Despite war, Israel’s IAI hits record backlog for orders, sees IPO as ‘essential’: CEO
“Every leader in the world these days knows that they must protect their population from future wars,” IAI’s President and CEO Boaz Levy said.
Visitors stand on the booth of the Israeli defense technology company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) at the Eurosatory international land and airland defence and security trade fair, in Villepinte, a northern suburb of Paris, on June 13, 2022. (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images)
JERUSALEM — Executives from Israel Aerospace Industries said recently their company saw a record gross income in 2024 and has a higher-than-ever backlog of orders — mostly from abroad.
In a briefing at IAI’s offices with reporters in central Israel on March 13, the company’s President and CEO Boaz Levy and CFO Eran Anchikovsky discussed the company’s growth last year and its future plans. Levy pointed to an order backlog of $25 billion, a record for the company, while the value of new orders has jumped nearly $7 billion in the past six years.
Levy said that about 80 percent of revenue comes from overseas exports.
“Every leader in the world these days knows that they must protect their population from future wars,” Levy said. “What we see is that the wars are not being done on frontiers, they are in cities. We see a growth in defense requirements all over the world. Europe is having a change.”
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The uptick in business comes despite — or galvanized by — Israel’s experience in the multi-front war sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack. IAI makes the Arrow air defense system, the highest tier of Israel’s multi-layered air defense system, which together has helped defend the homeland against rockets, drones and missiles fired on Israel by Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and, in two instances, directly from Iran.
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Levy said that despite the unprecedented conditions of the war, the company did not institute force majeure and break contracts with client abroad. Instead it sought to fulfill its obligations, such as an Arrow sale to Germany, which was finalized in November 2023. “We have escalated our manufacturing lines, support and maintenance,” Levy said.
The next step for IAI, as Levy sees it, is to take the company public with an initial public offering, something he’s previously pushed.
“It’s essential for Israel and the company,” he said. “I believe it will happen.”
Anchikovsky noted that an IPO could bring the company untapped potential, raising money and taking advantage of the opportunity the company’s current strong balance sheet provides.
Currently IAI is one of Israel’s three giant defense companies, along with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Elbit Systems. Elbit is the only company that is publicly traded; the other two are government-owned companies.
In December Levy said IAI was awaiting government approval for an IPO, and last week he acknowledged that Israeli leaders have other pressing issues as the military remains in engaged on multiple fronts. (On Monday, days after the executives’ comments, Israel launched a wave of deadly strikes on targets in Gaza, marking a violent crumbling of a fragile ceasefire.)
Autonomous Bulldozers
Elsewhere during the visit to IAI on March 13, the company showcased several projects underway, including the D-9 bulldozer that the company has converted to autonomous operations.
The D-9 is a principal platform used by the IDF’s engineering corps in Gaza to clear areas and has been used in the West Bank and Lebanon. However, D-9s are slow and cumbersome and have limited armor or defenses against drones, improvised explosive devices or missiles. As such, making them autonomous “saved lives,” said one IAI official who was not named for security reasons.
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The autonomous D-9 is made possible by adding cameras, sensors and LiDAR to the vehicle. The system enables it to plan missions and drive through waypoints. It also conducts route-finding itself to move to the most optimum path during its mission and can do its own collision avoidance.
In one demonstration, the bulldozer drove in a circle through dirt and amongst trees and along a wall. The user interface was a kind of workstation that is man-packable and includes a joystick, similar to a game controller, to drive it.
