AEVEX shares fall 32.50% as company denies halt to U.S. Navy drone boat orders
Key Facts
AEVEX shares fell 32.50% at the close of trading on October 21, 2026, as the company denied that orders under its U.S. Navy drone boat program had been halted, responding to reports attributing the halt to performance problems. The stock closed at $9.68, according to Investing.com's historical price table. It had ended the previous session, on October 20, at $14.34, before the decline in the session when the company issued its response. AEVEX said in a statement dated October 21 that "no orders have been halted," directly addressing questions about procurement under the program. The company said in the same statement that the issues cited in the report did not affect its maritime systems division or its financial performance.
In its account of the program's status, AEVEX said it had fulfilled its contractual obligation to deliver 325 GARC boats to the U.S. Navy during 2025. According to its statement, the total value of the existing contract had risen to about $350 million through contract modifications, alongside work related to previously delivered units. It said work under the contract included adding mission packages to those units, including equipment dedicated to mine countermeasures. It said the program's mine countermeasures packages were conducting missions in the Strait of Hormuz, among the uses it cited in describing its maritime operations. The company's stated activities thus encompass delivering boats under its contractual obligation and equipping the delivered fleet with capabilities to carry out additional missions.
The maritime systems operations are part of AEVEX's expansion through the acquisition of BlackSea Technologies, which became the group's maritime systems division after the transaction closed. The division is led by Bob Pudney, the acquired company's former chief executive, according to the acquisition completion announcement. The deal agreement had set consideration at up to $650 million, including a performance-linked component within the announced maximum consideration. When the agreement was announced, AEVEX expected BlackSea to generate revenue of $150 million in fiscal 2026. In its announcement of the deal's completion, AEVEX described production capacity at BlackSea's Baltimore facility as approximately 40 unmanned surface vessels a month.
At the group level, AEVEX reported revenue of $201.8 million for the second quarter of 2026, according to its earnings statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Revenue rose 99.5% year on year, according to the comparison provided by the company in the statement. Revenue in the comparison period, the second quarter of 2025, was about $101.1 million. In the same earnings statement, the company set the lower end of its 2026 revenue forecast at $700.0 million. It set the upper end of that range at $720.0 million, as part of the annual guidance announced at the time alongside its second-quarter results.
The U.S. Navy had announced in a statement dated October 1, 2026, that BlackSea Technologies had won awards in the Mine Countermeasures Modernization Challenge, alongside BX and Vatn Systems. The Navy said the awards followed successful demonstrations of the companies' systems as part of the challenge. It added that the winning systems would be integrated into the fleet's autonomous mine countermeasures packages to keep personnel out of harm's way during these missions. Alongside enhancements to GARC boat missions, AEVEX says it is developing next-generation unmanned surface vessels. These efforts include developing the Chaser and Comet models, which the company cited in its maritime systems development plans. As for the existing GARC program contract, AEVEX said its term had been extended through June 2027.