Elbit and the $30 Billion Backlog
Israel’s largest defense prime by order book just crossed $30 billion in backlog — 71% of it foreign. Inside the Federmann-controlled, Nasdaq-listed company that turned European rearmament into a record order book.
Israel's largest defense prime by order book just crossed $30 billion in backlog — 71% of it foreign. Inside the Federmann-controlled, Nasdaq-listed company that turned European rearmament into a record order book.
On March 31, 2026, Elbit Systems closed its books on an order backlog of $30.2 billion — a record, up more than $7 billion in a single year, and the first time any Israeli defense company has carried more than $30 billion in committed work. About 71% of it sits outside Israel. The number is the headline. The geography is the strategy.
The one you can buy
Elbit is the only one of Israel's three defense primes a foreign investor can own outright. Israel Aerospace Industries is state-owned; Rafael is a government company. Elbit, founded in Haifa in 1966, trades on both the Tel Aviv and Nasdaq exchanges under the ticker ESLT, and is controlled by the Federmann family through Federmann Enterprises. It employs roughly 18,400 people and did $6.83 billion in revenue in 2024. For anyone trying to take a position in Israeli defense as an asset class, Elbit is the proxy.
The quarter
Q1 2026: revenue rose almost 16% to a record $2.2 billion. Net profit jumped more than 50% to $161 million. Non-GAAP operating margin crossed 10% for the first time in years. Contract awards topped $4 billion — nearly double the revenue booked in the same three months. The board doubled the dividend to $1 a share.
Land-systems revenue rose 27%, driven by ammunition and munitions sales in Israel and Europe. C4I and cyber rose 17% on radio and command-and-control sales into Europe. ISTAR and electronic warfare rose 17%, led by airborne and ground-based high-power laser and EW systems.
The European book
The 71% figure is the company. Elbit does not depend on the Israeli Ministry of Defense for its growth; it depends on a continent that spent thirty years disarming and is now rearming at Cold War scale. On the morning it reported earnings, Elbit announced a single European contract worth roughly $1.4 billion — a five-year military-modernization program spanning uncrewed systems, networked land electronic warfare, precision-guided munitions, artillery, and air-to-ground capability. Europe is now Israel's single largest defense customer, and Elbit is the company that turned that shift into an order book.
The read
For the business economy, Elbit is the rare case where the public market can price Israeli defense directly. The $30.2 billion backlog is revenue visibility deep into 2028; management is guiding to mid-teens growth and treating the constraint as capacity, not demand. The non-market risk is reputational: Elbit is the most-targeted Israeli company for divestment and activist campaigns abroad. Set against the global primes, the scale gap is still wide — but the velocity gap is closing, and Elbit is the Israeli company closing it in public, one quarter at a time.