June 24 (Reuters) – Rheinmetall shares fell more than 16% on Wednesday after Germany’s defence ministry scrapped a delayed F126 frigate programme that the company was the main contractor for.<\/p>\n
By \u200c0906 GMT, Rheinmetall was down 13% and headed for its sharpest daily fall ever, \u200cwhile shares in German shipbuilder TKMS jumped 9.8% and were set for their best day since April 2026, according to stock \u200bexchange data.<\/p>\n
Der Spiegel and the Financial Times earlier reported that Defence Minister Boris Pistorius intended to pull out of the F126 project and instead focus on buying Meko-class frigates built by TKMS.<\/p>\n
Germany’s defence ministry confirmed it will terminate the F126 project. The ministry said the cost of continuing the programme after replacing original \u200cprime contractor Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding \u2060with Naval Vessels Luerssen, now owned by Rheinmetall, would have pushed the bill for six F126 ships to more than \u20ac18 billion, including a roughly \u20ac15.2 billion contract \u2060with NVL.<\/p>\n
Rheinmetall declined to comment.<\/p>\n
TKMS said in a statement it was pleased to be contributing to the strengthening of the German navy, adding it had already begun preparatory work in February, plans to deliver the first \u200bMeko A-200 \u200bfrigate in 2029 and sees scope to involve other \u200bGerman yards if the option for four \u200cmore ships is exercised.<\/p>\n
COSTLY COURSE CHANGE<\/p>\n
Since the F126 order was placed in 2020, more than \u20ac2 billion have been spent, Der Spiegel reported. Rheinmetall offered in May to take over the project for a total of \u20ac12.8 billion, the magazine said.<\/p>\n
The defence ministry said in March it planned to buy four Meko A-200 frigates from TKMS as a stopgap to meet NATO anti-submarine commitments from 2028, with deliveries from end-2029.<\/p>\n
On \u200cWednesday it said it now aims to buy a \u200btotal of eight Meko frigates “primarily for anti-submarine warfare”, at about \u20ac6.3 \u200bbillion for the first four and \u20ac5.3 billion \u200bfor an option on four more if exercised by end-2026.<\/p>\n
Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger \u200csaid in May the group expected to sign \u200bthe F126 deal in \u200bthe second quarter.<\/p>\n
Amid the complex rearmament efforts in Europe, where Berlin and Paris have scrapped their joint FCAS fighter jet project and their MGCS tank programme is running about a decade \u200blate, Franco-German tank maker KNDS on \u200cWednesday set out plans for a dual Frankfurt-Paris IPO that sources told Reuters could \u200bvalue it at about \u20ac15 billion.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Emanuele Berro, Kirsti Knolle and Sabine Siebold and \u200bMatthias Inverardi; Editing by Christoph Steitz and Elaine Hardcastle)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 24 (Reuters) – Rheinmetall shares fell more than 16% on Wednesday after Germany’s defence ministry scrapped a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,2242,5,36809,770,5000],"class_list":["post-42498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-defence-ministry","tag-germany","tag-main-contractor","tag-rheinmetall","tag-tkms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}