Rheinmetall’s Bundeswehr Laser Order and US Robotics Push Do Little to Lift a Stubbornly Weak Share Price

Despite a €73B order backlog and new deals for autonomous vehicles, laser modules, and Arctic military vehicles, Rheinmetall stock remains 38% below its 52-week high with a 23% YTD decline.

Rheinmetall is pulling out all the stops – a new US partnership for autonomous ground vehicles, a high-value laser-module contract from the Bundeswehr, and a prominent presence at Canada’s biggest defence show. Yet the Düsseldorf-based group’s stock remains stuck in a rut, trading roughly 38% below its 52-week peak and nursing a year-to-date decline of nearly 23%.

The disconnect between operational momentum and market sentiment is stark. Rheinmetall’s order backlog stood at €73 billion at the end of March, the first quarter delivered revenue of €1.938 billion and an operating profit of €224 million, and the company is guiding for full-year sales of €14.0–14.5 billion with an operating margin of roughly 19%. But investors have not been buying the story: the share price has slid from a high of €1,995 to around €1,234, even after a recent bounce that pushed the relative strength index to 90 – a technically overbought reading.

On the ground, the deal flow keeps coming. American Rheinmetall, the group’s US subsidiary, announced a partnership on May 27 with California-based Harbinger to develop a new line of unmanned and autonomous ground vehicles for the Pentagon. The collaboration marries Rheinmetall’s military systems integration with Harbinger’s hybrid-electric drive-by-wire platform – a commercial base that can be scaled cheaply. The focus is on robotic tactical wheeled vehicles and logistics systems for contested environments, with initial demonstrations planned for this summer.

Across the Atlantic, Rheinmetall Canada is making a play for a piece of Ottawa’s massive Arctic spending spree. At the CANSEC exhibition in Ottawa, the subsidiary is showcasing its Mission Master family, including the SP2 model – shown for the first time in Canada – and the Mission Master XT2 Arctic Edition, a vehicle designed to traverse extreme terrain and cross waterways. The pitch is aimed squarely at two Canadian programmes still in the early “Options Analysis” phase: the Indirect Fires Modernization effort (unfunded, estimated at over C$5 billion) and the Domestic Arctic Mobility Enhancement programme (underfunded, estimated at over C$200 million). For the latter, Rheinmetall is offering the Voyager D12, a vehicle developed in Quebec that can carry up to twelve troops and their gear. Canada announced in March a defence and infrastructure package worth more than C$40 billion, including over C$35 billion in federal spending for the north, but neither programme has yet received a firm budget line.

Meanwhile, Rheinmetall has locked in a concrete Bundeswehr order that runs into the hundreds of millions of euros. The German army is calling off a “six-figure” number of LLM-VarioRay laser light modules, a type of tactical aiming and illumination device. Deliveries are scheduled between 2026 and 2032, and the net order value – booked in the second quarter of 2026 – is in the three-digit million euro range. The modules will be manufactured at the Rheinmetall Soldier Electronics subsidiary on Lake Constance.

The contrast between the steady inflow of new business and the weak share price is hard to ignore. Shares recently closed at €1,253, up 1.28% on that day, but the stock remains in a chart-based consolidation phase after a volatile year. Whether the Canadian marketing push will eventually translate into booked orders depends on when Ottawa moves its still-unfunded programmes into procurement – a timeline that remains uncertain. For now, Rheinmetall is building its case on three continents, but the market is waiting for more than promises.