WASHINGTON — German space company OHB will raise about half a billion euros through a stock sale to allow the company to expand facilities and pursue potential acquisitions.
The company, based in Bremen, Germany, announced June 22 plans to sell about 1.7 million shares at 300 euros per share. The sale would net OHB 490.2 million euros ($557.6 million) after expenses.
While OHB has been publicly traded for about 25 years, nearly all of the company’s shares are owned by the Fuchs family and private equity firm KKR, which bought most of the company’s outstanding shares in a 2023 deal. Marco Fuchs, chief executive of OHB, said at the time that the company was “structurally undervalued” in the public markets, and the deal would effectively take the company private.
With the share sale, OHB is changing course. Before the deal, only about 5% of OHB shares were available on the public market, but with the sale that will increase to nearly 20%. The Fuchs family will retain its controlling 60% stake in the company and KKR will own the remaining 20%.
“We are delighted to make OHB accessible to a broader group of investors again who share our conviction in the future of the European space industry,” Marco Fuchs said in a statement about the share sale.
In the last three years, European governments have increased spending on civil and defense space, creating new opportunities for OHB. The company says it is at the start of a “super-cycle” of increased spending by national governments as well as the European Commission and European Space Agency.
“We see ourselves as a European space champion,” Fuchs said in a presentation at the company’s Capital Markets Update event on May 18, calling OHB Europe’s largest pure-play space company.
“This capital increase opens pathways for us to execute on our strategic goals: We want to accelerate industrialization, invest in launch vehicles and explore attractive M&A opportunities,” he said in the statement about the share sale.
The company disclosed some of those plans at the May event. “As our markets are at an inflection point, we want to grow and accelerate this growth,” said Tim Teckenburg, chief financial officer of OHB.
One focus will be investment in new and expanded production facilities. OHB also is looking to invest in emerging capabilities, such as lunar exploration and its partnership with Dassault on its VORTEX spaceplane project. He said OHB is interested in “selective M&A” opportunities in Europe but did not provide more details about the types of companies it is considering. The fourth area would be financial support to Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), the launch startup in which OHB owns a 65% stake.
The slide from Teckenburg’s presentation estimated the combined investment in those four areas would be between 500 million and 600 million euros but did not specify how much would be spent in each area.
RFA update
The Capital Markets Update included an update on the progress by RFA and its RFA ONE small launch vehicle.
The company is nearing the first orbital launch attempt for the vehicle from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands. “The rocket is already in SaxaVord. We’re just doing the last, final preparations for the inaugural launch,” said Stefan Brieschenk, chief operating officer of RFA, at the event.
He did not give a target launch date other than sometime this year. Fuchs, speaking at an OHB earnings call May 7, said he was expecting a launch “later this summer.”
That rocket is what RFA calls “Block 1” of the vehicle, designed to be expendable and carry up to half a ton to low Earth orbit. The company has plans for an upgraded Block 2 version with an increased payload capacity of up to 1.5 tons and the ability to recover and reuse the first stage.
The Block 2 will use an upgraded version of its Helix engine with double the thrust but only a small increase in mass. “This is the big stepping-stone that we need” for making the first stage reusable, Brieschenk said.
He said RFA is planning a single launch this year of the RFA ONE Block 1, with two launches of that vehicle planned by 2027. The company proposes to start flying the Block 2 in 2028. “It’s extremely difficult to develop a reusable first stage, which is why a few attempts at recovery will be required,” he said.
RFA plans to scale up production of the Block 2 vehicle after 2028, with a goal of 25 launches a year at an unspecified “midterm” date after 2029. That flight rate would meet anticipated demand from the German military as it scales up space spending and plans satellite constellations.
The company has growth plans beyond the RFA ONE Block 2. In his presentation, he showed the design of an RFA TWO rocket, superficially similar to SpaceX’s Starship, with reusable first and second stages. That vehicle would be able to place 15 tons into orbit with both stages reused, increasing to 35 tons if the stages are expended. It would be powered by an upgraded Helix X engine with 100 tons of thrust, 10 times that of the current Helix 1.
“Europe needs to have a large rocket, a heavy-lift rocket, for the future,” Brieschenk said. “We have all the stepping stones in OHB to get there.”
He did not disclose a timeline for developing the RFA TWO other than “beyond mid-term” on the slide showing the vehicle.
