ELBIT SYSTEMS LTD (ESLT): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $708.68, ELBIT SYSTEMS LTD (ESLT) is priced for today's economics sustained for ~6.8 years. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Exported: 2026-08-31 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/ESLT

Headline

FieldValue
TickerESLT
CompanyELBIT SYSTEMS LTD
Sector / IndustryIndustrials
Current price$708.68/sh
CompositionAerospace 23% / C4I and Cyber 11% / ISTAR and EW 17% / Land 28% / ESA 21%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Operating margin (value-band context)4.9%
Operating margin today8.5%
Margin compression (value-band)-3.6pp
Must persist for6.8y
Multiple paid49x operating income

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 12: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

Solve inputs: computed at a 7.9% cost of capital; growth searched up to the 25% self-funding ceiling.

How unusual the bet is: elevated (limited comparison data)

ReferenceValue
vs own history+1.02σ
cohort percentile (of 225 peers)95

Valuation X-Ray

Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset4.86x5expensive
Earnings5.76x5expensive
Relative2.43x2expensive
Growth1.11x3expensive

Families that justify the price: Growth Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings, Relative

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.4%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=15)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$289.362.45xyesFCF base $0.6B, growth 11% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 9.4%, 6yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$691.791.02xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 37.1x / 39.1x / 41.1x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr
Relative ValuationRelativenoP/E 33.88x (blended: static sector reference 22x + trailing (TTM) 62x), scenarios: 28.0x / 33.9x / 39.7x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 21.53x
Simple DDMGrowthno
Two-Stage DDMGrowthno
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$124.385.70xyesBV/sh $88.92, ROE (TTM) 12.9%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$145.914.86xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$636.281.11xyesRev $7.9B, growth 11% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 3.4x / 4.1x / 4.9x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$242.802.92xyesEPS $11.39, growth 21% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=2.89 (Overvalued)
Margin TrajectoryGrowthno
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$82.978.54xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.46B × (1−21%) / WACC 9.4% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset$150.464.71xyesBV $88.92 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 12.9% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 8.4%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$150.964.69xyes√(22.5 × EPS $11.39 × BVPS $88.92) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelativenoEBITDA $0.84B × sector EV/EBITDA 14.0x
FCF YieldEarnings$127.795.55xyesFCF $552.8M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings$121.655.83xyesSBC-adj FCF $0.53B (FCF $0.55B − SBC $0.03B) capitalized at Kₑ
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$367.521.93xyesEPS $11.39 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$120.195.90xyesBV $88.92 × (ROIC 12.7% / WACC 9.4%)
P/Sales SectorRelativenoRevenue $7.94B × sector P/S 2.0x
PEG Fair ValueRelative$364.201.95xyesEPS $11.39 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 21.3% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 32.0x
Earnings YieldEarnings$123.145.76xyesEPS $11.39 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelativeno
Clinical Phase NPVGrowthno
MertonAssetno
V5 Mechanicalno

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

One or more material disclosed units has unresolved economics. Unknown/general is not evidence of homogeneity: segment SOTP is primary but incomplete, consolidated cash flow may remain only a secondary cross-check when every unit shares an enterprise basis, and one sector multiple or target margin is withheld.

UnitRoleValuation basisRevenueReported profitValue evidenceStatus
Aerospaceoperatingenterprise0.2B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
ISTAR and EWoperatingenterprise0.1B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
ESAoperatingenterprise8.5B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
Series Boperatingenterprise1500000.0B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
Series Coperatingenterprise200000.0B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
Series Doperatingenterprise200000.0B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

FieldValue
Net cash$412.4m
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)-0.78x (net cash)
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)-0.61x (net cash)
Interest coverage4.6x
Share count CAGR (dilution)1.5%
Burning cashno

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

There is no dividend policy. The 20-F states it in six words, "We do not have an established dividend policy.", and the board approves payments case by case. For a defence contractor of this size that is unusual, and it tells you where the capital is going instead. Not to buybacks either: the share count has risen about 1.5% a year over the last four years, including an offering of new ordinary shares whose proceeds the filing says are "intended for general corporate purposes." Elbit is funding growth from every source available to it, including its own shareholders, which is what a company does when it believes the demand in front of it is bigger than the cash it generates.

The evidence that the demand is real sits in one number. The order book stood at $28,131 million at the end of 2025 against $22,617 million a year earlier, and the geography shifted with it: 72% of the 2025 figure was for orders outside Israel, up from 65%. Roughly 54% of that book is scheduled to be performed across 2026 and 2027, with the remaining 46% in 2028 and beyond. Against revenue of $7.94 billion in the year, the company is carrying several years of production already signed. Backlog is not revenue, and the filing is careful to say so, but it is the closest thing a defence supplier has to visibility.

What makes the mix defensible is that no single part of it dominates. Land is the largest revenue line at 28%, followed by Aerospace at 23%, the ESA business at 21%, ISTAR and electronic warfare at 17%, and C4I and cyber at 11%. A company with five roughly comparable legs is harder to knock over than one built on a single platform programme, and it also means Elbit competes on different fronts against different opponents rather than facing one incumbent everywhere.

Growth is where the separation from the large primes is clearest. LHX grew revenue 4.4% and NOC 5.0% on their most recent filed figures, with LMT at 4.6% and GD at 9.4%. Elbit's backlog expanded by roughly a quarter in a single year. European rearmament and the reconstruction of Israeli inventories are both real and both multi-year, and Elbit sells into the middle of them: sensors, electro-optics, munitions, armoured vehicle systems, the things a rearming army buys second after it buys platforms.

The balance sheet is built to carry that without much drama. At the end of 2025 the company reported working capital of about 1.76 billion dollars and a current ratio of 1.29, with total bank borrowings of approximately 81 million dollars in short and long-term facilities, alongside the NIS 1.9 billion (approximately 575 million dollars) of Series B, C and D notes issued back in 2021. Operating profit covers the interest bill roughly 4.6 times. This is a company with room to keep building capacity, and building capacity is exactly what it has chosen to do with the money.

Bear Case

The variable with the most leverage over this thesis is not demand, and it is not competition. It is an export licence. The 20-F is explicit about the arrangement: "Current Israeli policy encourages exports to approved customers of defense systems and products such as ours, as long as the exports are consistent with Israeli government policy." Read that clause twice. Roughly 72% of a 28 billion dollar order book is for customers outside Israel, and the ability to deliver against it is conditional on a policy that can change without a single customer changing its mind. Encouragement is not entitlement.

The same dependence runs the other way through U.S. funding. The filing warns that if U.S. security assistance programmes are "reduced or discontinued, we may receive fewer U.S. funded orders and FMF funds", and that such developments could push the company out of some business lines entirely, with asset impairment as the consequence. A defence supplier whose end markets are set by two governments' foreign policy carries a beta to diplomacy that no valuation method prices.

Now put the price against the economics. On the last full year reported the company earned an operating margin of about 8.5%. Among the large primes that is on the thin side: LHX ran 10.2%, NOC 11.6%, LMT 9.9%, GD 10.2% and RTX 10.9%, all from their own filings. Elbit converts revenue into operating profit slightly less efficiently than the companies it is often compared with, and it trades at about 57 times company-wide operating income, at the very top of the peer distribution and well past the upper quartile. The premium is not being paid for margin. It is being paid for the growth rate, which means the growth rate has to keep arriving.

How long it has to keep arriving is the uncomfortable part. Today's price requires operating profit to compound at the fastest rate the business can self-fund for something like eight straight years. Of comparable fast-growers historically, only about 20% held such a pace for that long. And rearmament cycles are cycles. European defence budgets rose from a base set by a specific security shock; they are set annually by parliaments, and the same politics that raised them can flatten them.

The financing has an edge to it too. Covenants on the notes and bank facilities are tied to net worth, EBITDA, interest coverage, total leverage, equity and net financial debt, and the company reports material compliance for 2024 and 2025. Those tests are all sensitive to the same thing: operating performance. A slowdown in orders would not simply reduce growth. It would tighten the terms on which the company funds the working capital that a 28 billion dollar backlog consumes, at the same time as the equity market stops treating new share issuance as a growth investment. The bull case and the financing structure are leaning on the same assumption.

Valuation

An 8.5% operating margin and a 57 times multiple do not usually appear in the same sentence. That, in essence, is what this price is: the market paying roughly 57 times company-wide operating income, on the last full year the company reported, for a business whose profitability per dollar of revenue sits below the large defence primes. The arithmetic behind it implies operating profit compounding at the fastest rate the business can fund from its own cash flow for about eight years. The calculation runs at a 7.8% cost of capital, and it is moderately sensitive to that: a percentage point more of required return shortens the implied horizon by a bit over two years.

Two comparisons make that demand concrete without any modelling at all. Against the peer group, the multiple sits at the very top of the distribution, well beyond the upper quartile. Against history, only about 20% of comparable fast-growers sustained a pace like this for as long as the price requires. Neither says it cannot happen. Both say the price has already assumed it will.

The methods line up accordingly, and they are not close. Only the forward-growth approaches come near today's price, and even they sit slightly under it, with the price about 11% above the growth family. Everything else is a long way below: the price sits about 143% above the peer-multiple family, about 469% above the asset-value family, and about 567% above the earnings-power family. When only the growth methods reach a price, the premium is a durability bet, and the static methods are structurally incapable of framing it because they credit no growth at all. That is the honest description here, not a criticism of either side.

The method that comes closest deserves a look at how it gets there. It reaches the price by carrying the enterprise multiple the shares trade on today, which is exceptionally high for this industry, unchanged all the way to the end of a six-year forecast, with the bear case compressing it and the bull expanding it. It is not that the assumption is unreasonable. It is that the assumption is doing nearly all of the work, and it is an assumption about the market's willingness to pay rather than about the business.

Against the cohort the picture is consistent. LDOS earns a 12.0% operating margin, CACI 9.3% and SAIC 7.9% in the services-adjacent comparison, while TDY reaches 19.0% at the high-technology end. Elbit's reported profitability sits inside that range rather than above it. What separates Elbit is the order book, which grew to $28,131 million at the end of 2025 from $22,617 million a year earlier, and the geographic reach that came with it.

On solvency the reading is straightforward. Operating profit covers the interest bill about 4.6 times, working capital stood at about 1.76 billion dollars with a current ratio of 1.29 at year end, and the funded borrowings are modest: roughly 81 million dollars from banks alongside the NIS 1.9 billion of notes issued in 2021. The share count is the item moving in the wrong direction for holders, rising about 1.5% a year since the end of 2021. That is the cost of financing a backlog this large in a hurry, and it is charged to existing shareholders rather than to lenders.

Catalysts

Second-quarter results are scheduled for August 11, 2026. The number that matters most in that release is not the profit line but the order intake, because the whole valuation argument rests on how long the current pace of bookings persists rather than on this quarter's margin.

The most recent hard datapoint runs in the company's favour and, usefully, sits outside the export-licence question entirely. On July 20, 2026 Elbit Systems of America announced contract awards from U.S. Customs and Border Protection totalling more than $370 million. Work awarded to the U.S. subsidiary by a U.S. federal agency is domestic content performed domestically, which is a different risk profile from a foreign military sale routed through Israeli approvals, and building more of that mix is one of the few ways the company can reduce its political exposure without reducing its growth.

The sell side has been trimming rather than adding. Morgan Stanley lowered its price target to $845 from $978 in mid-July 2026 while keeping an Equal Weight rating. That reduction still leaves a target above the current share price, and the gap is worth naming plainly: a target like that credits the forward order book and the European budget cycle, while the trailing lenses in this report credit only what the company has already earned. Both readings can be held at once. Only one of them has already happened.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Aerospace (reported)

ISTAR and EW (reported)

ESA (reported)

Series B / Series C / Series D (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

company announcement, July 13, 2026 · FY2025 20-F · company news release, July 20, 2026 · analyst action reported July 2026

View the full interactive ESLT report on boothcheck