Navy Halts New Orders of Aevex Drone Boats Over Performance Issues
AVEX is trading near its 52-week low of $13.07 (9.8% above the low).
Summary
The Navy has stopped placing new orders for Aevex's drone boats, citing performance problems, according to Bloomberg. That is a direct hit to the company's core unmanned surface vessel line and comes just as Aevex has been stacking up government awards — $88.1M in production orders in July, a $41M one-way attack contract in August, and a $92.2M Department of War selection in September. The timing is awkward: Aevex closed the $600M BlackSea Technologies acquisition on September 8 and is integrating new maritime capabilities while its existing boat program is under a customer stop-order. Funded backlog already halved to $259.8M in Q2, so any order freeze on a fielded product line pressures the forward revenue picture.
At the time of this announcement, AVEX was trading at $14.35 on NYSE in the Manufacturing sector, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.8B. The 52-week trading range was $13.07 to $42.34. This news item was assessed with negative market sentiment and an importance score of 8 out of 10. Source: Reuters.