Rock bottom relations between Moscow and the West, along with the looming prospect of a conflict in Eastern Europe, bode well for firms cashing in on sending arms overseas, two of America’s largest weapons exporters have admitted.
As Washington spends increasingly large sums of cash on military equipment for Ukraine, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin told investors this week that escalation in the region bodes well for their bottom line, in transcripts released by investment site The Motley Fool.
On a January 25 earnings call, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said, “we just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”
The same day, Jim Taiclet, CEO of Lockheed Martin, also advised investors that the likelihood of further American involvement in Eastern Europe would be good for business. “If you look at the evolving threat level and the approach that some countries are taking, including North Korea, Iran and through some of its proxies in Yemen and elsewhere, and especially Russia today, and China, there’s renewed great power competition that does include national defense and threats to it,” he said.