OHB's Triple-Header: A Capital Vote, a Trade Fair, and an Asteroid Probe Assembly

OHB SE's high-stakes week: AGM vote on €1.2B bond dilution, KKR's stake sale, and stock volatility. Record backlog and RAMSES probe assembly add context.

June 8 marks the start of a week that will test whether OHB SE can translate its record backlog into something more tangible than a stock chart that has already doubled this year. The Bremen-based space company has crammed its annual general meeting, a major industry trade show, and the ongoing assembly of an asteroid-bound space probe into a single, high-stakes window.

At the AGM, shareholders are being asked to authorise the board to issue convertible and warrant bonds worth up to €1.2 billion — a move that could dilute existing equity by as much as 20%. The German Association for the Protection of Securities Holdings (DSW) has come out against the proposal. The criticism is straightforward: a fifth of share value being at risk of dilution is a direct hit on current holders.

Yet the same assembly room will also hear about operations that are humming. OHB’s order book hit a record €3.35 billion on March 31, up 45% from a year earlier. Total output in the first quarter rose 15% to €279.3 million, while adjusted EBIT jumped 63% to €16.8 million. The Space Systems segment alone accounts for €2.68 billion of the backlog.

Just days after the virtual AGM, ILA Berlin — Europe’s premier aerospace gathering — opens its doors on June 10. OHB plans to unveil new mission contracts there, alongside heavyweights Airbus, ArianeGroup and DLR. The showpiece is traditionally a platform for sealing partnerships and chasing political visibility, and OHB needs precisely that after a rough week for the stock.

The shares closed at €372.50 on Friday, down 9.15% on the day. Early in the week, the slide had been around 9% over the preceding seven days, but by Friday the weekly loss had deepened to nearly 15%. Even so, the stock remains up about 207% since the start of the year — a rally that has cooled sharply since hitting an all-time high of €688 on May 21. That level now lies almost 46% above the current price, illustrating just how much expectations had been baked in. The annualised 30-day volatility stands at a breathtaking 142%.

A big part of the pressure comes from the shareholder register. Private equity house KKR holds around 29% of OHB and wants to place roughly 20 percentage points of that stake before June 30 — a transaction valued at more than €1 billion. If successful, the free float would rise from its current 5.7% to about 26%. The founding Fuchs family would retain control via 65% of the voting rights, but the sheer volume coming to market is an event in itself for a thin-traded stock. Small orders have always been able to swing the price, and the KKR overhang adds to the uncertainty.

Behind the corporate manoeuvring, the engineering work continues. Since June 4, OHB Italia has been assembling the RAMSES probe in Milan. The European Space Agency and Japan’s JAXA are jointly funding the mission to shadow the asteroid Apophis before its close pass of Earth in April 2029, when it will come within 32,000 kilometres. The ESA contract is valued at €81.2 million, with the total framework including preparatory work reaching around €150 million. Launch is targeted for spring 2028. Meanwhile, Rocket Factory Augsburg, OHB’s rocket subsidiary, has applied for a launch window starting July 1, 2026 for the maiden flight of the RFA ONE — though the company stresses that first flights are always susceptible to delay.

The operational case for OHB is strong, but it is colliding with capital-market realities in real time. The AGM vote, the ILA showcase and the looming KKR placement all converge on the same brief stretch of days. Whether the company can bridge the gap between record orders and sustainable, conviction-driven growth will be decided not on a launch pad, but in a boardroom, at a trade fair, and on screens tracking the flow of its thinly traded shares.