OHB’s Billion-Euro Bonanza Meets a Wall of Skepticism

The Bremen-based space group OHB finds itself in an uncomfortable position: its order book has never been fatter, its growth metrics are pointing in the right direction, and yet the share price keeps sliding as if none of it matters.

That disconnect was on full display last Tuesday, when OHB signed a contract worth roughly €1 billion with satellite operator SES to build 18 satellite platforms for IRIS², Europe’s flagship secure-connectivity constellation. The program itself is enormous — 348 satellites in total, with a projected budget of €15.6 billion against an original cost estimate of €10.55 billion. First launches are slated for 2029, with commercial services expected to begin the following year.

The market’s response? A shrug. Since the announcement, the stock has managed a gain of just 1.4 to 1.6 percent, depending on the trading day measured. For a contract of this magnitude, investors might reasonably have expected more enthusiasm. Instead, the muted reaction underscores just how far sentiment on OHB has deteriorated.

A pattern of underwhelming reactions

This is not the first time a major win has failed to move the needle. Roughly a month earlier, OHB Italia was selected by the Italian space agency ASI for the PRISMA Second Generation Earth-observation mission, a project running through the end of 2031. That announcement triggered a similar non-event — and in the weeks since, the stock has shed 19.1 to 19.3 percent of its value.

The cumulative effect is stark. At Friday’s close of €186.00 (or €185.60, depending on the data feed), the shares sit roughly 27 percent below where they traded 30 days ago. Compared with the 52-week high of €688.00 reached in May, the stock has cratered by around 73 percent. Even the 50-day moving average of €241.53 stands about 23 percent above the current price — a technical signal that the downtrend has yet to find a floor.

To be sure, the longer-term picture is less grim. The stock remains in positive territory on a year-over-year basis and has more than doubled since its low point last September. But the sheer scale of the recent decline suggests something more fundamental than the digestion of individual contract news.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying OHB SE?

Fundamentals tell a different story

The operational narrative, meanwhile, is one of record-breaking momentum. In the first half of 2026, OHB grew total output to €628 million, a double-digit increase year on year, while adjusted EBITDA climbed more than 30 percent to €60 million.

The order backlog stood at €3.354 billion at the end of the first quarter — the highest in company history. Space Systems accounts for the lion’s share at €2.683 billion, followed by Access to Space at €362 million and the Digital segment at €309 million. Management has confirmed full-year guidance of roughly €1.4 billion in total output with an adjusted EBITDA margin between 10.5 and 11 percent.

A €480 million capital increase helped reshape the balance sheet, cutting net debt to 1.1 times EBITDA and lifting the equity ratio above 40 percent. The workforce has expanded by 50 percent over the past year to nearly 4,100 employees, and the project pipeline is estimated at around €20 billion, with key contracts at the ESA, EU and German defense programs in final negotiations.

The valuation question lingers

The IRIS² award is particularly significant because it marks the first major contract under the program’s concession, which formally entered its implementation phase in early August. The constellation is positioned as Europe’s strategic counterweight to dependence on systems like Starlink — a concern that has gained political urgency given the war in Ukraine and the roughly 50,000 Starlink terminals deployed there. Germany is also investing in parallel capacity through SATCOMBw4, a Bundeswehr program covering around 200 satellites at a cost of about €10 billion.

Yet none of this has been enough to arrest the slide. A handful of analysts initiated coverage on OHB in early August with price targets ranging from €250 to €360 — all well above current levels — but those calls are now more than four weeks old and have yet to be validated by the market.

The central question for investors is no longer whether OHB can deliver operationally. The order flow around IRIS² and related programs speaks for itself. Rather, the issue is whether the market’s earlier valuation of the stock was simply too ambitious — and whether the current price reflects a repricing that no amount of good news can reverse until the broader sentiment shifts. As long as that dynamic persists, even additional IRIS² contracts may struggle to lift the shares out of their current malaise.