OHB SE (XETRA: OHB) published its second quarter and first half figures on 6 August 2026 at 08:00 CET/CEST, reporting double digit growth in operating performance, a first half order backlog of EUR 3,304 million, and a balance sheet transformed by a capital increase. The Bremen group builds satellites, launcher components and ground systems, and its shares trade in the Prime Standard segment under ISIN DE0005936124. It has been listed since its initial public offering on 13 March 2001.

Total operating performance for the six months to 30 June 2026 reached EUR 627.9 million, up 11 percent from EUR 563.5 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 12 percent to EUR 600,140 thousand from EUR 536,957 thousand. Adjusted EBITDA increased 31 percent to EUR 60.4 million from EUR 45.9 million, and adjusted EBIT rose 46 percent to EUR 38.9 million from EUR 26.5 million.

The backlog and the balance sheet

The order backlog stood at EUR 3,304 million after six months, against EUR 3,067 million a year earlier. SPACE SYSTEMS accounted for EUR 2,566 million of that, ACCESS TO SPACE for EUR 440 million and DIGITAL for EUR 298 million. The company said order intake continues to show strong momentum, with an expected peak in the second half of the year.

The balance sheet changed more than the income statement did. Total assets reached EUR 2,113.5 million at 30 June 2026, around 35 percent above the EUR 1,566.4 million reported at 31 December 2025. Equity rose from EUR 431.4 million to EUR 915.6 million, lifting the equity ratio to 43.3 percent from 27.5 percent at the end of 2025. Cash and cash equivalents stood at EUR 526,939 thousand against EUR 52,799 thousand a year earlier, an increase the company put at 898 percent. OHB attributed the strengthened financial base to a capital increase completed in the quarter, without stating the proceeds in the announcement.

Analysis: the gap between adjusted EBIT and the bottom line

The headline growth rates all sit above the adjusted line, and the reader who stops there will miss the more interesting half of the table. Adjusted EBIT for the first six months rose 46 percent, but earnings before taxes fell by more than half to EUR 7,803 thousand from EUR 17,437 thousand, and net profit for the period fell to EUR 4,828 thousand from EUR 11,469 thousand. In the second quarter alone the group reported EBT of EUR -5,923 thousand and a net loss of EUR -5,112 thousand, against a profit of EUR 7,497 thousand in the second quarter of 2025. Earnings per share for the quarter came in at EUR -0.27, after EUR 0.37 a year earlier.

Adjusted EBIT and EBT are separated by financing costs, non-operating items and whatever adjustments the group makes to reach its adjusted measures. The announcement does not reconcile the two, so the size of each contribution cannot be established from this disclosure. What can be established is the direction: a quarter in which adjusted EBIT grew from EUR 16,207 thousand to EUR 22,054 thousand still produced a loss before tax. A reader tracking OHB through the second half should look for that reconciliation in the six month report rather than in the press release, because the guidance the company confirmed is set on total operating performance and the adjusted EBITDA margin, neither of which is affected by the items that turned the quarter negative.

The backlog deserves the same care. EUR 3,304 million is more than twice the EUR 1,400 million of total operating performance the company expects for the full year, which sets the forward cover for a business whose contracts run for years. Growth in the backlog was slower than growth in operating performance, and the company itself says the order intake peak is still ahead in the second half. That is a testable statement: if the backlog at nine months has not moved materially above EUR 3,304 million, the expected peak has slipped.

The segment split shows how concentrated the business is. SPACE SYSTEMS carries close to four fifths of the backlog. ACCESS TO SPACE and DIGITAL together hold less than a fifth of it, so the partnerships announced alongside the results, in defence communications and surveillance, matter less for the current backlog than for what replaces the SPACE SYSTEMS contracts as they are delivered.

Partnerships and the defence pivot

OHB set out several moves alongside the numbers. With Rheinmetall it aims to provide a communications architecture directed at European technological sovereignty and German security policy objectives. The KIRK joint venture, formed with Helsing and working with Hensoldt and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, is to develop a space based tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition system. OHB Czechspace will act as prime contractor on the SOVA-S satellite mission, the first time a company unit outside Germany has taken that role. OHB SPACE UK, whose Bristol location opened in the spring of 2025, is building a cleanroom there where more than 100 engineers are expected to develop, integrate and test space systems.

None of these were quantified in the release. They are positioning statements rather than booked revenue, and the company presented them as strengthening its position for proposals in German defence initiatives, which is to say the contracts have not been awarded.

Guidance and the reporting calendar

Management confirmed guidance for 2026 of total operating performance of approximately EUR 1,400 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin between 10.5 percent and 11.0 percent. The medium term targets are unchanged at more than EUR 4.0 billion of total operating performance and an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 13 percent. Reaching EUR 1,400 million from EUR 627.9 million at the half way point requires a materially stronger second half, which is consistent with the company’s own statement about the order intake peak.

The half year report itself follows the announcement. Directive 2004/109/EC requires issuers of shares admitted to trading on a regulated market to publish a half-yearly financial report as soon as possible after the period ends and no later than two months afterwards, and to keep it publicly available for at least five years. OHB publishes six month reports in German and English on its financial reports page, alongside the three month report for 2026 and the full set of annual, nine month and semiannual reports going back to earlier years. Those documents, not the press release, contain the cash flow statement and the reconciliation items that explain the distance between the adjusted figures and the reported result.