Europe is preparing and NATO countries will significantly increase their defense budget. Saab's CEO Micael Johansson says that the company is in a good position to take market shares, but on the continent they compete with, among other things, the German Rheinmetall, the Italian Leondardo and the French Thales.
It's hard to decide whether you're betting completely on your own domestic industry or if you actually see this as an open market from a European perspective, which I think is right.
But to compete, large investments in new technology are required. Saab is investing, among other things, in unmanned systems and autonomous systems. During the quarter, Saab tested an AI pilot in air combat against a human pilot for the first time. With the AI project, they want to provide support for pilots to perform even better.
We will see much more of that in the future, absolutely, says Micael Johansson.
More jobs
Saab has made major investments in recent years to increase capacity. It has also meant new hires, where the company has grown by an additional 1,500 employees just in 2025. Micael Johansson says that even if Saab will continue to hire new staff, the workforce will not increase proportionally with the company's growth.
We are also working in a new way when we get new volumes in the business. We are automating production lines and so on.
Micael Johansson says that it's not just Saab that needs to increase capacity, but the entire sector. Many of the defense companies use the same type of subcontractors, among other things.
Here, we will need to see investments also in the entire value chain for this industry to be able to grow.
Above expectations
The defense group Saab reports an operating profit of 1.9 billion kronor for the second quarter. It was better than the market's expectations, which were around 1.7 billion kronor, according to Bloomberg's compilation. The same quarter in 2024, the profit landed at 1.3 billion kronor.
The company's order intake amounted to 28.4 billion kronor at the same time. It can be compared to 39.6 billion in order intake during the corresponding quarter last year.
The revenue for the quarter increased to 19.7 billion, from 15.2 billion last year.
