Quarter highlights. I think here's for Q3, for us definitely a highlight on M&A with the announced acquisition of the Navy vessels Lürssen. I think we made a major move into the new business area, marine. We're going to see how this is going to develop. The latest announcement from the German Parliament has been very interesting. We're looking forward to that one. Closing here expected to happen until the end of this year. Second news from the German Parliament definitely was the approval of the German budget 2025. We are now expecting that the orders do come in and we are now seeing first, $25 million proposals coming through this week and then, regularly until the end of the year. Expectation is that there will be up to 80 proposals coming through with more than 30 being of value for Rheinmetall.
We did not see many orders coming in in the third quarter because of the fact that the approval was only taking place later in the quarter. The expectations are here clearly set on the fourth quarter. There were announcements from the German Vice Admiral that he is now also considering to convert the frame agreements into regular agreements, fixed contracts. What we have announced earlier is now expected to materialize over the next quarters. Regarding the performance of the third quarter, I just wanted to remind you of the following facts. We said already here in the Q2 call that we had the expectation that ammunition and truck would here be a contributor in the second half. Ammunition is going to depend on the approval of the Murcia new design of the plant. That has not taken yet place. We're still waiting to get the approval.
As a reminder, in the first half, we had like $300 million of hit from not being able to deliver from Murcia. The expectation is here still that we can get the approval until the end of the year. Q3 did not see any expected contribution. Regarding the trucks, we have received the call off for the trucks. A further reminder was that there is a slightly different time pattern compared to 2024. The sales only start six weeks or even seven weeks later than in 2024. A total of $300 million delay, which will then stretch from mid-August to mid-November. A little bit later in Q3, stretching into Q4. From the other businesses, we have not seen any major developments here, nor have had any communication during the latest conferences.
What we saw here as an additional element was the ongoing discussions now with Leonardo regarding the spin-off, the buyback of the trucks from Leonardo. You know that Leonardo took the whole piece from Iveco and we are now in the process of carving out the Iveco trucks from Leonardo. We couldn't do that until the due line for the offer and are now in the process of doing this. Expectation is that we can realize the carve-out until the end of March 2026. I already mentioned, NBL is expected to close in this year. We have to pass merger control, but that should not be an issue with the low exposure that we have from the Rheinmetall side as a component supplier. We are very confident that this is going to happen over the next couple of weeks until year's end.
Regarding the disposal of the civil business, we are in a competitive process. We're expecting to finalize the sale of the business and should as well see a solution coming up in the first month of 2026. By then we will be a pure-play defense business stretching across all the different domains now, sea, air, land, and space. I think that is the summary of the news that I wanted to share with you from the conferences. I'm now open for questions from your side.
Colin, you are three. Your line is open.
Hi, it's Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank. I hope you can hear me.
Hi, Christoph. Yeah.
Excellent. Thank you. A follow-up question first on the order intake comment that you made. Is a ballpark number around €1.5 billion order intake for Q3 the right range to think about, also based on your press releases, or did I miss anything more material? Did you or your management team comment in recent meetings around the seasonality just around weapons and ammunition and also on cash? Should we see the usual, top line-wise, Q3 potentially also be below Q2, and cash flow usually negative in Q3? Was there a comment on that or nothing to share?
The expectation is that we are going to see here large orders coming through in the fourth quarter with corresponding prepayment. The German customer here has indicated that he is willing to do material prepayments in order to meet here the spending targets. We are in the discussion now with the orders, with the customers here, how to structure this. There could be larger prepayments here expected for the fourth quarter. Order intake in Q3 was relatively low. No major orders were communicated. We are seeing now that some of the orders will come at the beginning of October, mid-October. Basically, everything is in line with the expectations that we had.
Thank you. On weapon and ammunition and cash seasonality, no comment, I figured that.
Yeah. Cash seasonality Q4 heavy because, as I said, the customers are interested to expense until year-end. In weapons ammunition, here should have here again, a very strong Q4 as we communicated here in the Q2 call.
Understood. Thank you.
Your hand is raised.
One information for call-in users: they need to press star three to ask a question. Sven Weier, your line open.
Thank you both for taking my questions. I have a few. First of all, coming back to the comments you made on Murcia and Germany trucks, if I understood you correctly, this only has an impact on Q3, but the current prediction is that this will then come in in Q4 and therefore have no impact on how we should think about the year as a whole. Is that the right perception or?
As I said, the truck is from just the timing pattern difference to 2024, with a six weeks delay into August, and end of delivery in November. That should not have any impact on the full year. Regarding the ammunition sales, we would here still need to get the approval from the Spanish authorities. For everybody who's not so familiar, the topic is that we need to get the approval on the reestablished receiving process in Murcia. Everything else is ready, just the customer wants full shots, and we can, at this moment, not deliver the propulsion because that last step, which was destroyed during an accident beginning of the year, has not gotten the required permits to start production.
If you get the approval in Q4, can you ship the $300 million directly right away, or how does it practically work?
We would be able to start shipping immediately here and realize the sales. Yeah.
Is it fair to say when we think about Q3 in terms of the overall dynamic, it sounds pretty familiar or similar to Q2? Is that fair?
Yeah. Here we have two businesses with a very good margin. I mean, especially the Murcia business is a high margin business, and that is the delay that we're seeing here and also the trucks. I mean, trucks have as well a good margin business, and here we're missing the three to six weeks of deliveries here in July and August.
The other question I had was just on the orders that are now coming in from October. I mean, when you planned this earlier this year, did you think that any of these orders would still contribute to revenues this year, or did you always assume that this would have an impact later after this year?
The large orders we're talking about now are mostly orders that have a very long-term contribution period here. If you look at the expected vehicles that are coming through and the ammunition, ammunition is a 10-year timeframe contract here that will be converted with the vehicles. The expectation is these are multi-year deliveries, and they did not have any significance for Q4.
The final question for me is just on the Skyranger. I was just curious, I mean, given the current debate around drones and the additional need for air defense, can you just remind us about capacity and how many Skyrangers you can do and how much flexibility you have for additional orders?
Clearly, we cannot do enough Skyrangers. Right now, interest is rising. Recent attacks in Ukraine have again confirmed the performance of the Skyranger systems. We are now looking to speed up the capacities. We currently have around 150 vehicles, which then should go above. We are going to start a plant or a line at the plant in Neuss for Skyranger production in order to increase capacity. The amount of the additional Skyrangers in Neuss has not been communicated yet.
Okay. Sounds good. Thank you, Dag.
Sebastian Grobe, your line is open.
Sebastian, you need to unmute yourself. Okay, next one.
Currently, there are no further questions. If someone wants to ask a question, who's a call-in user, needs to press star three on the phone.
Because I'm trying to unmute you, but I can't unmute you. You must unmute yourself.
There's a follow-up from Sven Weier. Your line is open.
Yeah, I'd hop in one more regarding trucks because I remember, I think one of the things you mentioned earlier was that the truck deliveries from the German customer are a bit of a bottleneck. I mean, does that have anything to do with the six weeks later, or is that all sorted now?
No. The issue was that the signing of the contract was a little bit later, and then delivery only started here mid of August. We still have an issue, a limited quality approval capacity at the customer, so we can't do more than 100 trucks a week. That has not changed.
At the end of the day, that's okay in terms of how you think about revenues and what you planned.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
There's one further question from Daniel, Gabelli. Your line is open.
Can you hear me well?
Yes.
Yes. Thank you, Dag, for taking my question. I would like to briefly follow up on your comments on the receiving process in Spain. Is there any chance you do not receive the approval in the fourth quarter, or is this cut in stone?
We are dependent here on the timeline and on the process of the authorities. Here we're expecting that this is coming through in Q4, but it's not cut in stone.
There are no further questions.
Okay. If there are no further questions, I thank you for your interest, and I would close the call right now. Thank you very much, and goodbye.