billion and management expects these acquisitions to help Spirit shift awaits a rapid recertification of the 737 its customer mix significantly from Boeing and to Airbus in the coming years. Max and a quick recovery in the airline Spirit’s main manufacturing facility is in Wichita, KS, but the firm also maintains business, which would facilitate a return two plants in Oklahoma and one in North Carolina, as well as two in the UK, one to more normal levels of revenue.” in Malaysia, and one in France. Spirit produces components for some of the most well-known commercial aircraft, including fuselages for the Boeing 737 Max and the Boeing 787 (and cockpits for all Boeing jets), as well as fuselage and front wing sections for Airbus A350 and components for other Airbus jets (including the A320).

1 FactSet consensus estimate 2 SPR’s calculation: $1.8B cash end Q1 + $1.2B debt raise - $800M paid to revolver - $900M for ASCO/Bombardier acquisitions 3 Calculated using SPR’s cash balance calculation (see note 2) 4 For TTM ended Q

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COVID has impacted Spirit more than most companies in the general economy, as air traffic has decreased by 96% in April. In Q1, revenue was down 45% year over year to $1.1 billion, with just 18 737 Max “shipsets” delivered in the quarter relative to the 152 produced in Q1 2019. Year over year, total deliveries fell from 453 to 342 for the quarter. SPR had negative free cash flow of negative $362 million for the quarter and management expects a similar figure for Q2, with the cash burn subsiding in the second half of this year.

This, coupled with SPR’s customer concentration related to Boeing (and its besieged 737 Max program), has place Spirit in a precarious situation for at least fiscal year 2020. Boeing had already committed to a reduced production schedule due to the 737 Max grounding and uncertainty surrounding COVID has led both Airbus and Boeing to cut production for at least FY 2020. According to the Spirit Q1 2020 presentation, production volumes have plummeted. At the end of Q4 2019, SPR had expected to complete 216 “shipsets” for the Boeing 737 Max in 2020 (versus 867 in 2019) and on the Q1 call, management revealed that the guidance has been reduced to 125 for the full year. Management reduced production guidance for the Boeing 787 from 14 to 10, Boeing 777 from 5 to 3, with 767 and 747 expectations unchanged. On the Airbus side, things are similarly dire, with A320 production guidance reduced from 60 per month to 40 shipments and A350s reduced from 9 per month to 6 (more than a 40% decrease over 2019 production figures). Note that Boeing has given Spirit a $225 million cash advance and deferred repayment of a previous $123 million advance to after 2022. This is a positive development, but SPR will need to give its suppliers some similar forbearance through an ongoing vendor financing program.

SPR has responded with swift action to meet the obvious challenges it faces. The company has deferred some $120 million of CapEx (more than 50% of the 2019 total). Spirit has significant variable and fixed costs associated with the business model and has aggressively addressed mostly the variable costs. At the end of FY 2019, Spirit had roughly 18,200 employees. The firm laid off 2,800 employees in January in response to the 737 Max shut down. In April, Spirit completed another 3,200 layoffs and offered another 850 employees voluntary retirements, cut executive pay by 20%, and instituted four-day workweeks in some production facilities. Costs related to these actions are represented in Q1 results ($116 million in Q1, $85-110 million additional expected for Q2). Note also that SPR management has revised the stockholders’ rights agreement to stifle any possible takeover attempts from outside actors.

SPR has raised $1.2 billion in new capital in April 2020, through a secured bond issue, using $800 million of these funds to pay down the outstanding revolving credit facility. Spirit has also cut its dividend to a negligible $0.01/share and suspended all share buybacks. After these transactions (and the merger payouts), Spirit stands with a cash position of roughly $1.3 billion (as of April 30) along with the $800 million in revolver capacity, which CEO Gentile says the company plans not to use. Note that Spirit’s debt covenants require the firm to keep $1 billion in cash on the balance sheet, at all times. Spirit burned more than $360 million in cash in Q1 and guides for a total of $600-700 million in cash burn for FY 2020. Despite these eye-popping figures, Gentile maintains “We believe we have an adequate liquidity position to survive the crisis.” We are less confident than management, understanding that the reduced air travel schedule, Boeing’s partial shutdown of production, and continued problems with the 737 Max program, suggest that worldwide jet orders could take a significant number of quarters to recover to previous levels.

Spirit management has taken this opportunity to make some long-term focused changes to the business. First, SPR has taken advantage of a reduced production schedule to complete long-planned optimization projects, such as automation of some production facilities. The other issue SPR is addressing now is to work on shifting revenue mix more to the defense side of aerospace. Spirit has delivered more than 20% growth in its defense business over the past year and the slowdown in commercial business allows the company to bid more aggressively for Defense Department business. Currently defense makes up roughly 15% of business, according to CEO Gentile, but management desires to get this portion of the revenue mix north of 40% as soon as possible. Presumably, Spirit desires to diversify business away from struggling Boeing and management believes its low-cost manufacturing and design capabilities provide a strong value proposition for defense customers. We are in agreement with management that a quick shift to defense manufacturing would add stability to the business and help defray significant fixed costs associated with this company.

Our view is that Spirit management has made all the right moves to respond to the double-barreled crises it faces in the 737 Max grounding and COVID. Where we differ with the picture management paints here is whether this is a

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problem that these actions can sufficiently address to keep the lights on at Spirit. In our reading of the company’s materials, the assumption appears to be that things will be back to relatively normal in 2021. This is where we part ways with Spirit management: through our reading of American Airlines’ and Delta Airlines’ recent filings, there is little reason to expect normality by the end of 2020. Both airlines appeared to indicate that they will be proceeding slowly in terms of purchasing additional aircraft and explicitly stated that previously agreed delivery dates have been pushed out into the future, as they seek to preserve cash amidst a near total interruption of revenues. If this is the case across the industry, Boeing’s suppliers (like Spirit) will bear the brunt of these deferred deliveries.

Granted, Spirit has done a good job of dialing back variable costs and the prospect of additional defense contracts is enticing. We must also consider that defense spending could decrease in the near to medium term as governments around the world face fiscal trouble. The Q1 cash burn is troubling and we do not share management’s optimism that it will end after Q2 2020. Asset coverage is less than 1x and equity cushion is light here, especially considering the relatively low enterprise value under $4 billion. On the positive side, Spirit faces just $600 million in maturities from here until 2023 and was just able to tap the capital markets for that secured 7.5% in the month of April 2020.

Against this backdrop, our view is that Spirit’s near-term future is very much up in the air (no pun intended!) The liquidity profile is encouraging (nearly $2 billion in liquidity at present) but our concern comes from the considerable cash burn that we struggle to see stopping without a successful resolution both to the 737 Max problem and the Coronavirus. Our view is that the safer play may be to invest in the 2025 secured issue, particularly considering that Spirit has additional secured capacity that, if tapped, would further disadvantage holders of the unsecured debt. With a YTM that rivals that of the 2028 unsecured, that bond appears a better opportunity. With the next few quarters so uncertain, we think these bonds could potentially trade lower than where they are today and it may be worth waiting to see how Q2 looks before taking a plunge. Therefore, we give SPR bonds a priority score of ‘2’ at this time.

◼ Debt Ratios 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 DEBT/EQUITY 0.17 0.15 0.12 0.25 0.40 DEBT/ENTERPRISE VALUE 0.16 0.15 0.11 0.22 0.37 TOTAL DEBT (IN MILLIONS $) 1134 1087 1151 1895 3083 ◼ Credit Data 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 REVENUE (MILLIONS USD) 6644 6793 6983 7222 7863 EBITDA (MILLIONS USD) 1064 1073 1139 1086 1045 DEBT/EBITDA 1.06 1.01 1.01 1.74 2.90 DEBT/EBIT 1.28 1.26 1.24 2.22 3.89 INTEREST COVERAGE 21.46 18.72 27.31 13.58 11.37 ASSET COVERAGE 4.65 4.53 4.15 2.70 2.27 FREE CASH FLOW (MILLIONS USD) 102.2 201.4 192.4 206.0 90.7

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◼ Yield Data5 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 OPTION ADJUSTED SPREAD (BPS) N/A N/A N/A 253 189 YIELD TO MATURITY (BPS) N/A N/A N/A 520 377 SPREAD PER TURN LEVERAGE N/A N/A N/A 2.99 1.30 ◼ Equity Data 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 STOCK PRICE ($/SHARE) 50.07 58.35 87.25 72.01 72.88 MARKET CAP (MILLIONS USD) 6789 7095 9981 7597 7645 SHARES OUTSTANDING (MILLIONS) 135.6 121.6 114.4 105.5 104.9 ◼ 3-Year CAGRs (measured from end FY 2017 to end FY 2019) Revenue EBITDA Interest Expense Total Debt FCF +6.11% -4.22% +48.45% +63.66% -31.34%

5 Offer date of 2028 notes was 5/22/2018

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◼ Capital Structure (as of end Q1 2020)

Note: FactSet offers a potentially more accurate snapshot of the debt profile at the present time, incorporating both the $1.2 billion capital raise in April 2020, along with the $800 million in revolver paydown.

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