Hensoldt’s Bird Radar Lands in Africa While Order Book Hits Record €9.8 Billion

Hensoldt's Robin Radar MAX 3D installed at King Shaka Airport – first in South Africa. Stock rallies 19% on record order backlog and Q1 revenue surge of 26%.

Hensoldt is proving its radar expertise extends well beyond military applications with the installation of a bird-detection system at South Africa’s King Shaka International Airport in Durban. The company’s local subsidiary announced on May 21 that the 3D avian radar had been successfully commissioned, making the site only the second airport on the African continent — and the first in South Africa — to operate this generation of specialised bird-tracking technology.

The system, a Robin Radar MAX 3D FMCW phased-array unit, boasts an instrumented range of 15 kilometres, rotates at 60 revolutions per minute, and delivers real-time updates every second. It can track up to 3,000 birds simultaneously, classifying them by size and swarm composition while storing three-dimensional position data. The project is backed by a formal agreement between Hensoldt South Africa, Robin Radar Systems, Airports Company South Africa, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The university’s team will cross-reference radar detections with on-site bird identifications to populate the system’s species database, helping calibrate the technology for local conditions over the long term.

Hensoldt’s push into civilian infrastructure dovetails with a powerful run in its share price. The stock broke decisively above its 200-day moving average on Thursday, closing at €87.76, and has surged nearly 19% over the past seven trading sessions. Behind the rally lies a combination of robust first-quarter figures, a freshly approved dividend, and a strategic bid for a major Bundeswehr contract.

First-quarter revenue climbed roughly 26% year-on-year to €496 million, while the operating loss per share narrowed from €0.26 to €0.16. The standout figure, however, was the order backlog: it swelled to an all-time high of around €9.8 billion, providing multi-year visibility. Meanwhile, shareholders at Thursday’s annual general meeting approved a dividend of €0.55 per share for fiscal 2025, with analysts already pencilling in a hike to €0.69 for 2026.

Additional momentum came from Hensoldt’s involvement in the “Spock 2” competition, a satellite-based surveillance and targeting system powered by artificial intelligence. The company is bidding alongside OHB, Helsing, and Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace. Germany’s federal government has held a 25.1% stake in Hensoldt since 2021, underscoring the group’s strategic importance to national defence architecture. Airbus Defence and Space separately noted that integrating Hensoldt’s Mk1 radar into new combat systems could yield cost savings of more than 40%.

For the full year 2026, Hensoldt targets revenue of roughly €2.75 billion, a book-to-bill ratio between 1.5x and 2.0x, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.5% to 19.0%. The first quarter delivered an adjusted margin of just 8.9%, a seasonally weak result that nonetheless fell within planning. Looking further ahead, management aims to cross the €6 billion revenue threshold by 2030.

Yet valuation remains a concern. The stock now trades at a forward P/E of about 40, and the average analyst price target stands at €91.17 — barely 6% above the current level. That leaves little room for error. The next major test arrives on July 31, 2026, when Hensoldt reports second-quarter results and investors will learn whether the record backlog is translating into profitability.