Key points
- AeroVironment (AVAV) beat on both lines in its fiscal Q4: adjusted EPS of $1.84 (vs about $1.47 expected) and revenue of $641.6 million (vs about $559 million), up about 133% year over year.
- It guided fiscal 2027 well above this year, with bookings of $2.7 billion and a $1.2 billion funded backlog behind it.
- The stock popped double digits after hours, trading near $156 to $160, up roughly 12% to 15% from its $139.59 close.
- Drone peers caught a bid too: Red Cat (RCAT) and Kratos (KTOS) were each up about 2% after hours.
This morning we previewed AeroVironment's report and flagged that the whole drone group was getting bid up into it. Tonight the company delivered, and the stock is responding.
A clean beat on both lines
For its fiscal fourth quarter, AeroVironment (AVAV) reported adjusted earnings of $1.84 per share, ahead of the roughly $1.47 Wall Street expected, a beat of about 25 percent. Revenue came in at $641.6 million, above the roughly $559 million consensus and up about 133 percent from a year earlier. That growth rate is enormous for a defense company, and the reason is the BlueHalo merger: AeroVironment closed its roughly $4.1 billion all-stock acquisition of BlueHalo in May 2025, so this was the first full year with the combined business in the numbers.
For the full year, revenue was nearly $2 billion ($1.98 billion, up about 141 percent). Just as important, bookings reached $2.7 billion for a book-to-bill of about 1.4, and funded backlog stood at $1.2 billion, signs that demand is still building rather than slowing.
And a raise
The bigger driver of the after-hours pop was the guidance. AeroVironment guided fiscal 2027 revenue to a range of $2.125 billion to $2.225 billion, well above the nearly $2 billion it booked this year, with adjusted EBITDA of $305 million to $325 million and non-GAAP earnings of $3.02 to $3.34 per share. On a GAAP basis it guided $0.16 to $0.48. Beating the quarter and guiding the next year higher is the combination the market rewards most, and it did here.
The stock reaction
AeroVironment closed the regular session at $139.59, up about 1 percent on the day. After the report, it jumped sharply, trading around $156 to $160 in after-hours, up roughly 12 to 15 percent from the close. That is a big reversal: the stock had been one of the more beaten-down names in defense, down about two-thirds from its October high near $418 and sitting at a fresh 52-week low only last week. After-hours trading is thin and can fade, but the initial verdict on this report is clearly positive.
Drone peers caught a bid too
AeroVironment's pop pulled some of the smaller drone names up with it in thin after-hours trading. Red Cat (RCAT) and Kratos (KTOS) were each up about 2 percent after the close, with Ondas (ONDS) and Draganfly (DPRO) slightly higher and Unusual Machines (UMAC) and AIRO Group (AIRO) roughly flat. The moves are small and after-hours volume in these names is light, so it is more a read on sentiment than a confirmed trend, but the read-through from AeroVironment's beat is clearly positive for the group, which had already rallied into the report during the day.
What it means
For a stock the market had largely given up on, a beat-and-raise with a growing backlog is exactly the kind of catalyst that can change the story. The questions from here are whether the move holds when regular trading reopens, how the BlueHalo integration looked in the details, and what management said about demand on the call. We previewed the setup this morning; the numbers backed it up. None of this is investment advice.
Headline figures are from AeroVironment's fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results released after the close on June 29, 2026. After-hours prices are as of about 4:15 p.m. Eastern and will move.
