Amentum Holdings, Inc.

Amentum Holdings, Inc.

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 12, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning and welcome to Amentum's second quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call.

Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode.

After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be provided at that time. I would like to turn the call over to Joseph DeNardi, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

Please go ahead, sir.

Joseph DeNardi

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We hope you've had an opportunity to read our earnings release, which we issued yesterday afternoon and is posted on our Investor Relations website.

We have also provided presentation slides to facilitate today's call, let's move to slide 2. Please note that this morning's discussion will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated.

I refer you to our SEC filings for a discussion of these factors, including the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K. The statements represent our views as of today, and subsequent events may cause our views to change.

We may elect to update the forward-looking statements at some point in the future, but specifically disclaim any obligation to do so, except as required by applicable law. In addition, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors.

Both our earnings release and supplemental presentation slides include reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures. We do not provide reconciliations of forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures due to the inherent difficulty in forecasting and quantifying certain significant items.

These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. Our safe harbor statement included on this slide should be incorporated as part of any transcript of this call.

With me today to discuss our business and financial results are John Heller, Chief Executive Officer, and Travis Johnson, Chief Financial Officer. We are also joined by other members of management, including Steve Arnette, Chief Operating Officer.

With that, moving to slide 3, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to our CEO, John Heller.

John Heller

Thank you, Joe, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I want to begin today's call by recognizing the incredible work our employees do every day in support of our customers around the world.

Their dedication, technical expertise, and innovation are what enable us to consistently deliver for our customers in the moments that matter most. In particular, I want to recognize our teams in the Middle East and the families who support them.

In these environments, our employees are working side by side with our customers to deliver reliable outcomes in high-consequence missions. Their safety and well-being remain our top priority, and we greatly appreciate what they do for Amentum and our country.

I also want to congratulate NASA, our Amentum employees, and other industry partners on the successful Artemis II mission, an extraordinary achievement that represents the very best of human ingenuity and perseverance. The success of Artemis II showcases our multi-decade relationship as a trusted partner to NASA, where we look forward to continuing to deliver the engineering, innovation, operational excellence, and mission-critical performance required to advance NASA's long-term goals.

Now, let's turn to second quarter performance. Amentum delivered another period of solid results across all key metrics and continued momentum in business development, with strong net bookings and robust submit activity.

Financial performance highlights, which Travis will cover in more detail shortly, include: revenue of $3.5 billion, reflecting normalized growth of 3%; adjusted EBITDA of $275 million, with solid margins of 7.9%; adjusted diluted earnings per share of 60 cents, up 13% year-over-year; and free cash flow of $220 million. Turning to slide 4, execution of our growth strategy continues to translate into tangible results.

We delivered net bookings of $4 billion, resulting in a quarterly and last-12-months book-to-bill of 1.2 times, and ending backlog of nearly $48 billion, up 7% from the prior-year quarter and an all-time high for Amentum. Our funded backlog was $6.9 billion, reflecting a 20% year-over-year increase.

We also continue to see robust demand across our diverse end markets, with over $20 billion in first-half submits, putting us on track to exceed our fiscal year 2026 target of $35 billion. In addition, we ended the quarter with $26 billion in proposals awaiting award, with approximately 65% being new business to Amentum.

With that, let me highlight a few notable second quarter awards. First, Great British Nuclear awarded a 14-year, $406 million contract to an Amentum-led joint venture to deliver advanced solutions in support of the commissioning of small modular reactors, or SMRs, in the United Kingdom.

This award reinforces our position as a trusted partner in complex nuclear programs and our role in supporting the global expansion of nuclear capacity. Also within our nuclear portfolio, the European Commission Joint Research Centre awarded an Amentum-led joint venture a 2-year, $112 million contract to provide decommissioning and waste management solutions.

In aviation, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CAL FIRE, awarded Amentum a 5-year, $425 million contract. This program will be delivered in an outcomes-based model, leveraging predictive analytics and data-driven tools to optimize fleet sustainment, reduce downtime, and streamline supply chain and repair cycles.

In our intelligence portfolio, Amentum was awarded multiple contracts totaling over $300 million, which align with national security priorities and will deliver a range of innovative, mission-focused solutions. Finally, in our Critical Digital Infrastructure accelerating growth market, Amentum received over $600 million in awards to provide advanced engineering and technology solutions to a broad range of telecom, hyperscaler, and national security customers.

Under these agreements, Amentum will deploy advanced wireless networks, expand secure connectivity solutions, and retrofit legacy data centers to support AI-driven workloads. These awards reflect the alignment of our portfolio with enduring drivers of demand across defense, commercial, and global energy markets.

Looking ahead domestically, we are encouraged by the president's government fiscal year '27 budget request and see alignment with key priorities, including enhancement of capabilities in readiness and deterrence, space, missile defense, and counter-UAS, just to name a few. We are also seeing sustained momentum across international markets, particularly in nuclear, alongside strong commercial demand driven by AI and digital infrastructure.

Turning to our growth framework on slide 5, as demonstrated by this quarter's awards, we remain steadfast in driving performance in our core markets. At the same time, we are strategically positioned to capitalize on accelerating growth in emerging markets.

Over the past two quarters, we've highlighted our Global Nuclear Energy and Space Systems & Technologies markets, both of which continue to represent substantial opportunities for Amentum. Today, we will focus on Critical Digital Infrastructure, or CDI, and how we are strategically positioned to benefit from this rapidly evolving area.

Moving to slide 6, you can see that CDI is a large and growing market with multi-decade tailwinds driven by increasing demand for AI, data, and mission-critical applications in both commercial and government environments. In particular, data center demand, which is expected to grow 29% annually, is increasing requirements for compute, power, and connectivity.

At the same time, global mobile data traffic is expected to quadruple in the coming years and is driving the need for scalable low-latency networks. Finally, at the edge, where the market is expected to grow 36% annually through 2030, there is an expanding need for distributed compute and real-time processing.

Taken together, these trends are creating a unique and expanding set of opportunities for companies like Amentum who offer integrated infrastructure solutions across data centers, networks, and edge environments. With that, let's turn to slide 7 to discuss how Amentum is well positioned to capitalize on this demand and help enable advancement in connectivity in the new AI and digitally driven world.

In CDI, Amentum focuses on three primary areas. First, in smart commercial infrastructure and data centers, Amentum supports the full lifecycle, from engineering and design through development and construction to operations, maintenance, and ongoing optimization, including power, cooling, controls, and automation solutions to enhance performance and efficiency.

In the front end, an example where we have seen recent increasing demand is the work we do to support hyperscalers in retrofitting legacy data centers for AI workloads, where Amentum brings differentiated expertise, positioning us for follow-on work as capacity expands. Beyond data centers, Amentum provides innovative solutions to several marquee Fortune 500 companies in areas such as advanced manufacturing to maximize uptime in mission-critical settings.

Second, in next-generation digital connectivity, we engineer, design, and deploy large-scale networks, including wireless and fiber infrastructure, enabling secure, real-time data movement across complex environments. Amentum's offerings span from supporting major telecom providers with national 5G deployments to more regional efforts, such as supporting state transportation departments with deployment of fiber-optic networks for connected vehicle systems, traffic management, and public safety communications.

Third, in cyber and network defense, we embed security across all of our solutions while also delivering standalone capabilities in highly sensitive conditions. Our differentiation lies in our ability to secure both IT and operational technology environments, protecting not only data, but the physical systems that underpin critical infrastructure.

For example, we support intelligence community customers through advanced systems engineering and modeling capabilities to assess vulnerabilities, secure facilities, and prepare for both cyber and physical threats. In aggregate, these areas represent a significant addressable market for Amentum, which is expected to grow 10% or more annually over the next several years.

When combined with our other accelerating growth markets, Global Nuclear Energy and Space Systems & Technologies, Amentum has over $4 billion in annual revenue at accretive margins aligned with end markets expected to see significant long-term growth. We believe the value of this aspect of our portfolio is particularly underappreciated by the market.

Our focus as a leadership team is to invest and execute to capture this opportunity and maximize long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Travis.

Travis Johnson

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to discuss with you today Amentum's second quarter financial results, which reflect underlying growth across all key metrics and a notable rebound in cash flow.

I will also cover the successful enhancement of our capital structure after quarter-end and our views on performance for the remainder of the year. Building on John's remarks, our second quarter performance, the business development results in particular, reflect the continued strength of our execution, disciplined operational focus, and measurable progress against our strategic and financial priorities.

With that, let's begin with an overview of our financial performance on slide 8. Revenue in the second quarter totaled $3.5 billion, reflecting underlying growth of 3%, as the impact from joint venture transitions and divestitures previously discussed was positively offset by the ramp-up of new contract awards and our accelerating growth markets.

Adjusted EBITDA of $275 million benefited from a 20 basis point year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA margins to 7.9%. The continued margin improvement represents tangible progress on our strategic focus to prioritize higher-margin work and realize benefits from our cost synergy initiatives.

Adjusted diluted earnings per share of 60 cents was up 13% from a year ago as a result of the strong operational performance and lower interest expense from our debt reduction initiatives. Moving to our reportable segment results on slide 9.

Digital Solutions delivered revenue of $1.5 billion, representing 10% growth driven by the continued ramp-up of new contract awards in our Critical Digital Infrastructure and Space Systems & Technologies markets. Adjusted EBITDA of $105 million was slightly lower year-over-year due to the fiscal year '25 divestiture, timing factors related to new program starts, and higher net write-ups in the prior-year quarter.

These impacts were partially offset by the higher revenue volume, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margins of 7.2%. Turning to Global Engineering Solutions, revenue was $2 billion, reflecting impacts from the JV transitions, the divestiture, and the expected ramp-down of certain historical programs, all of which were partially offset by contributions from new contract awards.

Adjusted EBITDA of $170 million benefited from a 100 basis point year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA margins to 8.5%. The strong performance in the quarter was driven by continued focus on higher-margin growth opportunities, including more fixed-price work and disciplined program execution.

Now turning to slide 10 to cover our cash flow and capital structure highlights. Free cash flow in the second quarter totaled $220 million and benefited from the recovery of collections consistent with our remarks on the first quarter earnings call.

First-half free cash flow of $78 million is in line with our expectations and puts us on track to meet our full-year free cash flow guidance. From a capital structure perspective, in the weeks after quarter-end, leveraging our improving financial profile, we took deliberate action to enhance the structure and terms of our debt.

We issued a new $1.4 billion Term Loan A facility and utilized the proceeds to pay down and reprice our Term Loan B. We also increased our revolving credit capacity to $1 billion.

These actions, coupled with benefits from the Moody's rating upgrade in December, have reduced our weighted average cost of debt by approximately 50 basis points and strengthened our overall capital structure, as we remain on track to achieve net leverage below 3 times by the end of the fiscal year, enabling greater financial flexibility and opportunistic deployment. On slide 11, let's now turn to our fiscal year 2026 full-year outlook.

As a result of our first-half performance, continued business development momentum, and with 97% of revenues expected to come from existing and recompete business, we are reaffirming our fiscal year '26 guidance. We continue to expect revenues in the range of $13.95 to $14.3 billion, adjusted EBITDA between $1.1 and $1.14 billion, adjusted diluted earnings per share between $2.25 and $2.45, and free cash flow between $525 and $575 million.

From a timing perspective, we expect approximately 48% of remaining revenue and profit in our third quarter and a sequential increase in the fourth quarter, which benefits from an additional working day, the timing of already funded project work, and contributions from new awards. Further, we expect cash flow will follow normal seasonality, with the majority generated in the fourth quarter as a result of payroll timing and strong collections given our alignment with the government fiscal year-end.

Wrapping up on slide 12, our first-half performance reflects disciplined execution, continued growth, and sustained demand across the business. As a result, we are well positioned to deliver on our fiscal year '26 objectives and remain focused on driving long-term value for our customers, employees, and shareholders.

With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone.

You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. If you would like to withdraw from the polling process, please press star then the number two.

If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure to lift your handset before pressing any keys. We will be taking one question and one follow-up per participant.

Your first question comes from the line of Greg Parrish from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Greg Parrish

Hey, guys. Good morning.

Congrats on the quarter. Great to be on the call here with you.

John Heller

Thanks, Greg. Good morning, thanks.

Greg Parrish

Morning. I wanted to talk about bookings strength.

Really good quarter for bookings, up sequentially, up meaningfully from last year. Appreciate the slide on the wins; seemed pretty broad-based.

I guess maybe just help us with the second half award environment. Do you expect bookings to continue to trend higher sequentially?

How should we think about bookings in the second half?

John Heller

No. Just taking a step back, Amentum really had a strong second quarter, but overall the company continues to execute at a very high level all across our portfolio.

The solid bookings with book-to-bill, LTM book-to-bill—so it's not just the quarter, but really LTM—1.2 times, 1.3 on an imputed basis if you include our joint ventures. Our backlog is strong, and really demand is being driven by these long-term secular trends in AI, data, national security that we touched on that are driving our accelerating growth markets.

At the same time, our core business continues to lead and perform well and generate strong free cash flow. That's another area of excitement in the overall portfolio.

If you look at performance today, we mentioned bids greater than $20 billion thus far, we set out a goal of bidding $35 billion-plus this year after bidding approximately $35 billion last year. We're well on track to do that.

Given the scale of our business, the end-to-end capabilities, we're winning our fair share, right? We have the capabilities our customers need to perform their mission, whether it's in our accelerating growth markets of Space Systems & Technologies, and Global Nuclear Energy, or CDI, or in our core markets.

We really think our growth rates stand up and will continue to be consistent. With our bidding focus and kind of feeling strong that we're going to bid over $35 billion this year, we think our book-to-bill can remain at the levels that we've been doing consistently since the first day we came out as a public company.

We feel pretty good about where the business looks from a new business and recompete win standpoint for the second half of the year. Think about a lot of what we're doing thus far this year is really focused on '27.

If we can have a good bidding year this year, it sets us up for success in '27 as well.

Greg Parrish

Great. Fantastic color.

Thank you. Maybe just to click on margin here, Engineering specifically, and how it expanded even further in the quarter.

I think last quarter benefited a little bit from the government shutdown, maybe we thought there would be a little bit of a step-down. I think you called out focusing on higher-margin work, fixed price as well.

Is there any timing or one-time things to think about in the quarter, or is this the right level to think about the second half for Engineering margin?

Travis Johnson

Greg, really pleased with the continued strong margin performance in our Global Engineering Solutions business specifically. Just to dive a little bit deeper to expand on what I said in the prepared remarks, it is a mix of things that are driving it, most of which we believe to be sustainable.

Certainly we're going to have the timing of program write-ups and performance from quarter to quarter that could vary a little bit, but it's more fundamental what we're seeing in that business. We mentioned our focus to continue to prioritize and go after higher-margin work.

Obviously, we view fixed-price work as a potential to be accretive, and that's been part of our strategy since we came out with our margin expansion initiatives at Capital Markets Day back in August of 2024. We are seeing a higher mix of fixed-price work, and we're starting to see the customer in some areas where they would have traditionally procured on a cost-plus basis, procuring on a T&M or fixed-price basis.

You'll see that in our contract mix statistics in the 10-Q that's going to come out later today. We welcome that.

Obviously, the recent executive order is another example of where the customer is looking to do more of that. We'll continue to work with them to support that initiative as well.

Then also we're seeing strong performance from our joint ventures. The equity income is a little bit higher this quarter than it was in the second quarter of last year.

That's also driving some of the margin expansion. Then obviously disciplined program execution, as we mentioned.

Then you're really starting to see the fruits of all the efforts we put into our cost synergy initiatives flow through the P&L. A lot of good activity really driving that 100 basis point improvement that you saw year-over-year.

Operator

Okay. Thanks very much.

Your next question comes from the line of Tobey Sommer from Truist. Please go ahead.

Tobey Sommer

Thank you. As we think about your underlying rate of growth and this year, and dovetail some of the better growth you're seeing in the growth areas that you've highlighted, are there any other puts and takes that you would point us to at this point as we think about growth in fiscal '27 and '28?

Travis Johnson

Hey, Tobey. I'll start, and then John can add, or Steve, as well.

The midpoint of our guidance for FY '26 implies normalized growth, if you account for the joint venture transitions, the divestitures, and obviously we had an extra week in the fourth quarter, of 3%. We had the impact from the government shutdown in the first quarter, so that's roughly an additional percent.

We're at underlying growth of roughly 4% at the midpoint of our guidance. That's exactly where we thought we would be at this point in our journey of bringing the merger together and going public, and our long-term growth objectives of a 4% to 6% CAGR by FY '28.

Then obviously in John's prepared remarks and what he said in response to the first question and how we feel about the growth trajectory of the business and what we're seeing in performance there in terms of a 1.2 book-to-bill on a LTM basis, and how we view the second half of the year setting up with over $26 billion worth of awards pending, in roughly two-thirds of that being new business to Amentum, we certainly are excited about what the potential could be headed into '27 and '28. We'll obviously have to see how the pending awards get adjudicated and see how '27 progresses, but certainly look forward to keeping you updated there.

John Heller

I would say just our strategy in general, and a lot of it, we're just the company at the right time in many respects. We have the strength in the accelerating growth markets that we've talked a lot about, and AI is driving demand for electricity, driving data center expansion, network infrastructure.

The other side, and you said are there any things that are popping up, well, the defense budget increase, we didn't necessarily see that coming when we go back a year and a half. It's aligned really well with strength areas in our core markets as well.

You think of readiness, the budget request is proposing a 20% increase from 2026. That really aligns well with areas like platform sustainment, training, logistics, where Amentum is really strong and the leader in the market.

Second, space and missile defense, where our work with Missile Defense Agency, Space Force, Air Force aligned really well if we see continued expansion of investment in those areas. Then finally, really in the drone, counter-UAV, counter-drone technologies, where the budget request has approximately $70 billion earmarked to expanded investment in those areas.

Amentum has been for decades a leader in helping develop and sustain the unmanned, and now counter-unmanned technologies. You think of contested logistics and tactical operations that unmanned technology could support that just aligns extremely well with Amentum's core markets.

We both believe our core markets are at the right place, our accelerating markets have great tailwinds that can provide the future growth that we've been talking about.

Tobey Sommer

Thank you. I was wondering to dovetail and build on that, if you could comment on what you're seeing in your NASA customer, as well as how you see the company applying capital proactively to shape and accelerate growth as you reach your leverage target in just a couple of months or quarters?

Steve Arnette

Hi, Tobey. I'll take the NASA question, and Travis may want to chime in on the second part of your follow-up.

We're right now still very thrilled about, John mentioned in his prepared remarks, the outcome of the Artemis II mission. That was a great achievement not only for our Amentum team in partnership with NASA, but the nation, thinking about the first crewed mission in more than 50 years to send our astronauts out beyond the Moon and return them safely.

Truly a banner day. Really even getting beyond Artemis II, and our teams are already working on processing hardware for Artemis III.

If you think about it, the overriding priority, credit to the National Space Policy formulated by President Trump and Administrator Isaacman with a laser focus on achieving the goals of the National Space Policy, which will take us back to the Moon to stay and prepare us to venture forward on to Mars. We're very excited about the campaign of upcoming Artemis missions, there's a lot to be excited about there.

There is, as you may be referring to, the NASA workforce directive, where they've taken a strategic decision that they need to incrementally insource some expertise to expand their core capabilities. We are, of course, working with NASA to understand their objectives and certainly understand how will impact our Amentum portfolio of contracts and programs where we're supporting NASA.

Based on the discussions we've had, the indicative input that we've received thus far, we believe the impact to FY '26 will really be immaterial. We do think that for FY '27, as we estimate an approximately 1% impact to revenue in '27, the impact to EBITDA would be a little bit smaller than that.

Given the modest impact that we see, this really does not change our excitement about the go-forward trajectory for Amentum.

Travis Johnson

Then on the second part of that question, Tobey, I guess building on John's remarks and really he touched on what we're seeing from a growth perspective. I touched a little bit on the margin expansion trajectory that we're on, and both of those being on track where we thought we would be.

The one area that I'll just add to that is on free cash flow. Obviously, what we've been able to do from a deleveraging perspective to date is accelerated relative to what we initially thought bringing the companies together and going public.

Then recently, obviously this quarter, what we were able to do from a refinancing perspective will only further benefit that and our ability to generate free cash flow at a growth rate of 10% or greater from now to FY '28. That puts us in a good point to your question on capital deployment, right?

We're really looking forward to getting to that place where we achieve our net leverage target of less than 3 times by the end of this year. Obviously, we should be in the high 2s based on the trajectory that we're on.

We're committed to maintaining a prudent capital structure that will allow us to deploy capital in a flexible and opportunistic way. We'll evaluate the options as that comes up, whether it's high return on investment organic opportunities, accretive M&A, it could be continued debt reduction, or a capital return to shareholders when we think the share price is trading below its intrinsic value.

All that said, our goal will be to look at things to make sure that we're maximizing free cash flow per share and delivering strong compounding returns for our shareholders.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andre Madrid from BTIG. Please go ahead.

Ned Morgan

Hey, good morning. This is actually Ned Morgan on for Andre.

I saw Japan is investing $40 billion in SMR development in the US. I was just wondering, are you guys positioned to benefit from this funding at all?

John Heller

There's a lot going on really in the US nuclear market, and we're real excited about the activity that this administration has been really focused on building partnerships that bring capital in from various sources to help support these types of projects. The money that you're talking about and the potential investment is targeted for a pretty significant project that we are in discussions with multiple of these opportunities throughout the US.

Many of them involve SMR technologies and SMR vendors. You can imagine with our expertise and things like the partnership with Rolls-Royce, where we are supporting both large gigawatt construction and engineering and design to SMR development across Europe, we're one of the key partners here in the US that has that capability given the lack of really progress in nuclear over the last 30 years.

Amentum brings a scale of capability in the US that is practically unmatched. Not only that, it's real.

We have a history of supporting nuclear projects that really our competitors don't have that hands-on experience that are new builds. We're excited about that project in particular, but many others that are being contemplated in the US.

I think I've mentioned this last quarter, say it again, the progress is continuing, and we fully expect in the second half of this year going into '27, we are going to see a number of projects come to light and really get the funding and the support and the partnerships come together that enable these projects to move forward from design and kind of theoretical to actual practical construction and moving forward in the second half of this year into '27.

Ned Morgan

Got it. Then another, just on Digital Solutions margins.

I know there's some new start work there, specifically within space, that Space Force Range contract. How should we think about the margins of that moving forward as the program kind of ramps, and where DS margins will trend throughout the year?

Travis Johnson

Thanks, Ned. The Digital Solutions segment obviously had a really nice quarter and a nice year-to-date performance on revenue growth.

It had 10% reported growth in the second quarter and bring that to 8.0% year-to-date. Nice growth in that segment.

Obviously, when you're growing that fast and you're ramping up new programs—we have a couple new program starts: one is in our space business, but another one's in our Critical Digital Infrastructure business—it's not uncommon for margins to start off more modest and grow over time. That's certainly what we expect on those programs that are ramping up, and that obviously is contributing to what you're seeing in the Digital Solutions margin dynamics this quarter and year-to-date.

The other element there just to mention is the timing of program write-ups. Those can vary from quarter to quarter, but over any kind of normalized period, say over a year, they're kind of steady, right?

While the performance was more modest this quarter and year-to-date in Digital Solutions, we do expect over time that there's opportunity for margin expansion. For the rest of this year, I'd say we expect it to be relatively consistent with first-half performance, and then going FY '27 and beyond is when those programs will get into full year and other initiatives that we're running from a margin expansion perspective will start to benefit the segment.

Ned Morgan

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Trevor Walsh from Citizens Bank. Please go ahead.

Ethan Frost

Hi, guys. It's Ethan Frost on for Trevor.

I was wondering on the CDI opportunity, can you give a rough long-term sense of how that customer mix could develop between commercial and government customers?

Steve Arnette

Maybe I'll start, and John, Travis may want to add context. I guess the first point I would start with is that we are not a new entrant into this market.

This is a business that we've been building for more than a decade, and maybe just from a historical context, I'll focus for a second on kind of the communication to telecom part of the market. It's a part of the business that we've been growing for really, as I mentioned, more than a decade.

We're excited about that business because structurally it really gives us some advantages. If you think about, first of all, what we do, it's really helping some of the major telcos to be able to match capacity to demand.

Whether it's 4G, 5G, our teams are even beginning to work with 6G, being able to diagnose where additional capacity is needed, to engineer and even to deploy that capacity to enable a stable system performance and reaction to dynamic demand. We're really proud to kind of partner in that critical aspect of their businesses and really be a key partner kind of the core business there.

That business has continued to grow, and it's really concentrated, if you think about it, in the population centers of our nation: Eastern Seaboard, West Coast, Chicago, the major cities where we're helping to solution those. It really gives us a structural advantage from the Critical Digital Infrastructure standpoint, and that we have this geographically distributed teams that are there ready to be able to design, integrate, and deploy these solutions that we can shift that capacity to work with data centers and these other types of projects.

The telecom is a little bit of a foundational piece, and now we're growing that business into other areas. John, maybe you want to comment on the data center part.

John Heller

Just in terms of the growth area, we talked about Critical Digital Infrastructure, the demand is being driven by long-term trends, primarily the rapid scaling of AI and data workloads. We actually have a slide in there in our presentation where we showed where that demand is driving.

It's really in the edge AI markets. If you think of all the applications that are being developed right now, it's accelerating rapidly, as you know.

Businesses and consumers of AI tools are using and driving the demand into the data traffic that Steve just mentioned, which kind of drives the telcos to build out more infrastructure, and then it's driving the need for more data center computing power that can process the AI tools, the edge AI products. That's our focus is really in supporting the telco capability, that infrastructure to transmit that data, and then the computing power, helping the hyperscalers build out the data center capability by using capabilities that we've had for decades and working for government, our ability to bring the engineering and the technical resources to help upgrade and deliver expanded data center capability.

For us, it's not expanding our capability, it's just leveraging strong capability that we've had for decades because you have this unbelievable demand being created by AI. The final piece is, we have the transmit piece, we have the data center piece, but we also have the cybersecurity piece because all of this data creates immense risk, and you need cyber capability to secure networks, identify threats, and respond when you have problems.

These are things that we've been doing for our government customers and continue to do that we can bring to commercial enterprises to help them as the AI demand increases and really creates risk exposure. We're pretty excited about all three of these areas and the growth that they can represent for Amentum going forward.

Ethan Frost

Great. Then just one quick one in terms of using the existing experience in space, is there any crossover with just telecom and network communication moving into orbit?

Is there a way to capture that opportunity as well?

Steve Arnette

It's a great concept, and we actually are very much seeing that come to life. Just building on kind of the examples John talked about there with Critical Digital Infrastructure, it's interesting how much of our expertise truly is dual-use.

It's critical to the national security missions with government customers, as well as the commercial mission. Kind of an example we were thinking about the other day is there's so much acceleration and activity in the government customer space trying to better utilize 5G and some of the, I'll say, elaborate capabilities of 5G in government missions, which heretofore has been primarily a commercial venture.

We're very much taking advantage of that dual-use. Then the other thing I would say is that government has always been a leader in terms of data security and cybersecurity, IT, OT, those kinds of things.

Increasingly, as John alluded, commercial networks, commercial applications increasingly interested in operational technology cyber and these kinds of things. We very much see that it crosses between government and commercial applications.

To your point, with the space communication, there's so much work going on in the government national security space, and we certainly work with customers like the Missile Defense Agency, Space Force to kind of pioneer next-generation ground-space communications to be more efficient, more rapid, take latency out of the system. Some of those exact expertise areas will absolutely crossover into future commercial applications as you really build out this data center core, connect, and edge, and all that has to work more efficiently.

There's a true convergence there. Very much appreciate the question.

Ethan Frost

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Your last question comes from the line of Kevin Liu from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Kevin Liu

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on the strong quarter.

As you guys look at your portfolio today, obviously you guys have done a few divestitures over recent quarters. Where are you guys today in terms of further portfolio pruning, or how do you look at your portfolio today?

Do you see any other opportunities to divest and get rid of non-core work?

John Heller

We've been really happy with the overall portfolio over the last 18 months. Our book-to-bill has been very strong.

We've seen opportunities in our core markets, and these emerging accelerating growth markets really settling in and starting to deliver on what the expectation is there. Of course, we're always going to look strategically at where the real key growth drivers are, where we can drive margin expansion, and will assess different parts of our portfolio, and are they all aligned to our strategic objectives?

What I would say is we do normal strategic planning process, we brief to the board actually later this year, closer to September. That's just part of the review that we would do is looking at the overall portfolio, looking at what's happening in our growth areas, where are the strong tailwinds, and are there opportunities to shape the portfolio that would help drive investment in markets that we think have greater growth potential, greater potential to drive margin.

I think that's just a normal evaluation that happens in the normal strategic planning process that we'll go through this year. Overall, thus far, we've been pretty happy with the entire portfolio and what it's doing.

Kevin Liu

Great. I'll leave it at one.

Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call.

Thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect.