Leonardo 2022-2025; a thorough analysis of the company evolution by the CEO

Talking at the 2026 Industrial Plan Presentation, Roberto Cingolani, the company CEO, depicted Leonardo evolution in the 2022-2025 period, based on expanded and rationalised portfolio with a focus on servitization, strategic partnerships, accelerated digitalisation, capacity boost to increase production and accelerate deliveries, cost optimisation and disciplined product capital allocation

Introducing his presentation Roberto Cingolani rapidly highlighted the progresses registered by the Leonardo group from FY 2022 to FY 2025. Manpower grew from 51,392 to 62,762 while the group sites stepped up from 105 to 131 throughout the world. Considering Italy, the UK, the US and Poland as the group domestic market, this saw an 18-19% increase while the international market growth was 28%.

“In 2023 the product portfolio was fragmented,” Cingolani said, underlining that the only platforms were in the rotary and fixed wing sector, while electronics was spread over air, land, maritime and space domains, digitalisation being very limited, mostly linked to cybersecurity activities. Considering the situation, he found when he took over Leonardo, in May 2023, “Investor confidence was not very good. The market cap was rather small for the size of the business, cash conversion was around 54%. Now, three years later, the picture is different,” he underlined, highlighting the changing nature of the portfolio, which now includes platforms in all domains apart from the maritime one, Leonardo maintaining a close link with Fincantieri, electronics and digitalisation being also spread on the five domains. Strategic partnerships were created through joint ventures, notably those with Rheinmetall of Germany in the land domain and with Baykar of Turkey in the air domain, while the group carried out selective acquisitions nationally and internationally, following a careful “make-or buy” analysis, closing or selling several non-core activities in the meantime.

Cingolani told investors present in the new Gate 2080 structure, a wide structure not far from the Group headquarters downtown Rome, about the specific actions, which followed what he illustrated to them when he took over Leonardo. “First of all, new products and increasing servitization on different platforms, to increase margins, … then we accelerated digitalisation to an extent that was never seen in the past, we built up high-performance computing capability,” he said, adding that today the group has over 2,000 engineers who operate in an AI-driven environment, and more than 100 developers of codes.

“We also launched the Capacity Boost programme, which was kind of mandatory because in the meanwhile, there were wars in the planet and the demand of the defence systems was increasing, so we had to accelerate our production capability,” a process which is currently still ongoing.

Back to finance, “we committed ourselves towards a very disciplined capital allocation. The aim is to guarantee high return of the invested capital, but also to have a serious approach while we manage our resources,” Cingolani stated adding that “Now, after three years, our portfolio is maybe the most complete you can find among the peers. I think this is a competitive advantage that we have now as we are in all platforms,” the exception being the maritime domain.

“Electronics is the real glue of the company because we are sharing payload, weapons, command and control. So basically, the soul of all our platforms has a common origin, which is the electronics, which grew considerably. We launched a new space domain that was very fragmented at the beginning, but we now have a dedicated Space Division, and we are entering into strong international alliances. We are building our constellation. So that was really a boost,” the group CEO stated. “Finally, cybersecurity had a strong growth because of a very selective choice of products. And, of course, digitalisation became transversal through AI, data, high-performance computing, and numbers somehow show that this was a good approach.”

Leonardo CEO detailed the portfolio by domain, something too long to report on, highlighting one of the latest solutions proposed by the company, the Michelangelo Dome unveiled in November 2025, an open-architecture system designed to provide an effective layered defence against threats coming from the third dimensions. The Michelangelo Dome is transversal to the company portfolio, as it includes elements of all domains.

One domain that deserves some notes is cybersecurity. In the early 2020s Leonardo was mostly integrating third party cybersecurity solutions into its products; through a series of merging and acquisitions the situation has changed considerably. In July 2025 Leonardo acquired 24.55% of the Finnish SSH and in that same month it acquired Axiomatics in Sweden, the latest acquisition in this field dating one day before the company presentation in Rome, when Leonardo announced the acquisition of Becrypt in the UK. Compared to 2023, in 2025 the orders generated by proprietary cyber products increased threefold, while in that same period orders from the defence business increased by 45%.

All this led to a considerable improvement in financial results; in 2022 orders were worth 17.3 billion Euro, 2025 results showing a 38% increase up to 23.8 billion, while revenues stepped up from 14.7 to 19.5 (+33%), and EBITA from 1.2 to 1.8 billion (+44%). “We are very happy that this year, for the first time, we broke the barrier of 1 billion in preoperative cash flow. That was a kind of psychological barrier we wanted to go through as soon as possible,” Cingolani underlined, numbers also showing a six-fold increase in market capitalisation, from 4.6 to 33.8 billion.

Ten years after the One Company transformation was announced, Leonardo is now operating as a true multinational One Company with a clear industrial vision and a strong attention towards execution. The increased focus on defence, due to the several ongoing conflicts, is certainly helping in improving financial results, however this would not have been possible without the deep transformation of the last few years. As underlined by its CEO, the company is however already looking at the future, when hopefully conflicts may come to an end, global security being the new target for Leonardo.

Graphics courtesy Leonardo, photos courtesy Leonardo and P. Valpolini