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OHB SE
OHB builds satellites and space equipment for governments and companies, and sells the digital services that go with them.
OHB is a German company that builds satellites and the hardware that goes into space missions. Its customers are mostly governments, space agencies, and commercial firms that need something put into orbit or need the equipment to run a mission. If you want a satellite built, tested, and delivered, OHB is one of the few companies in Europe that can do the whole job.
The business splits into two broad parts. One part is space systems — the actual satellites, the components, and the mission infrastructure that space agencies and defense customers order. The other part is digital services, which means the software and data services that keep space missions running and turn what satellites see into something useful. Government and institutional buyers are the backbone of the order book, which makes the revenue lumpy: big contracts land in chunks rather than trickling in month by month. That government-heavy customer base is both the strength and the weakness. It gives OHB steady, long-term work that competitors find hard to dislodge, since space agencies tend to stick with proven suppliers. But it also means the company is exposed to budget cycles and political decisions, and it competes for those contracts against much larger players like Airbus and Thales in Europe. OHB's edge is that it is a focused, mid-sized specialist that can take on full satellite programs rather than just supplying parts.
OHB's shares trade on XETRA, and the company has grown through a mix of winning institutional contracts and buying up smaller space-technology firms to widen what it can offer. The space business is capital-intensive and slow-moving, so investors mostly watch the order backlog and whether big government programs keep coming. It is a bet on Europe's appetite for independent access to space — steady, unglamorous, and tightly tied to public spending.
Saved answer · last researched 12 Nov 2026