A 33-Year-Old Czech Industrialist Just Launched a €25 Billion IPO — The Biggest Defence Listing in History

QUICK ANSWER What’s happening? Czechoslovak Group (CSG) listed on Euronext Amsterdam on 23 January at €25 per share, valuing the Prague-based munitions and armoured vehicle manufacturer at €25 billion. The IPO raised €3.8 billion — the largest defence listing ever recorded by both amount raised and market capitalisation. Shares surged 31 percent on the first day of trading. Order books were oversubscribed approximately 14 times, with cornerstone commitments from BlackRock, Artisan Partners, and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Founder Michal Strnad, 33, netted nearly €3 billion from the sale of existing shares. The listing is the clearest signal yet that Europe’s rearmament cycle has entered its industrial financing phase — and that capital markets are prepared to back it at scale.

Michal Strnad’s father started out trading Soviet military surplus in the 1990s with 100,000 Czech crowns — roughly $3,700. Three decades later, the son rang the opening bell in Amsterdam for a company worth more than Rolls-Royce.

CSG’s IPO on Euronext Amsterdam was not just the largest defence listing in history. It was a statement about where European capital is flowing and why. The offering comprised €750 million in new shares and €2.55 billion in existing shares sold by Strnad’s holding company, plus a €496 million overallotment option that was exercised in full on the same day. Total gross proceeds: €3.8 billion. Only 15.2 percent of the company changed hands.

The demand was extraordinary. Institutional order books were covered within hours of opening on the Tuesday before pricing. By the time allocation was finalised, demand reportedly exceeded $60 billion — roughly 14 times the deal size. Cornerstone investors BlackRock, Artisan Partners, and Al-Rayyan Holdings (a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority) committed €300 million each. A meaningful proportion of institutional investors received no allocation at all.

The Arsenal

CSG is not a startup riding a defence hype cycle. It is the second-largest medium- and large-calibre ammunition producer in Europe and the largest small-calibre ammunition producer globally, with 35 percent and 13 percent market shares respectively. Its 39 manufacturing facilities span the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Italy, Spain, the UK, India, and the United States. It employs more than 14,000 people. In 2024, annual revenues reached €5.2 billion.

The group’s subsidiaries read like an inventory of Europe’s rearmament supply chain: Excalibur Army builds armoured vehicles and land systems on Tatra chassis. MSM Group in Slovakia produces artillery ammunition. The Kinetic Group — acquired from Vista Outdoor for $2.23 billion in November 2024, in a deal that drew protests from US senators including JD Vance — manufactures Remington small-calibre ammunition. Eldis builds radar systems. Tatra Trucks, acquired in 2013, underpins the platform architecture for multiple NATO combat vehicles.

The Ukraine connection is central. CSG has been one of the leading European suppliers to Kyiv since 2022, delivering one million artillery shells in 2024 alone through the Czech Ammunition Initiative. Deliveries to Ukraine accounted for 42 percent of CSG’s revenue in 2024. Before the invasion, Ukrainian weapons systems including the Bohdana howitzer and the Neptune cruise missile were already being built on Tatra 817 chassis.

Revenue Growth at Wartime Speed

The financial trajectory is what turned heads in the bookbuild. Revenues for the first three quarters of 2025 reached €4.49 billion — an 82.4 percent year-on-year increase. Adjusted operating EBITDA hit €1.22 billion at a 27.1 percent margin. Within two weeks of listing, Excalibur Army announced a record $300 million export contract for more than 100 Patriot armoured vehicles in Southeast Asia. A cooperation agreement with Poland’s state-owned PGZ followed days later.

SIPRI data identifies CSG as the fastest-growing European defence company by annual revenue growth. Strnad has publicly stated his ambition is to grow CSG into Europe’s second-largest defence manufacturer, and the IPO proceeds — earmarked for “general corporate purposes,” which in defence-industry language means acquisitions — position the company to do exactly that.

What the IPO Tells the Market

The significance of the CSG listing extends well beyond one company’s capitalisation. It is a proof of concept for European defence as a capital markets asset class.

For years, European defence companies struggled to attract institutional investors constrained by ESG mandates and ethical screening. That dynamic has reversed. The depth of demand for CSG — sovereign wealth capital, US growth funds, European pension allocators — suggests that defence has moved from a screened-out sector to a strategic allocation. The oversubscription multiple, 14 times, exceeds what most technology IPOs achieve.

The timing was not accidental. EU leaders meeting in Belgium this week to discuss competitiveness explicitly linked defence spending to the bloc’s strategic autonomy agenda. European NATO members committed to spending 2 percent of GDP on defence, but most analysts now argue the real requirement is closer to 3.5 percent. Current European artillery stockpiles sit at roughly 10 percent of wartime requirements. The industrial base to fill that gap does not yet exist — and capital markets are being asked to finance its construction.

Bloomberg reported that defence, technology, and telecoms are set to dominate the European IPO pipeline through the first half of 2026. Investors who missed the CSG allocation are now actively screening for the next listing. The pipeline includes companies across the defence-industrial spectrum, from drone manufacturers to dual-use technology firms, many of which have been in private equity hands and are now approaching the scale that public markets demand.

Strnad, for his part, told investors that becoming a publicly listed company would strengthen CSG’s ability to “invest in innovation, expand our global reach, and deliver on our mission to be a critical long-term supplier of advanced defence and industrial technologies.” The market — to the tune of €25 billion — agreed.

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