Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc's Suppliers Performance

The national aerospace supply base continues to consolidate due to economic, environmental, and marketplace circumstances beyond our control. The loss of key qualified suppliers of technologies, components, and materials can cause significant disruption to our program performance and cost.
Availability of raw materials and supplies has been generally sufficient. We sometimes are dependent, for a variety of reasons, upon sole-source or qualified suppliers and have, in some instances in the past, experienced difficulties meeting production and delivery obligations because of delays in delivery or reliance on such suppliers. We closely monitor sources of supply to ensure adequate raw materials and other supplies needed in our manufacturing processes are available. Further, as a U.S. government contractor, we are often required to procure materials from certain suppliers capable of meeting rigorous customer and government specifications. As market conditions change for these companies, they often discontinue materials with low sales volumes or profit margins. We are often forced to either qualify new materials or pay higher prices to maintain the supply. Although we have been successful in establishing replacement materials and securing customer funding to address specific qualification needs of the programs, we may be unable to continue to do so.

The supply of ammonium perchlorate, a principal raw material used in solid propellant, is limited to a domestic independent single source that supplies the majority of the domestic solid propellant industry and actual pricing is based on the total industry demand. The completion of the Space Shuttle Program reduced demand, resulting in significant unit price increases. In the majority of our contracts, we anticipated this price increase and incorporated abnormal escalation pricing language into our proposals and contracts.

We are also impacted, as is the rest of the industry, by fluctuations in the sustained availability, prices and lead-times of raw materials used in production on various fixed-price contracts, particularly on multi-year programs. We continue to experience volatility in the price and lead-times of certain commodity metals, electronic components, and constituent chemicals. Additionally, we may not be able to continue to negotiate with our customers for economic and/or price adjustment clauses tied to obsolete materials and commodity indices to reduce program impact. The DoD also continues to rigorously enforce the provisions of the “Berry Amendment” which imposes a requirement to procure certain strategic materials critical to national security only from U.S. sources. While availability has not been a significant issue, cost remains a concern as this industry continues to quote “price in effect” at time of shipment terms, increasing the cost risk to our programs. An emerging challenge to the extended supply chain is the NASA/FAR requirements to comply with stringent cyber security regulations that may influence the cost of materials and services on U.S. government contracts. We are actively working to identify these costs to obtain protection in our contracts.

The national aerospace supply base continues to consolidate due to economic, environmental, and marketplace circumstances beyond our control. The loss of key qualified suppliers of technologies, components, and materials can cause significant disruption to our program performance and cost.
Availability of raw materials and supplies has been generally sufficient. We sometimes are dependent, for a variety of reasons, upon sole-source or qualified suppliers and have, in some instances in the past, experienced difficulties meeting production and delivery obligations because of delays in delivery or reliance on such suppliers. We closely monitor sources of supply to ensure adequate raw materials and other supplies needed in our manufacturing processes are available. Further, as a U.S. government contractor, we are often required to procure materials from certain suppliers capable of meeting rigorous customer and government specifications. As market conditions change for these companies, they often discontinue materials with low sales volumes or profit margins. We are often forced to either qualify new materials or pay higher prices to maintain the supply. Although we have been successful in establishing replacement materials and securing customer funding to address specific qualification needs of the programs, we may be unable to continue to do so.

The supply of ammonium perchlorate, a principal raw material used in solid propellant, is limited to a domestic independent single source that supplies the majority of the domestic solid propellant industry and actual pricing is based on the total industry demand. The completion of the Space Shuttle Program reduced demand, resulting in significant unit price increases. In the majority of our contracts, we anticipated this price increase and incorporated abnormal escalation pricing language into our proposals and contracts.

We are also impacted, as is the rest of the industry, by fluctuations in the sustained availability, prices and lead-times of raw materials used in production on various fixed-price contracts, particularly on multi-year programs. We continue to experience volatility in the price and lead-times of certain commodity metals, electronic components, and constituent chemicals. Additionally, we may not be able to continue to negotiate with our customers for economic and/or price adjustment clauses tied to obsolete materials and commodity indices to reduce program impact. The DoD also continues to rigorously enforce the provisions of the “Berry Amendment” which imposes a requirement to procure certain strategic materials critical to national security only from U.S. sources. While availability has not been a significant issue, cost remains a concern as this industry continues to quote “price in effect” at time of shipment terms, increasing the cost risk to our programs. An emerging challenge to the extended supply chain is the NASA/FAR requirements to comply with stringent cyber security regulations that may influence the cost of materials and services on U.S. government contracts. We are actively working to identify these costs to obtain protection in our contracts.