OHB client delays affect 2023 revenues
November 14, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Satellite and aerospace business OHB, headquartered in Bremen, Germany, said that anticipated contract awards were slower coming to fruition and had affected its backlog. It cautioned that the slow-down could also affect its full-year results.
OHB reported that various clients including the European Space Agency as well as commercial customers had been slow in issuing contracts.
OHB stated total revenues of €737 million for the 9-months to Sept 30, up 6 percent, and “an all-time high”.
“It’s a strange year,” OHB Chief Development Officer Lutz Bertling said in a Nov. 9 analysts call on during OHB’s latest quarterly results. “Across the board, our customers are super-delayed in awarding contracts. Even [German railway operator] Deutsche Bahn is late. If you see what has been awarded out of the [ESA] ministerial conference of 2022, it’s practically nothing up to now. Even offers handed in at the middle of the year are still not evaluated. Many tenders are not even out. It’s the same in Germany. There have been no project cancellations and we have not lost any. The budgets are there and have been committed.”
Bertling said that OHB expects to book no less than €2 billion in firm orders for 2024-2025. The Group’s firm order backlog stood at €1,742 million after nine months of fiscal year 2023, down from €1,859 million in the previous year.
The company confirmed the recent restructuring where private equity investor KKR has bought a minority stake in the business and an increase in the company’s capital structure of €77 million.
Additionally, OHB is taking a 20 percent stake in Berlin Space Technologies, which builds small satellites.