Morning, welcome to OHB's earnings call for the annual report 2025. I'd like to welcome you here on behalf of OHB. I'm here together with Tim Tecklenburg, our CFO, Daniela Schmidt, and Kurt Melching, and we're obviously ready for questions. I hope you have been able to download the materials this morning. I will quickly walk you through the slides, and then Tim will take over for the financial part. The OHB business segment has not changed. This is the same business segment chart that you saw in our Q3 results a couple of months ago. What has changed in the course of 2025 is that our access to space division has been changed because we took over 100% of MT Aerospace AG.
We created the European Spaceport Company and, of course, this part is also the Rocket Factory Augsburg. Quick recap of 2025. We had multiple successes in launches in 2025. A very important was on July 1, the weather satellite MTG-S1. That's Sounder, as we call them. The Sounder satellite has been developed by OHB completely. The payload in Oberpfaffenhofen, very sophisticated optical payload, and the satellite platform and the overall satellite in Bremen here at OHB Bremen. We're very happy with the results. That has been a very big success. Successful launch also in August with the launch of our Earth observation satellite, NAOS, for the Luxembourg government.
It's a military satellite that OHB Italia developed and built for the Luxembourg military that has been successfully launched. In November, we had a batch of 8 satellites of Eaglet-2 satellites for an Earth observation constellation called IRIDE for the Italian government. There will be more launches, so we're launching a full constellation for Italy. In December, we had another launch for Galileo first-generation satellites. There will be 2 more launches on Galileo this year. We're nearing the end of the full ramp-up of the Galileo satellites of the first generation. If we look to 2025, of course, we have been able to secure a number of significant contracts. We had a business expansion.
One of the big successes was the LISA science satellite that we won in a competition for the European Space Agency, ESA. It measures gravitational waves. I leave it there how this works in detail. It's a very fundamental science mission that we believe we will hear very good news over the course. We have been able to contract with the DLR, the German Space Agency, the Heinrich Hertz operational contract for the operating services over the next years. With ESA and Thales Alenia, we have been able to contract our share in the Argonaut mission for the independent European launcher, European Lunar Access program.
The Argonaut is a lunar lander that Europe will build for moon exploration, and we are a core partner with Thales Alenia. In terms of business expansion, we had our growth in Sweden. We inaugurated a new factory. By the way, yesterday we announced the SARah contract, about EUR 250 million, for this contract, this facility has been developed and built. We bought a company called OHB Vogtland now, I mean, OHB Vogtland now. We bought it from TechniSat, company, located in Schöneck, in Saxony, for the industrialization and serial production. It will help us there. It's a small factory, but it will be helpful to ramp up production capabilities.
We created a company in the U.K., in Bristol, OHB Space UK. This is now in the build-up phase for, actually for the assembly, integration, and test of big satellites, initially in the frame of a European Space Agency science program. Total order intake was very significant in the space system division with more than EUR 1.5 billion. That was a big success for Markus Mõller and his team and the whole company actually. Here you see quick recap of the two investments that we made in Sweden and in Schöneck, in Vogtland. Yeah, I talked about it. I think I can move on. I think as part of our continuous expansion, we are investing.
Currently, we are building a new significant clean room in Italy, in Torino for OHB Italia. You see growth there. As we can say in general, OHB Sweden and OHB Italia are massively growing and are very successful. Obviously that requires also new facilities and more space. U.K., I don't have a photo of the U.K. here yet. Because it's in the course of being implemented, but that's another focus of our investment that we will see in actually, I think, starting 2026, that we will invest in a significant facility there in the Bristol region. MT Aerospace had a very successful year, 2025. We took over the remaining 30% stake in MT Aerospace, so now we own it 100%. That has been a good step, I believe.
The Ariane 6 business is ramping up. We signed recently the contract for the flight model 16 to 42, which obviously gives us security to plan over the next years to ramp up. We do have substantial contracts also from other rocket companies in the U.S. and elsewhere. We have significant growth with regard to our military programs, where MT Aerospace has a significant role also in military. The digital activities just summarized in one slide. We had a good order intake last year, EUR 250 million for our OHB Digital.
This is a business that was not very much in the limelight of public attention, but it's a solid growth and solid deliveries, mainly in what we call downstream, the antenna business, the ground segment operations, but also in the geospatial area where the commercial data resale is growing as well. Last week, OHB celebrated its 25th anniversary of the listing. We had the IPO completed on March 13, 2001. We went public at the so-called Neuer Markt. Since then, we are one of the few remaining successful companies listed previously at Neuer Markt.
If you just look at the numbers, that at that time, the revenue was EUR 15 million with about 125 people. Now 25 years later, it was EUR 1.2 billion with about 3,800 people. You see that we had a very busy 25 years. Actually, the shareholding at that point in time, the Fuchs family had about 70%, and now we have 65.4%. We have been able to grow substantially, massively over 25 years without significant dilution. I mentioned it briefly yesterday, OHB Sweden has been able to finally sign the contract for EPS-Sterna. This is a big success.
20 satellites, EUR 250 million, roughly, is the volume for the development and building up of the satellites. I can say that I'm very happy to see these constellation successes at OHB in Sweden, but also in Italy with IRIDE. We are able to succeed competitively in these markets. Much smaller satellites. This is the EPS-Sterna satellites are satellites in the range between 100 and 200 kg, 150 kg satellites. That's a very different market segment from what you see in our capability in Germany or here in Bremen. It's a lucrative market, and we can also be competitive there.
Actually also with IRIDE and even smaller satellites, it's the 50-kilo class where we have been able to have a constellation implemented and actually, as we saw, rolled out. That's quite a big success. A quick view of what has changed and the development of institutional budgets is obviously one of the significant drivers of growth of the whole space industry in Europe. There's a huge shift towards defense across key institutional budgets. You see that the geopolitical landscape, of course, creates a push for increased sovereignty across Europe. ESA has increased its budget at last year's ministerial conference here in Bremen by about 32%, which is a significant growth for ESA as an institution, EUR 22.3 billion.
The European Commission has an even bigger growth in their planned next multi-annual financial framework. We'll see more detail, but EUR 131 billion for defense, including space, is very significant, and space will play a significant part within this budget. Next to that, obviously, the German military, Bundeswehr, has a plan implemented for EUR 35 billion for space-based security infrastructure that has been announced by Minister Pistorius last fall, and that's a significant increase. This is all part of the overall overarching increase in investment in NATO with the decision that was taken last year by member states to go up to 5% of GDP for defense budgets, 3.5% directly in military and 1.5% in infrastructure related to that.
That basically this one chart gives the overall picture of the boom that you now see in space around Europe. A few details on the ESA budget. I don't wanna go into detail, but the EUR 22 billion have been broken down very specifically to the different lines of activity. Earth observation, navigation, space transportation, and we are playing a good role in some of these bigger parts of ESA budget. I mentioned the growth of the MFF. Actually, it's the MFF proposal. It's the MFF proposal by the commission. The proposal there is for the timeframe 2028 to 2034 to have significant budget increases for defense and space in one budget.
As you can see, comparing the numbers, the current budget line for the budget 2021-2027 is EUR 30 billion. Broken down the way you see it here, the EU Space Programme and EU defense funding. It was in the previous budget cycle, 2014 to 2020, it was EUR 12 billion. You see a massive increase, including defense funding, space programs, and Horizon Europe, which is also taking care of space and defense. We cannot obviously detail it down, but I think it's just a fundamental commitment of Europe or actually the commission so far to invest. That has to go through the approval process with member states, with parliament. Obviously, this might change, but I think it's a significant data point.
The EUR 35 billion for security-related space infrastructure in Germany is much more detailed. If you look to the website of the Ministry of Defense, you can see the German space military strategy, and you can see very detailed what Germany is planning to do. Of course, the geopolitical landscape requires, in the view of the German government, significant space infrastructure, significant build-up of capabilities. A number of constellations are mentioned in this document, and as we can see that this is also being implemented. Satellites, of course, ground infrastructure, on-demand launch capabilities, everything is mentioned there. You will see Germany becoming a very active and leading partner in military investment in space.
I hand it over to Tim to walk us through the financials, for the time being. Thank you very much, but obviously, I'm here for questions.
Yes. Thank you very much, Marco. Also from my side, a warm welcome. Really great to have you in our call. As Marco has already mentioned, from our perspective, 2025 was also from a financial year, a very successful year. We have grown in all our segments, and I am happy to walk you through the key financials right now. As this is one of our key metrics, I start with order entry, and we were able to kind of reach a level of EUR 2.1 billion in 2025, contributed by all the segments, as also Marco has shown, for instance, the space systems about EUR 1.6 billion.
This is a significant growth versus 2024 with a level of 23% and corresponding also in 2025 with a book-to-bill ratio of above 1.5, which is clearly a sign that we are growing. Our backlog is showing this growth. As you can see here, we have reached a level of EUR 3.2 billion, which is an all-time high and provides us with a really comfortable outlook for the year to come.
It is also the fact that considering, and this is shown by the arrows here in the mountain chart, that after each ministerial conference, there was a time of growth in order backlog. Considering that we have already now, when the ministerial conference took place in November 2025 in Bremen here, that we are already at all-time high provides, in addition to the information given by Marco, also positive outlook for the future. Looking into the KPIs in a little bit more detail, especially our total revenue grew by 25% up to a level of EUR 1.25 billion, which is significant growth. It is also mirrored by growing profitability.
We were able to disclose an adjusted EBITDA of a level of EUR 125.6 million, which is also quite above the previous year stated adjusted EBITDA. Also, related to that, the adjusted EBITDA grew to a level of EUR 84 million, which is also a relevant increase in comparison to previous year. What's important for us to master the growth is that we also grew our employees, especially our operational colleagues that are the engineers, technicians, that are really kind of doing the operations to kind of move the growth ahead. I hear an echo. I'm not sure who that is.
Oh, it's gone.
Oh, it's gone. All right. Overall, this is a very also important that we grew in employees in order to fulfill our promises to the customers. Connected to that is also that on the support functions, we were flat rather also shrinking. That is, we are maintaining our cost controls as in the past. Showing the development over the last years has shown that we are clearly growing. We have exceeded also the EUR 1 billion level of 2022 with the already mentioned EUR 1.25 billion. We are surely aiming to continue this path with a level of about EUR 1.4 billion in 2026. This the same development we want also to continue with the profitability.
You see on the adjusted EBITDA and EBIT, we are clearly growing and also we expect that we also grow to a level of about EUR 150 million more, give or take, in 2026, which is corresponding to a level of 11% margin. This growth is also nourished by our order intake. We see and expect also a growth here. This is kind of based on the funds that were shown by Marco before. On the right-hand side, you can see that there are opportunities in basically every segment in our portfolio and the different product categories, be it Earth observation, SatCom or and also in the launcher areas.
As we see that also in 2025, as also already disclosed, our colleagues from the aerospace structure area where we manufacture components for the Ariane 6 launch vehicle are growing significantly and also internationally. Overall, we see that we had a very successful year, 2025, and for sure it's also our ambition to continue this path. As such, I'd like to show you some highlights from our financial calendar. Today, our full year 2025 results call. Then we continue our calendar with some conferences, but also then especially with the disclosure of our Q1 figures and then in June, the general assembly. With that, I'm closing the presentation. Thank you very much for your attendance.
Once again, thank you very much for following in 2025, and we are looking forward to continue our discussions with you, right now with the Q&A section, but also, into our 2026. Thank you for your support.
Yes. Thank you, Tim. I would like to open the floor for questions. Please raise your hand if you have any, and then I will add you as a panelist. Okay. First one is Simon Keller from NuWays. Simon, can you hear us? Simon? You should be able to talk. You have to unmute now.
Hi, everyone. Can you hear me?
Hi. Yes, we can hear you.
Awesome. To start, my question list, can you share any details on the SatComBw Stage 4 tender? Would it be fair to assume that you capture 1/3 of the project?
Yeah. Thank you for the question. Maybe we answer them one by one. As you know, on this program, we have released two ad hoc news in late January and in early March, where we give a statement to the status of this procurement process. Other than that, we are not in a position to comment on any details. We have obviously also seen media reports in the past weeks about it, and we have had many questions on it also from media. Beyond our ad hoc statements, we are not in a position to comment on any details, and this is why also speculating about potential share volumes is much too early from our side.
We unfortunately cannot go into any details of that question.
Understood. Two financial questions. Firstly, on personnel costs. In Q4, they have been noticeably low. What was the reason for it, and what personnel cost runway should we assume into 2026?
Also on transformation costs in 2026, do you expect any? If so, at what level? Then I hop back into the queue. Thank you.
Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. With regard to the personnel expenses, they're on the one hand, we weren't kind of getting all the colleagues on board as we would have expected. Overall, this was in line with the previous quarters. What you noticed correctly is that, as you know, we had one incident in 2024 with one project. In the course of 2025, we had been able to kind of make good progress on dealing with the incident.
As such, it was the case that we, on the one hand, here, utilized provisions that we built in 2024 for the course of 2025, which were mostly personnel costs. Then in addition to that, we also kind of adjusted for this project with regard to all the expectations. As such, this was also kind of by means of utilizing the provision, and on the other hand, reducing the personnel expenses accordingly. This, which is then washed. It is without any impacts on the results.
To answer your second part of your question with regard to the projection, we see that this should be in line with the previous quarter, so that is we will kind of continue the way it was in 2025 in the first quarters. With the second question on transformation costs, I think that in the last year we made really good progress in our so-called Up2Jump program, which is a transition program which we launched. Those kind of transformation costs were associated with those aspects. We will continue in 2026 with the transformation cost control other project efficiency measures.
We don't expect, as of now, a level of the same magnitude as 2025. We will see how this will play out in 2026.
Okay, one quick follow-up question then, because you mentioned now this provision for the SARah project. Can you share how much of this provision has been released in 2025? And is it now completely released? Do you still have something in your books? And do you expect something in 2026 to be released as well?
Yes, thank you very much. With regard to SARah, we have two component which we kind of utilized in 2025. This is on the one hand, the costs that were immediately associated with that, and then also the adoption. Based on that, we are having in our books still provision remaining level of about EUR 9 million. We expect that in 2026, we also continue to really kind of finalize it and so will utilize it most probably. This is to be seen.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question.
Okay. I can see no further raised hands, so, maybe I just hand over to Marco for some closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Obviously, you have further time to think about if more questions are coming. I believe we will put this call online in the next hours or days or whatever. Obviously, should you have more questions, you can directly contact us at the first time, but also, of course, Marcel, for this. I guess from my side, I can only say thank you very much for your attention and to OHB. From my side, I can only look here, if you see at the first time, this is today actually I think, what, your last appearance at the earnings calls.
I would like to thank Kurt for his, I think, 37.5-year work at OHB. Obviously for the last whatever 10 years or so, he had the first time. From my side, a big thank you. Again, I think by the end of the month, Kurt will retire. He will be staying close to OHB, but in terms of investor contacts directly, this is the final event we have together.
Well, last years was a support from your side and from my side. It's everything okay now. It's time to leave, to go in retirement and after really successful and good years here at OHB.
Thank you. I guess that's now the moment to close the call. Marcel is nodding, so there have not been further calls or questions coming. Again, thank you and have a good day. Again, we very much appreciate your interest in OHB. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much.