Company: SPR
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-009088
Chunk: 14

Company: Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 14
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, titanium, steel, and composite material. We also purchase metallic parts, non-metallic parts, and machined components. In addition, we procure subassemblies from various manufacturers that are used in the final aerostructure assembly. From time to time, we also review our make-versus-buy strategy to determine whether it would be beneficial to us and/or our customers to outsource work that we currently produce in-house or vice versa.

We have long-standing relationships with hundreds of manufacturing suppliers. Our strategy is to enter into long-term agreements with suppliers to secure the best value for Spirit and our customers. Our exposure to rising costs of raw material may be limited to some extent through leveraging relationships with our OEM customers’ high-volume contracts.

We continue to seek and develop sourcing opportunities in North America, Europe, and Asia to achieve a competitive global cost structure. Over 25 countries are represented in our international network of suppliers.

For additional information on our suppliers, please see Item 1A. “Risk Factors – Risks Related to Our Industry and Overall Business” and “Risk Factors – Risks Related to Our Operations”.

Research and Development

We believe that a world-class research and development focus helps maintain our position as an advanced supplier to our OEM customers’ new product development teams and expand our position in emerging markets. As a result, our research and development spend was $47.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2024, $45.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, and $50.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. Through our research, we strive to develop unique intellectual property and technologies that will improve our products and our customers’ products and, at the same time, position us to win work on new products. Our development efforts focus on improving manufacturing processes on our current work and developing new capability and affordable, industrialized technology targeting growth focused initiatives. It also serves as an ongoing process that helps develop ways to reduce production costs and streamline manufacturing processes.

Our research and development is primarily geared toward the design and manufacturing processes for our three business segments and aimed at enabling Spirit to utilize commercial scale and expertise to translate best practices to our growing defense and aftermarket businesses. We maintain six Distinctive Capability areas (digital transformation, industry 4.0, engineered factory, metals technology, composites technology, and performance architectures) which guide our research and development strategy to enable growth and sustainability. We are currently focused on research in areas such as advanced metallic joining, low