London, April 30, 2026, 16:02 BST
- BAE Systems’ Hägglunds arm has built an $8 billion order book as Europe keeps buying armoured vehicles.
- The company has also started production and initial deliveries of its NavGuide military GPS receiver.
- Shares rose in London on Thursday, putting the stock back in focus before BAE’s May 7 annual meeting.
BAE Systems plc’s Swedish armoured-vehicle business has become a sharper part of the UK defence group’s growth story, with BAE-owned Hägglunds now holding an order book of about $8 billion after years of European rearmament linked to the war in Ukraine.
That matters now because investors are testing whether BAE’s surge in demand can keep feeding production, earnings and cash, not just headlines. The company is due to hold its annual general meeting on May 7, with its half-year results scheduled for July 30, BAE’s investor calendar showed.
BAE shares were up 1.7% at 2,035.5 pence at 1547 BST, according to Fidelity data, after a weaker session the previous day. The stock remains one of the large UK-listed defence names watched as governments in Europe and the United States raise spending on weapons, ships, aircraft and electronic systems.
Tommy Gustafsson-Rask, managing director of BAE Systems Hägglunds, told Reuters that the business had moved from a typical order book of a few hundred million dollars to $8 billion, calling it an “enormous development”. Reuters reported that headcount at the unit has risen to 2,600 from 800 since 2020, while output has climbed 400% over the same period. Reuters
The growth rests heavily on the CV90 infantry fighting vehicle, a tracked armoured vehicle that carries troops into combat. Reuters reported that more than 1,300 CV90s have been sold, with more than 600 on order, and that Hägglunds hopes to secure orders for a further 500 vehicles from five European nations later this year.
BAE also said this week that its NavGuide GPS receiver had entered production and initial deliveries had begun. The company described NavGuide as a portable, field-installable M-Code GPS receiver; M-Code is a more secure military GPS signal designed to resist jamming and spoofing, or attempts to block or mislead satellite navigation.
Luke Bishop, BAE’s director of Navigation and Sensor Systems, said NavGuide was “more than just a replacement” for the older Defense Advanced GPS Receiver. BAE said more than 650,000 of the legacy DAGR units had been deployed globally since 2004 and that NavGuide had been integrated on more than 30 vehicle platforms. BAE Systems
The product push sits beside a broader order base. In February, BAE reported 2025 sales of £30.66 billion, up 10%, underlying EBIT — earnings before interest and tax, a measure of operating profit before financing costs and taxes — of £3.32 billion, up 12%, and a record order backlog of £83.6 billion.
Chief Executive Charles Woodburn said then that BAE was operating in a “new era of defence spending”. The group guided for 2026 sales growth of 7% to 9% and underlying EBIT growth of 9% to 11%, while also flagging that its guidance remained subject to geopolitical and other uncertainties. BAE Systems
Competition is not standing still. Saab, Sweden’s biggest defence employer and the maker of the Gripen fighter jet, had an order backlog of more than 274 billion Swedish crowns, Reuters reported. In armoured vehicles, Romania has selected Rheinmetall’s Lynx KF41 for a planned acquisition estimated at about 3.4 billion euros, or $4 billion, after a competition that also included BAE’s CV90.
But the upside case is not clean. Reuters reported that drone threats remain a risk for CV90 vehicles in Ukraine, and the Romania decision showed that European land-system orders can go to rivals even as the overall market expands. Production capacity, supply chains and government budget timing remain the dull, hard constraints behind the rearmament boom.
A regulatory filing on Thursday showed BAE had 3.16 billion ordinary shares admitted to trading and total voting rights of 3.01 billion as of April 30, after treasury shares with suspended voting rights were excluded. The figure gives shareholders the denominator used for disclosure calculations under UK market rules.
