{"id":113424,"date":"2026-08-29T15:42:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T15:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/113424\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T15:42:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T15:42:25","slug":"bae-systems-sets-sights-on-higher-profits-as-defence-spending-rises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/113424\/","title":{"rendered":"BAE Systems sets sights on higher profits as defence spending rises"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/lo\/mysterio\/api\/ef5a3eb2883a8c4cd6be20dbc1b2922053e7aa00cc0f9245ef09ce210e4bf7b4\/lightyear_networkapi\/resizefit_w960%3Bquality_80%3Bformat_webp\/https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.zenfs.com%2Fen%2Fproactive_uk_164%2F3df6009b49f323df1e4052f25560f0a6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==\" alt=\"BAE Systems sets sights on higher profits as defence spending rises\" height=\"540\" width=\"960\" class=\"yf-1f8hkhu loader\"\/><\/a> BAE Systems sets sights on higher profits as defence spending rises Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock           <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/BA..l\" data-ylk=\"slk:BAE%20Systems%20PLC%20(LSE%3ABA.);elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;BAE Systems PLC (LSE:BA.)&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">BAE Systems PLC (LSE:BA.)<\/a> upgraded its full-year guidance after higher defence spending helped lift first-half sales and orders, while free cash flow improved sharply.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Sales increased 9% to \u00a315.8 billion in the six months to June, with growth across all divisions. Underlying operating profit rose 11% to \u00a31.7 billion and underlying earnings per share climbed 13% to 38.9p.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Order intake increased to \u00a316.4 billion from \u00a313.2 billion, leaving BAE with a record backlog of \u00a384 billion.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The defence group now expects sales to grow by between 8% and 10% in the 2026 financial year, up from its previous forecast of 7-9%, with underlying operating profit growth expected to reach 10-12%, compared with the previous 9-11% range. Guidance for underlying earnings per share growth was raised to 11-13% from 9-11%.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">BAE also lifted its free cash flow target to more than \u00a32 billion from more than \u00a31.3 billion. Its cumulative target for 2024-2026 increased to more than \u00a36.7 billion from \u00a36 billion.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">First-half free cash flow reached \u00a31.8 billion, compared with an outflow of \u00a3368 million last year, helped by customer advances.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Chief executive Charles Woodburn said: &#8220;The global threat picture remains highly volatile and governments are responding with sustained increases in their defence budgets.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">BAE secured orders including a \u00a35.9 billion contract supporting Britain&#8217;s Dreadnought nuclear submarine programme and more than \u00a35 billion of contracts for the Global Combat Air Programme.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The interim dividend was raised 11% to 15p a share. BAE returned \u00a3933 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks during the half.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAE Systems sets sights on higher profits as defence spending rises Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock BAE&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21224],"tags":[46337,46506,21234,8160],"class_list":["post-113424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bae","tag-1-7-billion","tag-15-8-billion","tag-bae","tag-bae-systems"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117179563533935824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}