Turkish defense giant ASELSAN posts record export contracts

Largest Turkish defense electronics company posted its strongest quarterly export performance in years on April 28, 2026 — and the numbers behind ASELSAN’s first-quarter results suggest a company that has moved well beyond its domestic market roots.

ASELSAN, the most valuable company listed on Borsa İstanbul, reported inflation-adjusted revenue of 34.3 billion Turkish lira for the first three months of 2026, a 15 percent increase in real terms compared to the same period of the previous year. New export contracts signed in the first quarter reached $629 million — a 69 percent increase year-over-year — with exports accounting for half of all new contracts signed during the period. The company’s total backlog climbed 39 percent to $20.7 billion, while new contracts overall reached $1.3 billion. Investments for serial production jumped 261 percent to $137 million, and research and development expenditures rose 41 percent to $357 million.

Those figures, disclosed to the Public Disclosure Platform in accordance with Turkish financial reporting requirements, paint a picture of a defense company accelerating in multiple directions simultaneously — revenue, exports, backlog, investment, and R&D all moving upward in the same quarter. The EBITDA margin reached 25.2 percent, a 260 basis-point improvement over the same period last year, with EBITDA itself rising 28 percent to 8.6 billion Turkish lira. The Net Debt/EBITDA ratio fell from 0.60 to 0.41, reflecting a balance sheet that is getting stronger as the company grows rather than straining under its own expansion.

The revenue performance in the first quarter was driven by a specific set of product categories that reveal where ASELSAN’s demand is concentrated: Steel Dome, radar, electronic warfare, military communications, AI-supported urban security, electro-optics, and guided munition systems. Steel Dome — Turkey’s layered air and missile defense system — has become one of ASELSAN’s signature programs, and its appearance at the top of the revenue driver list reflects the global surge in demand for air defense capability that has reshaped defense procurement since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Radar and electronic warfare systems follow, categories where ASELSAN has invested heavily in indigenous development and where export interest from customers seeking alternatives to Western or Russian suppliers has grown substantially.

CEO Ahmet Akyol framed the quarter’s performance in the context of a multi-year growth trajectory: “Having recorded growth rates of 5% in the first quarter of 2024 and 9% in the same period of 2025, our Company expanded by 15% in the first quarter of 2026, with our revenue reaching TL 34.3 billion, a 69% increase in our export contracts to USD 629 Million, and outstanding orders reaching USD 20.7 Billion confirms the resilience and sustainability of our business model.” The acceleration in that growth rate — from 5 percent to 9 percent to 15 percent across three consecutive first quarters — is the detail that stands out. ASELSAN is not maintaining growth; it is compounding it.

The investment surge deserves particular attention. A 261 percent increase in serial production investment in a single quarter — reaching $137 million — is not routine capacity maintenance. It signals a company that has demand it cannot yet fill at current production rates and is spending aggressively to close that gap. Akyol confirmed the logic: “We have already realized half of last year’s total investment volume within this first quarter alone. Behind this investment appetite lies the intense need and demand for ASELSAN’s products and technologies.” The Oğulbey Technology Base, described as the largest single defense industry investment in the history of the Turkish Republic, sits at the center of this expansion. The facility — whose foundation was laid in 2025 — will provide additional production capacity specifically for Steel Dome components, with the first phase scheduled for commissioning in the second half of 2026.

The R&D figure — $357 million in a single quarter — places ASELSAN in a category of defense companies that treat technology investment as a competitive weapon rather than an overhead cost. For context, that quarterly R&D spend exceeds the annual defense budgets of multiple small NATO members. Akyol connected that investment to product delivery ambitions: “We aim to take the success we achieved last year by delivering 286 thousand products to end-users to the next level by exceeding the 400-thousand-unit threshold this year.” Moving from 286,000 to 400,000 units delivered in a single year requires both the production capacity being built at Oğulbey and the technology pipeline the R&D spending is designed to sustain.

The export dimension of the quarter carries strategic weight beyond the revenue line. Half of all new contracts signed in the first quarter came from international customers — a ratio that would have been unthinkable for ASELSAN a decade ago, when the company’s revenues were almost entirely domestic. Akyol noted that the NATO Secretary General visited ASELSAN during the period, calling it “a valuable indicator” that the company’s position within the global defense ecosystem is now recognized at a strategic level. A NATO Secretary General visiting a Turkish defense company is not a routine diplomatic courtesy. It signals that ASELSAN has become relevant to alliance-level defense industrial conversations in a way that domestic producers rarely achieve.

ASELSAN enters the second quarter with a $20.7 billion backlog, accelerating investments, and three new product launches planned for SAHA Istanbul — Turkey’s major defense trade show scheduled for the coming week. Whatever those three launches reveal, they arrive at a moment when the company’s financial foundation has never been stronger.