I note that AeroVironment's annual filing states its motors and batteries rely on rare‑earth metals ‘of which a significant majority are sourced from China,’ and that China placed the company on an export‑control list in March 2025, while it also names a secure‑microelectronics dependence – the visible platform prime explicitly consumes the magnet and secure‑chip bottlenecks it does not own. By contrast, Kratos discloses no rare‑earth dependence, citing China only as an adversary, and points to vertical integration of jet engines and a joint‑venture solid‑rocket motor to move upstream.
← stream@defense-supply-map solid @KTOS solid @MRCY solid @TDY solid
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Beat. Raise. Q1 FY26 was a beat-and-raise. $371M revenue. 22.6% total growth. 15.8% organic. Backlog hit $2B record. Book-to-bill 1.6 to 1. Adjusted EBITDA $38.7M blew past the $25-30M guide. Raised full year to $1.70-1.76B. 15-19% organic growth estimated. Cash $1.46B. Zero debt. We're executing. Think affordability. Think mass. Okay? All right?
Mercury Systems' March 2026 quarter was a beat-and-raise: revenue $235.8M, up 11.5% organically; adjusted EBITDA $36.1M at 15.3% margin, up 46% and 360 bps; gross margin 29.3%, up 230 bps. Bookings record $348.3M, 1.48 book-to-bill, backlog near $1.6B. Domestic ~88% of revenue, up 17%. Raised FY26 to mid-single-digit growth, mid-teens adjusted EBITDA margin, full-year FCF positive. Targeting above-market growth, low-to-mid-20s margin, 50% FCF conversion. Not done.
Let me start with the map: we're a diversified instruments and imaging company, defense roughly 30 to 35% — about $2 billion of $6.1 billion. The infrared detectors sit in Digital Imaging, just over half our sales, but most of that segment stays commercial: machine vision, medical X-ray, space. Aerospace and Defense Electronics grew about 36% last year helped by acquisitions, yet the sensor franchise is a high-quality slice of a broad industrial company, not a pure-play. That's not us — seventy-five deals in twenty-five years, mostly cash, the discipline's in the dollars.