Rocket Lab Eyes Big Defense Opportunities With New Acquisition

Rocket Lab is signaling to investors, yet again, that it’s much than “just” a rocket company.

Rocket Lab’s second-quarter results, which were posted Thursday, show revenues proceed to beryllium driven by its abstraction systems business alternatively than launch. The results besides highlighted nan company’s acquisition strategy and really its acquisition of a caller optical payloads institution will make it much competitory for lucrative authorities contracts.

The company’s abstraction systems brought successful $97.9 cardinal of nan $144.5 cardinal successful full revenues for nan 2nd quarter. Rocket Labs’ full revenue, its highest quarterly gross successful nan company’s history, jumped 36% from a twelvemonth ago. The company’s nett nonaccomplishment widened to $66.4 million.

Rocket Lab laminitis and CEO Peter Beck highlighted nan “busy 4th of M&A activity” arsenic nan institution is gets adjacent to closing its woody to bargain Geost, a institution that builds optical payloads. Through that acquisition, which will adjacent astatine $275 cardinal successful rate and equity, Rocket Lab is opening a caller business portion called Optical Systems to standard electro-optical and infrared sensor manufacturing.

Those sensors are utilized successful rocket warning, tracking, and abstraction domain awareness. The acquisition is besides 1 portion of a larger play from Rocket Lab – spelled retired rather explicitly successful nan company’s net position – to bid for multi-billion-dollar DOD initiatives for illustration Golden Dome.

Rocket Lab has already won immoderate awesome defense contracts, including a $515 million, 18-satellite build statement to support nan Space Development Agency’s constellation of rocket search satellites. The institution has moved into accumulation connected those satellites, pursuing confirmation that they meet nan DOD’s ngo requirements, Rocket Lab said.

Down connected Earth, Rocket Lab says its progressing good toward nan first motorboat of its larger Neutron rocket. The rocket’s motorboat analyzable successful Virginia is expected to beryllium complete successful nan 3rd 4th of this year, pinch hardware en route and nan caller rocket engine, called Archimedes, undergoing aggregate tests per day.

The institution is staying vague astir nan nonstop motorboat date, saying only successful nan position that it is pushing an “all-out effort to get Neutron to nan motorboat pad earlier nan extremity of 2025.”

Rocket Lab ended nan 4th pinch $564 cardinal successful rate and rate equivalents and estimates revenues will deed betwixt $145 to $155 cardinal adjacent quarter.