OHB’s Tight Float and Record Backlog Create a High-Stakes Balancing Act

OHB's stock volatility reflects 6% free float; company plans to expand to 20% via €1B+ placement. Q1 net profit surged 150%, order book hit €3.35B record. Key milestones: Ramses asteroid mission and RFA ONE rocket.

OHB’s stock swung more than ten percent intraday on Thursday, closing just above the €500 mark — a classic symptom of a company where barely 6% of shares are freely traded. When the Bremen-based space specialist confirmed plans to lift that tiny free float to around 20%, the market’s reaction was instant and outsized. A coordinated placement worth over a billion dollars, backed by an expanded bank consortium now including Berenberg and Commerzbank alongside coordinators Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, is in the works. But the sensitivity to any hint of a setback was exposed on May 25, when a rumour that the placement had been called off sent the stock sharply lower.

The volatility is understandable given the shareholder structure. The Fuchs family, which founded the company, holds roughly 65% of the shares, while private-equity firm KKR owns about 29%. That leaves only a sliver for public trading, and with a market capitalisation of around €9.4 billion based on roughly 19 million shares outstanding, even modest order flow can produce dramatic moves.

Behind the trading noise, however, the operational numbers tell a different story. First-quarter 2026 revenue climbed 18% to €270.9 million, while adjusted EBITDA jumped 37% to €27.3 million. Net profit more than doubled, reaching €9.94 million — up 150% from a year earlier — translating to earnings per share of €0.52. More importantly, the order book hit an all-time high of €3.35 billion at the end of March, a 45% year-on-year surge. The Space Systems division accounted for the lion’s share, with a backlog of €2.68 billion, underpinned by rising European defence spending and expanded ESA programmes.

That bullish operational momentum is being reinforced by concrete project milestones. OHB Italia, which last February secured the prime contract worth €81.2 million for the Ramses asteroid mission, has now awarded a subcontract to HPS GmbH for the development and delivery of the probe’s communication antenna. The deal was signed at the SmallSat Conference in Amsterdam. Ramses — a joint ESA-JAXA mission targeting the asteroid Apophis — is scheduled for launch in 2028, with the flyby expected on April 13, 2029. While the antenna subcontract is modest in value, it signals that the technically demanding programme is moving from design into hardware.

Meanwhile, OHB’s vertically integrated ambitions are advancing on other fronts. Its subsidiary Rocket Factory Augsburg has applied for a launch window starting July 1, 2026, for the maiden flight of the RFA ONE rocket. Success would give OHB its own launch capacity for the first time. The company is also exploring a partnership with Rheinmetall in tactical reconnaissance to tap growing demand for space-based surveillance systems.

All these threads converge at the annual general meeting scheduled for June 8, 2026. Shareholders will vote on a proposed dividend of €0.60 per share, but the session’s strategic importance lies in the proposed new capital framework. That authority is the formal prerequisite for the planned billion-dollar placement. If approved, the move to boost the free float to 20% would materially alter the stock’s liquidity profile and potentially attract a broader institutional investor base.

For now, the market’s attention remains fixed on the interplay between a tiny float and a company that is firing on all operational cylinders. While the TecDAX surged to a record above 4,100 points, the DAX edged lower on geopolitical tensions in the Middle East — a reminder that OHB’s fate is increasingly being written by its own order books and corporate calendar.