I'd now like to hand the conference over to Dr. Andreas Schwer, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Andreas Schwer, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Electro Optic Systems. I would like to give you our speech for the first half 2026 year results presentation, and we are very proud to announce that the first half year has been exceptionally good. It has been a record year for Electro Optic Systems. Please move to slide number four. The agenda looks like the following. We will first summarize the highlights of the first half year. I will put you then into the strategic context, what has happened in particular in the first half of 2026, with a focus on the high energy laser weapon business, and then a very strong focus on the MARSS update, MARSS, our recent acquisition.
We then have looked at our order book, and I will give you an outlook on our business development, what will happen over the next few months. I will then hand over to Clive Cuthell, our CFO, who will give you an overview about our financial performance down to divisional level, some aspects on the cash flow, and then I will summarize the presentation by giving you a strategic outlook before we go to the question-and-answer session. Please move on. We are on slide number six. To put you into the context, EOS is operating in very strong market. The first half year has been exceptionally strong from a market perspective. The conflict in Ukraine, but also in particular in the Middle East, was helping us a lot to get more traction and to achieve the results which we have achieved.
Part of that obviously was a strongly evolving partnership network. You might remember that part of our go-to-market strategy is to enter into partnerships with national champions, in particular key and core markets. That has happened also in the first half of 2026. We could also demonstrate now in a quite impressive way that we can deliver. We can deliver on commercials. We can deliver in a highly operational excellence mode. So we could convert quite significantly our order book into revenue, and we could operate in a very complex and demanding supply chain environment. An environment where internationally lots of challenges were to be faced, but we delivered according to customer requirements, urgent customer requirements. We could deliver in very short delivery time frames, quicker than most of our competitors. And this could be done because of some strategic investments which we did in the past.
Some of you might remember. We have invested some years ago into a framework agreement with Northrop Grumman to secure us the supply of a very strategic component, the 30 mm cannon. That is one example why it is paying off now. We can deliver quicker than some of our competitors, and that is giving us a strategic lead. We expect the growth to be very sustainable and robust, and we are very optimistic for the outlook over the next few months and years. We are well-positioned to capitalize on all those factors and all those framework conditions. Let us move on, please. I would like to hand over to Clive to give you the highlights of the first half 2026 financials. Please, Clive.
Thank you, Andreas, and good morning, everyone. As this slide shows, it has been quite a positive first half in many respects. The revenue of AUD 169 million, which was announced a few weeks ago, is an increase of almost 300% on the comparable prior period. Gross margin at 58% continues a trend of positive development, particularly in our remote weapon system business. We are extremely pleased that in the first half we are able to report an underlying EBITDA of AUD 21 million. As we have said previously, we have been targeting profitability for some time. The strong markets, combined with the order book and then particularly the agility that Andreas mentioned, has allowed us to achieve the revenue that has driven this positive EBITDA for the first half of the year. The cash position and the funding position of the business has never been better.
At the end of June, we had AUD 256 million in the bank. We also had undrawn debt facilities of AUD 30 million, and in July, after the end of the period, we received the final tranche of the equity raise, which was a further AUD 30 million. We are in markets, as Andreas is about to explain, that are very strong, and the business is extremely well capitalized to deliver on that growth. The other highlight that I will come back to later on is this morning we are announcing that our revenue outlook for the calendar year of 2026 is now a range of AUD 360 million- AUD 400 million, including the benefit of the MARSS business, which we acquired in May.
We are going to talk about that a little bit more as we go on, but I will hand back to Andreas, who is going to talk more about the environment that we are dealing with and the opportunities ahead of the company.
Thank you, Clive. We are on page number eight. EOS is active in four segments following our strategic imperatives of becoming the number one global provider of integrated counter-UAS solutions and secondly, to become the worldwide leader outside the U.S. on space control, space warfare type of systems. In order to achieve that, we are active in the following four domains. Two of those domains are effector type of domains, and the other two domains are system-level type of domains. I start with the effectors. We have been, we are, and we will be a world-leading supplier of kinetic defeat systems, of remote weapon systems or remote weapon stations. This business is remaining very exceptionally strong, and we expect a strong growth path also over the next few months and years because of our highest accuracy in tracking and shooting, the highest hit probability.
I just want to remind everybody, we have never lost any kind of competitive shooting event, and that is the baseline of our business success in this particular business area. Our high-energy laser weapon business where we succeeded in 2025 with the first worldwide 100 kW laser weapon contract for export, that is a domain where we expect a very substantial growth in the future. This is becoming a backbone of our business, and that's an area where the competition is not that strong. There are only very few players on the market competing against Electro Optic Systems. I will come back on all those segments in a few minutes again. Most notably here is our recent acquisition of the company, MARSS, a company which was based at acquisition time in Monaco. We have transferred the company meanwhile to France, to Nice.
They're active now with operations in France and in U.K. and in Saudi Arabia. This pillar, which was always promising, it was promising from day one, is turning now to become an extremely positive growth area for the business. We are now in a position to offer integrated counter-UAS systems, turnkey systems for any kind of client, whether it's a military client or whether it's a client coming from the so-called homeland security area, such as operators of airports, commercial airports, power stations, and other critical infrastructure.
That is our business, which is driven by MARSS, and MARSS is backed by its own proprietary NiDAR, AI-driven command and control system, a system which is fusing any kind of sensor information and creating an integrated picture for the operator in order to decide automatically on which sensor or which effector should take over which kind of intruder in order to protect the infrastructure in a hemispherical way. I will also come back on this a little bit later on. The fourth pillar of activity is our so-called space control system, our space business, where we are developing systems being able to interact with any kind of space object. Interaction could go that far that we are able to not only move space debris, but also being able to blind satellites temporarily or also permanently. We can disable satellites from ground.
That is a business which is coming sooner than we have expected and which we believe will become a very strong pillar as well, a little bit later than the high-energy laser weapon business and the MARSS business, but with the same level of potential in the future. That is also a business where there is hardly any competition outside the U.S. in a marketplace. Let's move on, please, on slide number nine. Let's recap the first mega-trend, the drone warfare. I cannot repeat this often enough that the appearance of the drone in the battlefield is causing a substantial change in the overall warfare scenario. Month over month, we can see this in Ukraine, but also in the Middle East, that this kind of threat is dominating the airspace.
It is creating a zone of up to 40 km, the so-called kill zone in between the front lines, causing almost a standstill in ground-based operation because of loitering ammunition, because of attacking kamikaze drones. This is becoming the threat scenario number one, and that's the reason why the defense number one, the defense priority number one will be on counter-UAS in anti-drone weapon systems. That's exactly where EOS is active, where we put all of our efforts in, and where we are so strongly positioned. Let's move on. Number 10. This anti-drone warfare is facing substantial problems. First of all, traditional defense systems, which are basically missile and rocket-based systems, are way too expensive to defeat on the long term those kind of drones.
Nobody can afford to shoot with missiles costing up to $3 million-$4 million, of course, to shoot them against drones for a few thousand dollars. Not even the rich and wealthy Middle Eastern states can afford that long run. That's the reason why also those states are heavily investing into integrated counter-UAS systems such as ours, being able to offer with more affordable effectors to go against those drones with more affordable effectors. The second point is traditional air defense is too inflexible. They're based on a few effectors, only effectors which cannot exchange that quickly, effectors which cannot interlock with those kind of threats that quickly. This kind of slow response, the traditional slow response, is not adequate anymore in this upcoming drone warfare, a warfare where drones can be launched in your nearest vicinity and giving you only a few seconds to react.
Such a short period of time, which even requests you to give up on manual operation, to even give up on the human operator being in the loop, but instead of going to fully automated, to fully robotic type of defense operation. Those are the key changes in the field, and we experience week over week changes to that one in Ukraine, requiring adaptations of the defense strategy, adaptation of our effectors, which happens then mostly in the software area. Please move on. Slide number 11. The EOS solution is now with the acquisition of MARSS, that it can offer this kind of complete counter-drone platform.
I want to remind everybody that EOS is active, in particular in the Middle East, with more than 60 installed bases. EOS is protecting more than 60 critical infrastructures in the Middle East successfully over the last few months from being affected by and impacted by attacks of drones or missiles or rockets. We have shot down, with our systems, hundreds of Shahed drones and dozens of missiles and rockets. If anybody needs a testimony, we can provide first-hand testimony from the top leaders of those countries there. What makes us extremely proud is we seem to be the one and only customized and dedicated anti-drone platform. We are not competing in those markets with the traditional C4I platforms coming from the big OEMs such as, for example, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, or Thales.
Systems which have been developed in a very complex environment to operate very complicated systems such as Patriot or THAAD systems which are interconnecting the different domains, land, space, air, and sea. That is an overkill for most of those applications. It is an overkill for what is demanded by the clients. What the clients are asking are flexible solutions, adaptive solutions to protect a single piece of infrastructure where a system which they can purchase for a much lower price is much more an appropriate solution. This is exactly where MARSS is active, where MARSS has delivered since 2018 and 2019, and that is the reason why EOS is now at the forefront of this mega-trend. Again, not only a trend to protect military installations, a trend to also protect commercial and homeland security type of platforms. That is all possible because of our hardware-agnostic platform, MARSS.
Because of its history as an absolutely hardware-agnostic provider of those solutions. They can integrate any kind of sensor, whether it is a radar, electro-optic, RF, acoustic, or any kind of sensor and any kind of effector. MARSS has integrated more than 160 different type of sensors and effectors. Nobody else has done this multitude of effectors. This is allowing us now to offer the client on the spot to use his existing portfolio of sensors to integrate in a very seamless way within no time, and to offer our clients in very few days to set up a solution which is able to defeat those kind of drones, even if they attack in large quantities in swarms. Our secret behind is our AI-driven algorithms. We have a software package which is extremely user-intuitive and which is extremely flexible to handle complex type of threat scenarios.
The user intuitive usage capability is a key point allowing us to train operators within a few days. Everybody can operate those kind of systems within no time, thanks to the concept of operation. A concept which allows you to operate those systems either from traditional command control centers, war centers, but also from a simple platform like an iPad. It does not make any difference in terms of effectivity. It only depends on the customer preference, but it is extremely easy to operate. That is another key selling factor, and it is absolutely at the state of the art on how to operate those kind of platforms today and in the future. Please move on. We go to slide number 12. This kind of operation of an integrated MARSS counter EOS system is following the following kind of action stream.
The system is always continuously doing this data fusion from all those kinds of sensors I was just mentioning. It identifies any kind of intruder, any kind of object. It does then the identification to not only discriminate whether it's a hostile kind of threat, whether it's a drone or whether it's just a bird or a friendly force. It's doing the identification down to the type of effector. It can even identify the weaponry on those kind of incoming threats, which is quite unusual. We are doing this by doing a kind of permanent comparison with a library, which is uploaded to any of those systems. This kind of library is learning day by day, and we give our clients permanent upgrades of those libraries.
That's a very good after-sales business to allow our clients to always be at the forefront of knowledge on what is potentially coming in and how to defeat those kind of systems in the most efficient way. This NiDAR system is giving then recommendation to the operator to engage, and it is proposing which type of effector should take out which type of intruder. Again, this can be done with man or with person in the loop, or it can be done autonomously. In the future, that's our prediction, it will be done more and more autonomously because there is no time for human interaction. In many cases, we will only have a few seconds for the decision-making process, requiring a fully automated robotic approach. Then the system will decide by itself on the engagement and they shoot down those kind of drones.
That's the kind of circle of operation. It is a state of the art. It is what the customer is needing, and this is how we are operating day by day. Again, EOS has a battle-proven system that's quite unique in the anti-drone warfare. This is showing you, just to illustrating you how such a kind of operating center could look like. This is the kind of high-end solution with a 360-degree war area or war zone or command center, where the control is happening. But again, it can go down to a simple iPad or laptop type of operation where you see everything on one single screen, and the operator does not need anything else in order to fulfill more or less the same kind of job.
What you can see on the right side, that's more the kind of setup for a nationwide operation or an operation where you interconnect several critical infrastructures to keep the overview on what's ongoing over a certain number of sites, more than one. Please move on. Slide number 14, partners and clients. This is a collection of partnerships which we have active. You can see top-notch first-class defense companies from all around the world, which are our proud partners, starting from Korean companies, European companies, top-notch American companies. We are partnering with them because they all appreciate our high-end performance, our first hit probability, and our survivability in the battlefield. We have signed a couple of new partnerships, and I just want to highlight two of them here. One is with BAE Systems, one of the world-leading providers of defense systems.
BAE Systems has decided to use for all of its future counter EOS applications our NiDAR command and control software. That is an exceptional result, and it shows that one of the world market leaders has done after a very thorough review of all the options on the global market. They've decided in our favor. They've decided that our NiDAR system is the best of the best, and that's the reason why we are together now and shaping up the future with BAE Systems and Electro Optic Systems. We also formed a partnership with a French-German group, KNDS, one of the leading European groups in land systems, and we are a proud partner of KNDS in the area of remote weapon systems, including its application in the anti-drone warfare.
Those are just two examples of how we go into markets to minimize the time to market and to minimize the capital exposure. High energy laser weapon. We have signed the first contract in the middle of 2025. This contract is not only running according to schedule. We are about one year ahead of schedule. The client is extremely happy with our performance, and as a result of that, he intends to place the first low-rate initial production contract, so the first kind of serial production contract to EOS much ahead of the delivery time of the first system. We will deliver the first system not only in 2028, but towards the middle of 2027, which is a tremendous achievement.
Because of that, we will enter with a client most likely into a contract for this low-rate initial production contract ahead of even that point in time. That's underlining our capability, and it's underlining that our investment into the setup of the first worldwide serial production facility of high energy laser weapons in Singapore was the right decision to do. It puts us at the forefront at this very prestigious advantageous market, and a market which will grow significantly over the next three years, where we can play now a very strong position. The contract with the Dutch has had a value of EUR 71 million, but you might recall that we are able to deliver in larger quantities systems at the price of down to EUR 30 million. That is giving the client a huge advantage because of the large scale opportunity.
As I was mentioning before, we passed successfully the so-called critical design review. That's a kind of standard review you have to pass in any military procurement process. That is a strong quality stamp which we got by the client that they consider the system being ready for production now. That is a reason why we can increase or decrease the time scope delivered earlier than expected. The customer is also considering to increase the scope of this standing contract by adding other features like navalization, for example. All that, again, is a testimony of our quality, even in delivery, not only in development. MARSS has secured in 2026 contracts for more than AUD 200 million.
You might recall that we are very optimistic to be able to sign for MARSS orders of up to EUR 1 billion, which is around AUD 1.6 billion of orders within the first 12 months. That is the reason why we have increased the CapEx in earn-out from originally EUR 500 million- EUR 700 million. We are more confident than ever before that we can achieve those values, and this is the reason why the acquisition of MARSS was a turning point for Electro Optic Systems. It is giving us not only the position of being able to compete against other primes in the delivery of turnkey solution, but also to be able to significantly scale up our revenue base as the MARSS contract size usually is higher than if you sell just normal type of equipment, normal type of effectors.
MARSS from any kind of angle is a big success story for us already now. Please move on. The order book. The unconditional order book we could manage to increase from last year, AUD 459 million and [end of 2436 to now more than AUD 846 million. That is an exceptional success. What makes us extremely optimistic, it is not only the MARSS business coming on top of it is also the laser business coming into play now and also our very kind of backbone and the so-called bread and butter business. The weapon station business is picking up extremely successfully, giving us a very optimistic outlook into the next future. If you look to the order book, this is driven currently very much by the Middle East. That is basically reflecting the actual geopolitical situation with a strong short-term delivery demand.
We expect this to be more balanced in the next future by European programs coming into play, also very significant programs and acquisitions coming into play, where we expect long-term to have a balanced order book with one-third going to the Middle East, one-third at least going to Europe, and another third going to the U.S. and the rest of the world. That gives us a more robust position in the market. We become less and less depending on a single client or a single region. Please move on. This is the order book. You can see here that we have added some more lines, some more lines of very substantial opportunities, large-scale opportunities, some of them, but not all of them, coming from the MARSS type of business opportunity.
MARSS has so far been only active or predominantly active in the Middle East with its over 60 installations. What will come now very soon and much sooner than expected also, MARSS will reach out to NATO countries, will reach out to European countries, and most of you will have been informed that there was some days ago, the first aggressive drone attack on a European airport. It was in Leipzig, Germany, where a drone with explosive on it was attacking an Antonov aircraft. It was the first time that a weapon system was really attacking a direct manner on a commercial airport and aircraft. That has caused lots of panic with most of European airport operators, also with many operators of other type of civil infrastructure all across Europe. We are over flooded by inquiries from those type of operators.
We are now in very intense contacts and dialogues, not only with the ministries of defense across Europe, but also with the ministries of interior, with the homeland security ministries, with the police forces and all the commercial operators all across Europe. We expect this business to pick up in a much stronger way than we were ever expecting before. Thanks to MARSS and thanks to our ability to deliver solutions which are also customizable for those kind of infrastructures where you cannot use missiles, where you not can use cannon-based air defense, but where you can use laser weapons. That is where you can use interceptor drones. Our interceptor drone is a drone which is not based on an explosive forward, but which is just operating by the pure kinetic impact by hitting the attackers.
Those kind of effectors will play a dominant role with those kind of installations. So MARSS is perfectly positioned to also go into those kind of markets, which is creating another layer of growth potential on the short run. All that has not been expected when we were starting the acquisition of MARSS. That is the reason why we are more optimistic than we have ever been before. Please move on. Space is also getting more and more traction. I just want to highlight one country. The German government has decided, and they have allocated budget of more than EUR 35 billion, which is more than AUD 60 billion, for expenditure to defend and to protect their own space, their own military space infrastructure.
A significant sub line of this EUR 35 billion budget is denoted for our type of capability to protect space-based assets by ground-based systems. This is giving us a strong outlook for our space business. We believe that not only on the German example, because other governments will follow this example, that our space business, we pick up business much earlier than we have ever expected before, and we expect the space business to become very substantial, not only beyond 2030, but even before 2030. That is, again, based on our capability to track in an unmatched precision any object in space down to a single coin, even in cislunar orbit, combined with our ability to correct atmospheric distortions, which nobody else can do outside the U.S. to this kind of extent.
Our ability now to combine our high energy laser weapon technology, which we have available up to 150 kW today, and which we expect to scale up to 300 kW over four years. To be able to combine all that together will allow us to engage against satellites from ground, irrespective of the orbit of the satellite. This is giving our kind of client a more decisive leading edge. That type of business is extremely sensitive. It will require localization, and that's one reason why we are able and prepared to localize not only this kind of space type of business in NATO countries such as Germany. We will also do that in any kind of request for laser, for counter-based type of business. We can do that because we own all IP from A to Z. Let's move on, please.
We are coming up to the financial side. I would like to hand over to our CFO, Clive Cuthell, please.
Thank you, Andreas. On the next slide is a little bit more detail on the financial results for the first half. Overall, the revenue of AUD 169 million, which was announced a few weeks ago, as the chart on the right-hand side shows that first half revenue is the highest first half revenue that EOS has ever achieved. That reflects many of the market trends that Andreas has outlined. The chart on the bottom right sets out the diversity of our revenue stream, and we are particularly pleased with the improvement in the geographic diversity of our revenue that was achieved during the half. The company, as many people know, has done a lot of work to diversify the sources of geographic revenue over the last couple of years, and that is now translating into the financial results.
The other things to highlight include, obviously, the underlying EBITDA of AUD 21 million achieved during the period. The company, as I said earlier, has been focused on profitability coming from scale for some time, and we are obviously pleased to see that being operationalized. The result includes a gross margin of 58%, as the table shows. Ignoring the very unusual one-time result of 76% last year, this 58% continues the positive trend that we have seen across different parts of our business, which is attributable not just to the strong markets that we are in, but also the pricing discipline and the execution discipline that we have been establishing over the last few years in EOS. The next page, over on page 23, shows a summary of the results between our different segments.
The defense segment at the top now includes the MARSS business, but also includes the results for high energy laser and for remote weapon systems. During the first half, more than 80% of the revenue in the first half came from our remote weapon system business, in particular, selling the Slinger counter-drone gun system that we have. In the space systems part of the business, as Andreas said, this is more of a significant future growth opportunity. We remain very positive on the outlook for this business, and we will continue to make very modest investments from the company's perspective in this and continue to develop the European market in this area. Maybe just a couple of comments on the margin mix in the business. Over the next 12 months, we expect to see two or three things impacting margin in the business.
In particular, the growth in high energy laser weapon revenue that we expect to arise from the Dutch contract should have a positive impact on gross margin and EBITDA margins. On the other hand, the growth in the MARSS business that we're expecting over the next 12 months as we've taken over ownership, that will have a lower gross margin, but we still expect 20% EBITDA. We're not providing guidance on margins overall, but as we've indicated previously, in our industry and in our business in particular, we continue to aim for a 20% EBITDA margin overall. On the next page is the cash flow, and as people who've followed us for a long time know, cash flow is very important at EOS, and it's been a strong focus for us over the last few years.
Most of our business, remote weapon systems, laser weapons, and space. We have always run these over the last few years to be cash flow positive. Our business is evolving a little bit with the acquisition of MARSS. As Andreas mentioned, MARSS is a prime contractor, which is a little bit different from an OEM manufacturer that our traditional business has been. Larger projects when you're a prime contractor can be a little bit lumpy. That said, I think it's safe to say that EOS will continue to be very disciplined in managing the cash flow and the profitability and the execution on prime contracts over the next 12 months in the same way that we've been careful with cash over the last two to three years. Over the next 12 months, we do expect to deploy capital, particularly in growing the MARSS business.
Some of that will be bank guarantees, some of that will be working capital. Typically, we can sometimes see in the MARSS business investments in the first few months of large contracts. With the existing MARSS order book, we may see a little bit of that over the next 6-12 months. The company is well-funded. As mentioned earlier, we had more than AUD 260 million in the bank at the end of June and AUD 30 million of undrawn debt facilities, so a total of almost AUD 300 million. The company has all of the funding that it needs to grow the business in the way that Andreas has outlined over the next few years. We will continue to focus on scale and profitability and cash flow.
Finally, naturally, we're obviously very pleased that the first half result has operationalized the growth that we've talked about over the last few reporting periods. The revenue outlook, as Andreas has indicated, is stronger than we previously expected. That's a factor of market growth. It's driven by our strategy to focus on counter-drone activity, and it's obviously driven by the company's agility in the way that Andreas mentioned. Our ability to supply customers quickly has been a defining factor in our first half performance. As a result of all of these things, the full-year growth outlook has been increased and the revenue that we are guiding for the full year, as I mentioned earlier, is a range of AUD 360 million- AUD 400 million, including the MARSS business. I'm going to hand back to Andreas now for some wrap-up comments before Q&A.
Okay. Thank you, Clive. As you have seen, our business is very stable and robust. All of our segments are performing really well. We are extremely confident to increase our growth year-over-year and our revenue base year-over-year as the strategy is working out in a very nice manner. The decision to focus our strategy on the two pillars, counter-drone and the so-called space control or space warfare, is playing off now. We are very proud of having taken this kind of decision some years ago. We are in the middle of the military growth and we are a so-called new tech player in defense. We are not seen as a traditional player. We are not the metal bending company.
We are the company working and being active in areas such as anti-drone business, AI technology, software technology in high-tech technology such as laser and in this anti-satellite business. Those are all key drivers which make EOS very attractive for clients, for industrial partners, and also for investors. This is giving us all the confidence to be able to execute this growth path, again, based on the more weapon systems much further pushed with the AI-enabled C2 command and control system capability by MARSS, further pushed by our high energy laser weapon business, then in a third step by our space warfare type of capability. This is the growth story which we have told you we will go through, and if you please go to slide number 27. That's the kind of growth story which we will continue to be executed.
We are currently riding an exceptionally strong wave, and we expect this wave to continue. We will benefit with all you together on that wave. We, EOS, we want to remain your trusted partner in defense business. To conclude my statements with my standard closing statement, we always say what we think, and we always do what we say, and we continue on in this wave. In this context, we are more than happy to receive your questions now. Thank you very much for your attention, and looking forward to further collaborate with all of you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question via the phone, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before speaking. If you would like to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. Your first question from the phone comes from Owen Humphries from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Well done, guys. Great set of numbers and looks like the pipeline's building strongly. Got a couple of questions here. One relates to the guidance upgrade here relating to MARSS. How much of the upgrade relates to contracts you have not secured yet?
Thanks, Owen. I'll cover that one. The guidance that we have provided is entirely based on contracts that are secured. There are no amounts in the guidance that relate to future contracts that are not signed, and there are no amounts in the guidance relating to conditional contracts. If we sign additional contracts over the coming weeks, there is the possibility that they would benefit 2026. Albeit, as time passes, naturally, that will be of limited benefit to 2026. Does that cover it, Owen?
Yep. The guidance in the second half of the core business is, call it AUD 110 million. You've just done AUD 170 million in the first half. Does that relate to supply constraints for the core business? Or is that-
Yeah, thanks, Owen. We've given guidance in total of AUD 360 million- AUD 400 million, which obviously includes both businesses. The first half was especially strong, Owen. I think it's more a reflection of the lumpiness of some of our contracts. We are expecting, as you've indicated, that the core business may not be quite as strong in the second half as it was in the first half. Although that's just more due to the timing of deliveries and other factors. We continue to manage capacity and supply chain constraints. We're very comfortable about our ability to grow over the next 12- 24 months.
Just checking the notes, the account. It looks like you've put through a AUD 77 million security deposit. Just historically, can you guys give us a range of how much-when you sign a contract, how much is required up front for a security deposit? Not a number, maybe a range.
Yeah. Thanks, Owen. That's right. In the detailed financial report, we have indicated that the company provided a guarantee to a potential future customer after 30th of June. Typically, in our industry, we can give guarantees to customers or prospective customers sometimes that are. And the guarantees can sometimes be 5%, 10%, 20%, sometimes even higher, relative to contract value. Just for context, the guarantee that was provided is in relation to an opportunity that is presently unsigned and unannounced, and if it results in a material contract being signed, then naturally we would update the market immediately.
If you go to your business development update there, that's a new slide that's getting bigger. To me, particularly the bottom three. Say you do sign a material contract, call it one of those big three there. How does the working capital nature go? I know most of the revenue side comes in the first year, but with the procurement, what's the lead times between order and delivery and payment?
Thanks, Owen. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that we're, as Andreas has indicated, the outlook for the MARSS business that we acquired is stronger than we expected, and some of that is shown on the bottom of slide 19. We see quite a lot of opportunities to grow that business, and we do think that there may be, on some opportunities, there may be some initial working capital investments that are modest and well within the funding position that the company has. I think as you know, we did raise equity in the first half of the year and as a result, the balance sheet is very well positioned to support growth outlook, including the operationalizing of future opportunities such as those listed on page 19. So I hope that answers the question, Owen.
Well done, guys. Great outlook for the next couple of years.
Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Baxter Kirk from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes. Great result and outlook there. This question has been partially answered, but I was just hoping to get an idea on future MARSS orders. The ramp up in the contract that has been signed late last half to revenue, is that typical of future orders, that revenue ramp up from signing to when it is actually being delivered? Or is that more reflecting the urgency there by the Middle East customer?
Yeah. Thanks, Baxter. I will answer that. We acquired MARSS in May. It came with an order book of about just over AUD 200 million, and most of which was signed in April and May. In the MARSS business, it is typical that 60% and 70% of the revenue, sometimes a touch more, is earned in the first 12- 24 months of the contract. That is because usually contracts that MARSS wins are involved in setting up new anti-drone systems to protect assets of the customers concerned. The profile of having front-end loaded revenue that is earned over 12- 24 months is normal. It is fair to say that there are urgent operational requirements, particularly in the Middle East, that are benefiting our business at the moment.
That includes MARSS, and also there is some benefit in the first half for our remote weapon system business from urgent operational requirements. We do not expect the urgency in the market to diminish over the coming years, because the trends that are giving rise to it are long-term, and we are expecting them to continue.
Clive, if you allow me to add one more point. I think it is important for the understanding. The beauty of the MARSS system, again, is to be able to act such as the LEGO. You can plug and play any kind of brick, one on top of each other. It is always working, it is all compatible. As MARSS has integrated more than 160 type of effectors and sensors over the last couple of years, we can just use on the market whatever is available on short-term delivery. Whether it is a sensor or an effector, and we can combine this very easily, allowing us to deliver much faster than other players, which are only qualified for the usage of very few types of sensors and components, and they are really required to wait for the delivery time for those kind of few sensors and effectors.
We are more flexible, and we can use and integrate, again, whatever is available short-term. This is giving us a leading edge and allows us to convert orders into revenue much quicker than anybody else.
Yeah. Thanks for clarity. Just another question. I'm just looking at the market development order book pipeline. I'm curious to know whether the Abrams product integration is that in that pipeline there, perhaps in the U.S. Army follow-on opportunities?
Yeah. Page 19 lists the opportunities. What is listed there at the top of page 19 is the nearest of the U.S. Army opportunities, which we've listed at AUD 20 million-AUD 50 million, and relates to some of the work that we've talked about before, like you mentioned. There are significant opportunities in the United States that are larger than the 20- 50 indicated here. But they are a little bit further away. Potentially more 2027 than 2026. But there are sizable opportunities there, as we've indicated previously.
Yeah. Okay. This business development update pipeline slide, it relates to sort of potential orders in the next 12 months, would you say, or 24 months?
Yeah. This is a selection of some of the most significant and the nearest opportunities. Yes, some of these we would expect to sign over the next 12 months, and some will take a little bit longer.
Yeah. To make it-
But it's not exhaustive, I think is what Andreas was about to add.
Yeah. It's not the exhaustive pipeline as other companies are reporting. This is just a selection of some key elements out of our pipeline. Yes, the focus is on very short-term execution of contracts here. To come back on your question on the U.S. Army, this will be the second phase of the pre-production contract phase, which we expect to get. We received the first pre-serial contract order last year. The second one, which is the one which you can see here in the pipeline, we expect to receive either towards end of this year or beginning of next year. Then we expect the first high volume serial contract to come into play towards maybe end of next year or 2028.
That is then a substantially bigger one, and that goes then really into the high volume production to serve our weapon systems for this particular platform, which you have seen on one of the slides before.
Okay, thanks. Can you perhaps detail your localization and your production capacity in the U.S.? Obviously, we have seen drone tariffs come through, obviously not relating to counter-drone. Can you just detail to what extent you have localized in the U.S.?
Yeah. We are operating a facility in Huntsville, Alabama, which has the same kind of capacity as our one in Australia. We can produce there in one shift operation, around 300 systems per year. In two shift operation, up to 500, 600 systems per year, depending on the product mix. Again, the same kind of quantity we can produce in Australia and with a new joint venture in the Middle East, which we have recently signed with a company, Gen Five, which is government-owned. In that facility, we will also be able to produce a couple of hundreds per year. So capacity constraints we do not have with our current setup, and we do not need to invest heavy CapEx in order to achieve that kind of growth. That is the situation for remote weapon systems.
All what relates to the MARSS type of business is even easier to scale because our in-house value contribution to MARSS is software. We just need to adopt the software case by case, in order to scale the business. We do not need any kind of CapEx in order to do so. We just need to recruit some more software engineers. We need to increase then the quantity of procurement managers and project managers because we need to purchase more products from the market. But again, that is not a question of building up internal production capacity. The MARSS type of business is extremely easy to scale. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah. Thank you, Andreas and Clive. I will leave it there.
Thank you. There are no further phone questions at this time. We will now address any webcast questions. Your first question from the webcast comes from Amit Malik. Amit asks, What is the timeline for the German contract, and who are the other bidders in for it?
I assume this question relates to the so-called UTF tender. That is to provide up to 4,000 R150 type of weapon systems on top of military logistics trucks. That is probably one of the biggest worldwide remote weapon system tenders over the next 10 years to come. We are in the lucky position to be one of the three remaining contenders. We are not permitted to disclose further information on who are our remaining competitors. We can only tell you that we are very confident from the feedback we have received from the clients that we are very well-positioned in terms of quality of the product and also in terms of the price which we have delivered to the client. The client is now executing a one year of testing with the product.
Everybody had to deliver five units, which will be integrated on those platforms and tested extensively over one year. And we expect the clients to take a decision towards end of 2027. That will be also a multi-phase contract with a total volume of up to 4,000 systems. It's huge.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Glenn Mabbott. Glenn asks, What is stopping Australian defense purchase of CUAS for protection of local airports and infrastructure?
Nothing is stopping the Australian government to do so. I want to remind, we have been selected together with Leidos and other partners in a program called LAND 156 that will be the backbone for any Australian anti-drone application, whether it is for the military domain, which was the primary planned purpose in the past, but now also homeland security type of operators have reached out to Ministry of Defence and have declared interest in order to participate and to benefit from this program coming into a kind of production phase pretty soon. We expect also Australian will pick up in that domain, but not to the extent as it will happen in Europe because of the threat scenario, which is more imminent in Europe because of geopolitical framework conditions.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Mike C. Mike asks, Has NiDAR from MARSS been used in combat in the Middle East?
Yes, I was mentioning before, we have more than 60 active installations, and it is in operational use since 2018. That started after the Houthi rebels have attacked, 2000, I think it was 2018, some Saudi Aramco oil refineries in Saudi Arabia. That was the starting point for us to deploy those kind of systems in Saudi Arabia. Today, we have in the entire Middle East, more than 60 stations supporting more than 60 critical infrastructures. And yes, we have shooting down more than 100 Shahed drones and dozens of missiles and rockets, and that is continuing. Day by day, we are defending those kind of systems. That is making us unique in the marketplace because almost nobody else can or has this kind of stamp being battle-proven as a dedicated counter-UAS system.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Tobias. David asks, Can HELW shoot down ballistic missiles?
Sorry, who can shoot down ballistic missiles?
Rather, can the high-energy laser weapons shoot down ballistic missiles?
Okay. It depends on the power level of the system. Yes, with 100 kW systems, you are able to shoot down slow speed or low-speed type of rockets, artillery shells, and mortars. In order to shoot down faster, quicker flying objects like a missile, you need to have higher power levels. That's one reason why we will go into the 300 kW domain to be able to have a full C-RAM type of capability, which includes the missile segment, which will allow us to go against any kind of classical missile, not against hypersonic missiles, but classical missiles. That's not our primary objective. Our primary objective is to become the anti-drone company number one, because that is the dominant threat on the battlefield.
There are thousands more drones being launched against targets than missiles, and that's the reason why the 100 kW market will be the dominant, the kind of mass market over the next 10 years.
Thank you. Unfortunately, that does conclude our time for questions today. I will now hand the conference back to Andreas for any closing remarks.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much for listening to this conference. I think the first half of this year is providing the evidence which we have promised to deliver for a long period of time. It is the evidence and proof point that our strategy is 100% right in putting all of our efforts into a strategy which is focusing on two pillars, two pillars of military warfare, which are now turning out to be in the center of all actions in the future. We will execute exactly the strategy further on, and as I was mentioning before, we will always say what we think and do what we say. We will provide 100% transparency, and we are absolutely convinced that our growth path will be sustainable and stable to create more shareholder value.
Thanks for being us, and we are crossing fingers for another half year to come with great success.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.