Chemring boasts record order book as global military spending swells
The aerospace and defence contractor on Tuesday revealed its order intake totalled £488million in the six months ending April, a 42 per cent annual increase.
This contributed to the Hampshire-based company's order book growing by a quarter to £1.3billion, the highest in its history.
Multi-year purchases helped Chemring's order intake soar by over two-thirds to £418million in its countermeasures and energetics segment.
Its Scotland-based business secured a £23million deal to supply components used in the Next Generation Light Anti‐Tank Weapon system and an £11million deal from the Ministry of Defence for various air countermeasures.
Chemring's Norwegian subsidiary, Chemring Nobel, also struck a £278million deal with Diehl Defence to provide MCX, a type of explosive material used in munitions.
But overall revenues rose by just 5 per cent to £234.3million due to a weaker performance from its sensors and information segment.
The FTSE 250 firm said the division's rate of new order placement had slowed amid delays by the UK Government in the publication of its strategic defence review.
However, the group saw its total underlying operating profits expand by 8 per cent to £27.1million and kept its guidance for 2025 unchanged.
Michael Ord, chief executive of Chemring, said: 'Both sectors benefitted from the receipt of several significant orders in the period, evidencing confidence in our market-leading products and services.
'With growing geopolitical uncertainty resulting in increased defence expenditure, particularly across NATO, the group is well positioned, with a strong and sustainable platform to increase revenue to £1billion by 2030.'
Global military expenditure went up by 9.4 per cent to $2.7trillion last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, as wars raged in Ukraine and the Middle East, and concerns remained elevated over China's intentions towards Taiwan.
Total spending by NATO member states grew to $1.5trillion, partly driven by European countries ramping up spending following pressure from US President Donald Trump for them to bear a greater share of the defence burden.
British defence giants, such as BAE Systems, Babcock, and Chemring, have been major beneficiaries of this added spending, which has led to their share prices jumping considerably.
Chemring Group shares were the FTSE 250's top riser on Tuesday morning, rising by 6.3 per cent to 517p, meaning they have leapt by approximately 58 per cent since the year began.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Keir Starmer should take Donald Trump's message on board and get tough to make Britain great again
Get tough, PM DONALD Trump has run rings around the EU — and in the process shown the folly of the Remainiacs who tried to defy Brexit. Terrified of the President, the Eurocrats have been utterly humiliated in trade talks. In a deal described by French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou as 'submission', the EU accepted punishing 15 per cent tariffs on goods. It agreed to plough billions of investment into America. Brussels also ripped up its various green pledges in order to import $750billion of US gas. Meanwhile, Britain has been free to do its own deal with Trump, resulting in much lower tariffs. Sir Keir Starmer — who spent years trying to wreck the chances of a Brexit deal — now benefits from the UK being free of the dead hand of the EU Commission. There's a lesson here for the PM that he failed to grasp during negotiations for his recent 'reset' with the EU, which has ended with us once again taking rules from Europe while selling out our fishing fleet. That under pressure the EU WILL crack and give way. That cutting taxes and curbing immigration is the only way to make Britain great again. In other words, get tough, PM. Rot's up, doc OF the many mistakes Labour has made in its first year in power, will handing militant doctors a 22 per cent pay rise last year prove to be among the worst? Awkward moment Trump blasts 'nasty' Sadiq Khan for 'terrible job'… before Starmer interrupts: 'He's a friend of mine!' Didn't it dawn on ministers that all it would achieve would be another absurd pay claim from the Marxist BMA this year? This time it is a huge 29 per cent. Now patients who already receive a terrible service are in for a summer and autumn of chaos as nurses and millions of other NHS workers threaten multiple strikes, too. Proud of you CHLOE Kelly — born and raised on a London council estate and now a global superstar — spoke for a nation after lifting the Euro 2025 trophy when she declared she was proud to be English. Her teammates will also take their tournament mantra of being ' Proper England ' into today's triumphant trophy parade. After decades of being made to feel embarrassed about being English, it feels good for us to be able to celebrate unashamedly. Thank you, Lionesses.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Ministers turning clock back to bad old days of British Rail
Bit by bit, Britain's rail network is falling back into public ownership. As the contracts of train operating companies expire, their operations are coming under the control of an interim Department for Transport (DfT) entity that will make way for Great British Railways some time in late 2026. All passenger operator contracts are expected to have been rolled into GBR from October 2027. From then on Britain will be served by a nationalised railway not dissimilar to British Rail, that specialist in shabby, second-class service that so epitomised shabby, postwar Britain. Only private freight operations will survive this return to locomotive socialism, together with rolling stock leasing firms and nimble 'open-access' private passenger companies operating on only a few routes with no subsidy in the gaps between GBR services. Everyone outside the Labour government can see what is coming down the line: a gigantic state monopoly run by civil servants (hundreds of DfT officials are being transferred to help run it) and those well-known champions of innovation and customer choice, the RMT and Aslef. As a report warns, the 'ghost of British Rail' is risen. Tony Lodge, a specialist in the rail industry at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, is not alone in believing that it doesn't have to be this way. In his report, 'Rail's Last Chance', Mr Lodge describes GBR as a solution in search of a problem. He is right: while the privatisation of national infrastructure in the Thatcher-Major era produced winners (telecoms) and, ultimately, losers (water), the experience of the rail industry was more mixed. Before the pandemic rail privatisation was largely a success. Between 1998 and 2015 the number of passenger journeys more than doubled, outstripping state railways in France and Germany. New trains and services were introduced; passenger satisfaction was the highest in Europe. True, fares increased, and private operators sometimes overreached themselves with excessive franchise bids. But that record in no way makes the case for raising British Rail from the grave. It was not privatisation that resulted in the recent drop in rail income but Covid. The pandemic permanently altered the rail landscape. Working from home meant many fewer commutes and lucrative peak-time season tickets. Raw passenger numbers are almost at pre-pandemic levels but the tickets being bought are cheaper, off-peak ones: receipts are down £1.4 billion. Shipping fresh air around the country, as Rishi Sunak described operations during lockdown, killed the franchise model. Faced with rescuing insolvent passenger companies, the Tories chose consolidation under GBR, but with private firms running services on fixed contracts to foster innovation. In his report Mr Lodge pleads with the government not to throw the good out with the bad. The network is costing the taxpayer £12 billion a year while delivering only 2 per cent of passenger journeys. If this huge burden on the public finances is to be reduced ministers must, he says, prioritise customer and income growth. That means allowing more and more open-access operators to compete on price and service, making ticketing more user friendly with apps and points systems, monetising the network's vast land bank and making the Office of Rail and Road into a muscular regulator. His is a hybrid system marrying a unified network with competition. Everyone knows it's the best way forward. Except the unions and government.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Why Lionesses saying they're ‘proud to be English' could get them arrested in Keir Starmer's woke police state
IN the afterglow of shooting the Lionesses to Euros victory, striker Chloe Kelly told the watching world: 'I'm so proud to be English!' For a player from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France or the US, a simple exclamation of national pride in their homeland nation would go unremarked. 6 6 6 Here in England it sparked a social media frenzy. Some half-jokingly wondered whether such publicly avowed patriotism would elicit a knock on the door from cops. One X user posted a picture of officers on a door camera with the caption: 'Hi Chloe Kelly, police here, we just need to speak to you about your nationalistic outburst.' Posters were referencing the new elite police squad set up by the Home Office to monitor anti-immigrant sentiment online, aimed to prevent a summer of riots. As we see time and time again, expressing a love for England and displaying a St George Cross flag can erroneously be interpreted by those who wish to divide us as Far Right rabble-rousing. So we shall watch and wait to see who gets caught up in this new net. Hopefully it wil not trouble our new net queen, hero goalie Hannah Hampton who also evoked her Englishness in a post-match interview. 'We've shown during this tournament that we can come back when we go a goal down, we have that grit, we've got English blood in us,' she told TV viewers. That two young women — part of a diverse team that reflects modern England — were happy to express pride in their homeland should be a wake-up call to our nation's elite, falling over themselves to praise Sarina Wiegman 's aces since Sunday night's stunning win. This new flowering of Englishness comes in an era where it's become fashionable to talk the country down and smother it with colonial guilt. Many on the metropolitan left in Britain have long had a sneering disdain for the emblems of the nation. In 2014, Dame Emily Thornberry's snobby tweet of a Medway home with England flags flying and a white van in the drive saw her resign from the then Labour Shadow Cabinet. The following year fellow Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn, who was then Labour's leader, failed to sing the National Anthem at a service to mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Not only did it appear an affront to the memory of 'The Few' — those who had lost their lives in the history-defining conflict — it was also bad politics. Labour signalled that it was drifting away from its traditional, patriotic working-class base who loved their country, their flag, their monarchy and their football team. Sir Keir Starmer recognised Labour's patriotic deficit late in the day, the piping up about his pride in the nation and instigating the singing of the National Anthem at party conference. Later, Corbyn, now in the throes of setting up a new hard left party (don't expect it to have a Union Jack emblem), called singing God Save The King at Labour's annual get-together 'very, very odd'. Such sentiments drove away voters in the so-called 'red wall' constituencies in the north. Little wonder that as the Starmer project flounders, Reform UK — unafraid to fly the flag — have now found fertile ground in once Labour heartlands. English patriotism has long hid its light under a bushel — not helped by the St George Cross being adopted by far-right knuckle draggers like the English Defence League. Compare the comparably muted St George's Day celebrations to the green carnival of St Patrick's Day. In America, with a bloody history to rival Britain's, Old Glory is hung from garden flag poles across the land, whether the owner is Republican or Democrat. Some argue that our patriotic reserve is part of the essence of Englishness. Chloe and Hannah showed the world they were gutsy, skilled, confident, joyous — and proud to be English Yet, Chloe Kelly and Hannah Hampton wore their national pride on their sleeve. It was remarkable for being such a rarity in English public life. Former Government special adviser James Price wrote on X: 'I haven't heard anyone on telly say that about England in so long. 'For all the sneering from some quarters, that's just such a wonderful thing to hear. Much more of this please, in all kinds of arenas.' Much has been made of the British — as well as English — preoccupation with our victorious role in World War Two. Yet, standing alone against Nazi Germany — real fascists not someone misgendering you on social media — was a crowning achievement of the British Empire, with theatres of war in Africa and Asia as well as Europe. Swell with pride The number of red poppies displayed on St George flags is testimony to how important it remains to our national story. After the war — under Clement Attlee's Labour government — a sense of patriotic purpose and unity helped rebuild Britain. A shared togetherness can work wonders for the economy and the national mood. Remember Cool Britannia in the 1990s when the nation revelled in its identity? It was a soft power and financial winner. Everyone has their own sense of Englishness in a land that produced the likes of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, John Lennon, Agatha Christie and Sir Isaac Newton, to name but a few. For some it's rolling moorlands of the Pennines and Cumbria, others might choose dining out on chicken tikka masala or dancing to dub reggae at the Notting Hill Carnival. Many will swell with pride re-watching Bobby Moore wiping his muddied hands before accepting the World Cup from the Queen. Now the Lionesses have roared and added their story to our national identity. Chloe and Hannah showed the world they were gutsy, skilled, confident, joyous — and proud to be English. 6 6 6
