Rheinmetall’s Comeback Gains Traction as Rival’s IPO Collapses and Berlin Fast-Tracks Defense Spending
02.07.2026 - 10:13:23 | boerse-global.de
The German defense contractor’s shares have clawed their way back above the psychologically important €1,000 mark, drawing fuel from two distinct but complementary catalysts. A rival’s aborted stock-market debut has eased valuation fears across the sector, while a cabinet-backed push to accelerate military infrastructure spending and localise production of US weapon systems has given investors a fresh political narrative to latch onto.
Rheinmetall last changed hands at €1,068.40, up 1.21% from the prior session and notching a weekly gain of 13.08%. The rebound follows a brutal stretch that wiped nearly half the stock’s value from its September 2025 peak of €1,995. At the current level, the shares still sit 46.45% below that 52-week high, but the pace of the recovery has quickened enough to pull the relative strength index up to 43.1 – out of oversold territory and into neutral ground.
KNDS walks away from listing
The most immediate trigger for the bounce was Wednesday’s announcement that Franco-German tank maker KNDS had shelved its planned initial public offering. The company blamed elevated market volatility in the defense sector, but the real obstacle was a stubborn valuation gap. Bankers advising on the deal had pitched a price tag as high as €15 billion, while institutional investors balked at anything above €12 billion. Unable to bridge the divide, KNDS pulled the float.
For Rheinmetall, the development is being read as a relief signal. When KNDS first revealed its IPO intentions, the prospect of a new, large-cap defense pure-play forced analysts and investors to reassess sector multiples, weighing on Rheinmetall’s valuation. With the listing abandoned, that overhang has lifted, at least for now.
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Berlin’s legislative push adds ballast
Political support arrived from an entirely different direction on the same day. Germany’s cabinet approved a draft law on July 1 designed to speed up the modernisation of military infrastructure, citing the changed security environment in Europe, NATO commitments and plans to increase troop numbers. The bill targets faster planning and approval processes for defense-related construction, with the Bundeswehr administration empowered to carry out more work in-house.
Separately, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius signalled a renewed interest in having US-developed weapons systems manufactured on German soil. The move is aimed at reducing import dependence, particularly for Patriot interceptors and other missile-defense platforms where American production lines are already stretched. Rheinmetall, as the country’s leading systems integrator, stands to benefit if those plans translate into concrete production contracts, though the cabinet decision itself does not name specific companies.
The stock added as much as 3.75% during Wednesday’s session on the back of the political news, closing at €1,054.80. Over the past week that gain has extended, helped also by a modest follow-through from the KNDS-related move.
A Ukrainian shell order firms the floor
Beneath the headlines, Rheinmetall continues to execute on a steady drumbeat of ammunition contracts. On June 30 the company disclosed an order from Ukraine for 155 mm artillery shells in the low five-digit range, valued in the high double-digit millions of euros. Production is already underway at Rheinmetall Expal Munitions in Spain and is scheduled for completion by the end of the first quarter of 2027. The group continues to ramp capacity across existing and new facilities, targeting annual output of around 1.5 million 155 mm shells by 2030.
That order, while relatively small in the context of the group’s overall backlog, reinforces the perception that demand for artillery munitions remains structurally strong – a vital anchor for the stock as it tries to stabilise.
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Technical and fundamental hurdles remain
The chart still reveals deep damage. The 50-day moving average sits at €1,202.67, roughly 12.6% above the current price, while the 200-day average at €1,542.85 represents a 31% gap. The next immediate resistance lies around €1,112; a clean break above that level would give the recovery more credibility.
On a year-to-date basis, Rheinmetall is still down 33.29%, and the 12-month decline stands at 37.99%. From the 52-week low of €902.50 touched on June 25, the shares have recovered 16.88%, but the overall trend remains firmly negative until the stock can reclaim its major moving averages.
The KNDS IPO withdrawal removes one source of sector-specific pressure, and Berlin’s legislative push adds a political tailwind. What the market still lacks, however, is a direct, large-scale order tied to either development. For now, Rheinmetall’s recovery rests on the hope that faster infrastructure approvals and a clearer competitive landscape will eventually feed into the order book – at a time when the shares are still trading at a deep discount to their recent highs.
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