L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Cai von Rumohr from Cowen and Company. Please proceed, sir.

Cai von Rumohr -- Cowen and Company

Yes. Terrific quarter. Could you give us an update on where you were with the Coast Guard recompete and what you have in your model for the year?

Michael Strianese

Yes. Forgot about it?

Ralph D’Ambrosio

Sure, well, Mike gave the updates on the – what’s happening with the recompetition and that the RFP was amended and we are going to submit our bid I guess along with others by August 6^th. In terms of the, what JOG is in our full year guidance, it’s unchanged from where it was last time. And if you recall, I said it was going to contribute about $400 million to sales and about $0.14 to EPS. So that remains unchanged. Given the timing on the recompete and the protest, it looks like we are going to have JOG for most of this year, at least for most of Q3.

Cai von Rumohr -- Cowen and Company

Okay. And I apologize because I was on another call. Could you give us some color, the book-to-bill was lower than it’s been in terms of how much of that was timing and how much of that you might catch up later on?

Ralph D’Ambrosio

Sure. So, I will give you some of the larger items. Number one is the JOG contract. And we are doing a little more than $100 million a year -- $100 million a quarter on that contract and given the status of the competition, we are running off backlog. So, orders in Q2 were below sales by $112 million pm JOG and about $200 million for the first half. So, that’s probably the biggest single item.

Another item was the timing of the JCA orders. If you recall, we booked $200 million in the first quarter of this year. We had no orders for Q2 and we had $112 million in Q2 of 2008. So, that’s another big timing item.

I talked about the change in contract vehicle on that army contract, the fact that our test orders are going to a prime and they are – what they are doing is they are dribbling out orders to us. That’s causing about $85 million reduction in orders.

Mike mentioned the slips in the simulation device business. That’s about $70 million. It pertains to AVCATT for Australia and the F-16 Pakistan contract. We are sole-sourced on those jobs. We are just waiting for the funding to be resolved.

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