From Bremen to OHB's Q1 earning call. We are presenting here the results of the first three months of 2026. With me here is Tim Tecklenburg, and online is also Markus Moeller. I hope you have been able to download the materials we had published this morning on our website. I'll walk you through, quickly through the slides, what has happened, and then Tim will take over with the numbers. We had a very good first quarter. Just recap quickly a summary of who OHB is. We're a European champion in the space market in Europe. We're the biggest pure play space prime, obviously with a very strong German heritage. Currently, the markets are developing very well. Strong market tailwinds from all kinds of institutional and commercial customers.
We see ourselves as a company that, with its strong track record, outstanding technology, strong customer relationships, is on a very good way and on a very good trajectory to grow the business successfully. When I say growing the business, we are increasing our footprint. Tim will show later a slide of the ongoing expansions that we are currently doing. This will also be shown in the numbers that we have over the last years, but also especially now in this first quarter. Our activity in the three domains, very briefly hasn't changed in the last quarter. Space systems is our satellite and system development part, where in the past we have developed big satellite projects here in Europe with Galileo, with Meteosat Third Generation.
On the military side, SAR-Lupe and SARah. Our access to space business actually has started because our customers needed launch services, so we started kind of a broker a long time ago when we started to build full end-to-end satellites. Now we are also in the business of developing a small micro launcher, where we have a significant share in company called Rocket Factory. We are hoping to see that launch taking place, the first launch, first test launch later this summer. We are the largest supplier into the Ariane 6 system as a structural supplier, and also similar product range for number of U.S. rocket manufacturers, mainly the biggest one being Blue Origin, but also others.
On the digital side, we are providing ground systems and operations, and data analytics, and I will come to that later. Here's an overview of the company setup. Has not changed in the last three months, with regard to what we published in the annual report 2025. Just a quick run through what has happened in Q1. A very big success was the signing of the EPS-Sterna constellation. It was a 20 satellite constellation with about EUR 250 million, largest contract ever for OHB Sweden. It's on the success of the Arctic Weather Satellite that was launched, well, 1.5 years ago, roughly. Yeah, we're looking forward to complete that. Customer here is EUMETSAT.
It's an operational constellation that will be operated as part of the EUMETSAT Weather Satellite Network. Another important contract that we signed was the next planetary defense mission. OHB Italia signed with ESA the RAMSES contract. RAMSES is a mission that will go to an asteroid that is coming pretty close to Earth within the geo orbit. It will be launched by JAXA. Actually today, this afternoon, there will be the signing between JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and ESA in Berlin of the agreement that JAXA will partner with ESA for providing the launch. We're very optimistic that we will be ready for a launch in 2028 because the asteroid will not wait.
The asteroid will come on, if I remember correctly, it is a Friday the 13th. I think it's Friday 13th in April 2029. By that time the probe needs to be where the asteroid is, in order to monitor it. It will not a collision scenario, but it will be monitoring scenario. Another big success was the next step in our, the constellation Eaglet II. We've launched another eight satellites. Now we have 16 operational. The remaining satellites or the next eight satellites will be launched later this year. It's an Earth observation constellation with really interesting images. I looked at them recently. I'm very proud of the quality of the images that the radar is doing over the, mainly over the Mediterranean for the Italian government.
Another success was the maiden flight of Ariane 64. we are very proud to be part of the Ariane community as a supplier. of course, this launch marked the four solid booster version and the strong version, so to say. About 20 tons into LEO orbit. Very good performance. Congratulation from our side. We did also have a new company established, European Moonport Company, which is our, as the name says, our approach of establishing a European Moonport program. the moon is obviously a very hot topic. We all have seen the exciting Artemis II images. We have seen how much excitement the very successful Artemis II mission has created all around the world.
Now Europe is also pushing very strongly to help to return to the moon. Just as a reminder, 20 years ago, OHB has been the first with the SMART-1 mission. First European mission to the moon was built out of OHB Sweden. Actually it, I'm not saying it landed, but it crashed on the moon purposely. We are obviously strong moon aficionados. Another celebration we had, 25 years ago, OHB was listed at the Deutsche Börse. At that time at the Neuer Markt, which was the growth market of 25 years ago. We're now part of the Prime Standard, and we have developed very well.
If you look at the overall timeline that you can see there, I see on this chart, it's even the stock development over the whole 25 years. Started very low. It's almost not visible to see. Overall, much better performance than the DAX over 25 years. Ownership, just as a reminder, 65+% the Fuchs family. At 28.6% KKR, which holds it through an entity called Orchid Lux Holding. The free float is very small, at 5.7%. We, as the founding family, are very happy to have been contributed to this and still holding the majority of almost 2/3. We're very happy that in this 25 years, we grew the company from very small, with 125 people, to now 4,000+ people.
With this, I'm turning it over to Tim.
Yes.
Please take the numbers.
Thank you very much, Marco. Highly appreciate it. Also thank you very much from my side that you are joining this call, and also warm welcome from my side. I'd like to provide you an overview on our financial figures as per Q1 2026. As Marco has mentioned, we had a good start in the year, and I will walk you through the key highlights from a financial perspective. Starting with the order backlog, we continue to grow our order backlog on the level of more than EUR 3.35 billion of order backlog. This is another record level for our company and provides us with already good visibility for the years to come. The arrows show when the ministerial conferences took place.
As you know, in November 2025, even here in Bremen, the last ministerial conference took place, already now we see that the first contracts are now coming. We also see, as Marco has mentioned, market tailwinds from the European Commission maybe, and also from other nations here in Europe where we are present in order to further grow and have the backlog all growing. For this record high backlog, we have already started to invest in the past few years. Right now we have, we are in 18 locations in 11 different countries. You're familiar with our structure.
A few highlights of last and ongoing investments is our expansion of our Bremen site, but also, we like to highlight that we have already set foot in U.K., starting with a new Bristol subsidiary. We have in 2025 moved into a new factory in Sweden, also preparing for instance, already the Sterna contract that we just won in the Q1 2026. We, as we also communicated, acquired a company for electronic components in Germany, in Saxony, in order to prepare ourselves for future growth, especially with regard to the industrialization of our satellite manufacturing.
We are continuing our ramp up for our components in the launcher segment. Overall, as Marco has mentioned, around 4,000 people here, we are growing and want to continue to grow and to hire. Here the group in brief, backlog I already touched base upon our total operating performance achieved a level of EUR 200 and almost 80 million, which is really a 15% step up in comparison to the Q1 2025. Our profitability measured in the adjusted EBITDA has kind of grown also versus last year, showing that we are on the right track with a level of EUR 27.3 million, which is representing 9.7% adjusted EBITDA margin.
We obviously want to continue this path and we'll do our best to do so. Overall, the development in the last years with regard to the Q1 figures, you see that our company is growing. This is basically also then shown in the full year figures, as mentioned, to almost EUR 280 million total operating performance with an overall profitability of 27.3% adjusted EBITDA and also an increased level of adjusted EBIT on a level of about EUR 16.8 million, so representing a 6% EBIT margin. That is also in the EBIT, we continue our growth path. A quick outlook for the next dates that you might want to consider. On May 18th, we conduct a capital markets update.
In June 8th, we will conduct our annual general meeting. The second half year is with the Q2 results, obviously, with the Q3 results in November. Basically with that, we are kind of coming to the end of our slide deck. Thank you once again for joining and also for supporting OHB, which we really highly appreciate.
Excellent. Oh, sorry.
No, go ahead. I thought I was talking.
Yes, with this, I would like to start the Q&A session. As usual, please just raise your hand if you have any questions, and we will add you as a panelist.
I think there has been a hand.
There's a raised hand already by Simon Keller from NuWays. I will just add you as a panelist quick. Hey, Simon, can you hear us? Can't hear you yet.
Good morning.
Good morning, Simon.
Thanks for the presentation. I have a couple of topics that I would like to go through one by one, if that's okay.
Yeah, sure.
Firstly, on personnel, how are you progressing with hiring? Can you keep the order momentum? Can you keep up hiring with the order momentum, or are there any relevant challenges worth to be aware of? Also in this regard, I noticed personal costs remain disciplined. Do you have any upfront expenses that we need to be aware of as you bring in new employees on board to ramp up for this super cycle?
We are continuing to hire. You see the numbers. I always say we have more than 4,000 people because if we add the hires of April and up to now, we are. We are hiring quite fast. We are hiring so fast that even our HR is not able to keep track of the hiring. I'm just laughing to myself because sometimes it's a time lag to find out how many people have been hired in that month. But we are doing it quite quickly. And obviously it's difficult to hire good people because the space industry is booming. Everybody in the industry is hiring people, so it's not so easy to find the right quality.
We are obviously offering a very attractive proposition, good compensation and an exciting job and obviously also hopefully a strong growth in the future. There's no extra expenses attached to that. Obviously, sometimes we might hire people through headhunters. Yes, this is taking place, so we do have sometimes consultancy fees for headhunters on special occasions. This is not something that should change any model.
If I may add to that, Marco, I'd like to highlight that those hirings are taking place in our core function of operational, in our operations. It is really focused on kind of fulfilling the customer contracts and with regard to support function, we keep this rather flat.
Understood. Thanks. Maybe one follow-up here. Where do you get the people from mostly? Are they mostly graduates, or do you get some from automotive, or generally is the space industry large enough such that you can absorb them from, I don't know, other countries maybe, or?
It's a mixture of everything. We are hiring a lot of young people directly from university, and those come from everywhere over Europe. We still, I mean, we have done this since the last 15, 20 years, so we have a strong community of colleagues from Spain and Italy and France. We are very, very diverse. I think we have about 40 different nations in the company. Very international mixture. We do also hire experts from the market. Sometimes, as you said, also from other industries. It's really a mixture. Our HR team is very busy, and they're working on a long list.
Again, as we are an industry that is booming, not all the industries are currently booming. There are also people like Quereinsteiger. They're coming into space, side entrance. They're coming into space. It's a big focus on us. Not so easy.
Okay. Thanks for the insights. Next topic would be Bundeswehr orders. Broadly speaking, what capture rate do you expect from the German space defense budget? Is there maybe anything that has swung the needle in your favor over the last months?
Well, obviously, I think it's well known that, first of all, Germany spends a lot of attention and of course, also money on increasing the defense efforts. Just, I think 10 days ago, there was a publication of the foresight of the German budgets including the outlook until 2030. You could see that there was, it's foreseen, this current government foresees a massive increase of the military spending up to EUR 180 billion per year in 2030.
Wow.
That's the public, it's a public paper. If you think back some years ago, we were EUR 50 billion-EUR 60 billion per year, so it's more than triple. It will go on in the direction of the 5% target of GDP, which is the current target for NATO. That's the overall environment, and I think it's going on. It's a stable increase. Within this, space has been designated as a core topic, which is good for the whole space industry, including OHB. We feel that a number of these topics are really well suited for us. The bottom line is that the topics that the military, the Bundeswehr wants to do are really published.
In November, they have published the space military strategy. It's online. If you read this, you can see all the topics. I can tell you that we are very much interested in almost all these topics. We are teaming with one partner here and with another partner there, and we're looking. Sometimes we have already delivered proposals. On other occasions, we are about to deliver proposals. On other occasions, we're just making thoughts about teaming options. The bottom line is we are working hard on this overall opportunity, but nothing of that is already in the order book of this wave, and nothing is in the current EUR 3.2 billion. This is something that is to come in the future.
Knowing the processes, obviously, there is not just a proposal to be delivered, but also then a selection process, potentially, obviously, then negotiations and parliamentary approval, and so on and so on. Long story short, this is not making us busy today, but we foresee this to be significant in the near future.
Okay. Maybe slightly more specifically, would you be willing to or supportive of the statement where I'd say, like, 40% of this space defense budget from Germany could land up in your order book? Is that a fair assumption, or do you think it's less or more for some reason?
Well, I wouldn't call it a fair assumption. I would call it a great idea or a great statement. No, I don't know. I mean, honestly, we don't know. Honestly, there has been a budget publicly earmarked, which is said to be EUR 35 billion over the next five years, meaning on average, EUR 7 billion a year. Yes, we are one of the big space players in Germany, but others as well. I wouldn't, I don't calculate this in a quota of that number. Also after 2030, there's also a future within the 2030s. We will see also operating, and replenishment and addition coming next.
My feeling is not, I'm not looking of what the share of us is, but I'm looking that we are getting some of the topics that we are pursuing.
Yeah. Understandable. Next topic would be Moonport. Do you plan to invest here anything that is not funded, for example, to capture commercial activity?
Yes, of course. I mean, I don't believe that you can speed activities on the moon without any private activity. Yes, of course, there are institutional programs, and we are, it's public that we are leading together with Thales Alenia Space from Torino, Argonaut. We have been involved in the moon, as I said earlier, since a long time. The whole idea of the Moonport company is also to attract private capital into the moon, because the Moonport, as the name says, is the hub for logistics. The difficult thing in the past has always been to safely land on the moon, and many of the missions, a high quarter of the missions was not successful in landing.
We believe, like 500 years ago, in the exploration of the world, the first thing you have to do is stable logistics, safe ports. That is the starting point of every exploration that needs to be done, and that's why we believe there needs to be a starting point around a Moonp ort with a common logistic. For that, it cannot be that everybody, or it is more efficient if you have a sharing of certain things like a stable ground, like energy and many other things. Yes, this is something we like to also invest in.
Understood. Thanks. Last topic, Rocket Factory Augsburg. What are the key development steps ahead next to the maiden flight? Is there any consideration on your side to crystallize the embedded value, for example, via separate listing?
The last question, we have no considerations on that yet. I mean, we are focusing on the first launch. I mean, first test launch, as we should call it. You know, launching rockets is difficult. Launching rockets is risky, we are humble people. We had a 1.5 year ago, we had a, I forgot the term, how people call it, we had a faulty first stage test, an anomaly that destroyed the first stage when it was on the test site. We are hoping for a launch later this summer. The rocket is already in Scotland, in SaxaVord, at the launchpad, it's still laying in the hall.
It's not yet erected into a vertical position, but the team seems to be very busy. We completed the engine tests. We're working hard on the logistics, building up the telemetry or finalizing that. The focus of our attention, or Rocket Factory Augsburg's attention, has shifted to SaxaVord. This is where people are busy now. Everything is at the launchpad, and well, we hope that it's going to be successful. We will see. Whatever we define as success, but this is something we will have to talk about briefly before the launch attempt.
All right, best of luck, and looking forward to this.
Thank you, Simon.
Thank you. I can't see any further questions for now. I don't know if we just give people another minute.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, we should give people another minute, and what I'm obviously doing is I'm using it for advertisement. We have upcoming the ILA show in Berlin from June 10 to June 14. We have a very exciting booth, hopefully. I haven't seen actually the plans yet, but I'm excited, and I'm sure it will be great. I'm absolutely sure that the show as a whole is worth coming, so everybody who has the chance should obviously come to visit us there. We will all be there. Come to ILA and look into the future of space.
No. No further questions, sir, I think we can conclude this call for now.
Right.
Very good. Thank you very much, and thanks for your attention.
Thank you very much.
Let's stay in touch, and, yeah, hope to see you soon again, in the upcoming events that, Tim just showed.
Thank you also from my side.