Egm in X-ray: Fae Technology enters space to return to growth
With the acquisition of Kayser Space, the electronics company makes its entry into the space sector after a less than brilliant 2025
Key points
It's not SpaceX. But a SpaceX mission Fae Technology did participate: more precisely, through its subsidiary Kayser Space, in the 34th commercial cargo flight of Elon Musk's company to the International Space Station (ISS) on behalf of NASA. The take-off took place on 15 May 2026 from the SLC-40 complex at Cape Canaveral and the docking to the Iss took place on 17 May, with the delivery of more than 2,900 kg of 6,500 kg of scientific experiments and supplies.
This included the Astrobone experiment, which aimed to validate in microgravity the clinical application of the resorbable biometric bone substitute B.Bone, made of hydroxyapatite from rattan wood by the Brescian company GreenBone Ortho, which specialises in the field of bone regeneration. Kayser Space designed and built the sixteen 'experiment units' that housed the three-dimensional model that supports cell growth. It should be remembered that the space environment is particularly favourable for experiments of this type since, due to the absence of gravity, astronauts are subject to an accelerated loss of bone mass. At the end of their stay in orbit, the samples will be analysed by the San Martino Hospital team and the University of Genoa, and the first scientific results are expected within the year.
Fae Technology's entry into the space sector took place at the end of 2025 with the acquisition of an initial 29.9% stake in the then Kayser Italia (renamed Kayser Space in April 2026), a Livorno-based company that has been operating for over 30 years in the design, development, production and testing of systems and components used for research activities on board space platforms. For this first tranche, €2.12 million was paid (of which €1 million as an advance on the second closing), while €0.57 million will be paid for the second closing, which will take place by the end of 2026, in addition to an earn-out of up to €0.3 million contingent upon the achievement of certain 2025 revenue and retention targets for key management resources. Subsequently, within 18 months of the second closing, a further EUR 1.06 million will be paid, for a total of EUR 3.75 million.
Results 2025 down as electronic boards business declines
Here it should be remembered that the acronym Fae stands for 'Electronic Equipment Manufacturing', and the group's core business is still electronics. The 2025 results should be seen in this light, which showed a contraction in revenues and margins due to the slowdown in demand for the group's products from the electrification and energy transition sectors, although there was a recovery in the second half of the year, especially from the defence sector.
In fact, revenues decreased by 7.4% to EUR 66.5 million, a trend almost entirely determined by the drop in the Contract business unit (-16% to EUR 48.2 million), focused on the production of electronic boards and tests for various industrial sectors. In contrast, turnover increased in the Embedded business unit (+17.2% to EUR 13.4 million), which develops custom electronic platforms, Engineering (up from EUR 655,000 to EUR 1.55 million) and Prototyping (+43.6% to EUR 3.4 million). And since personnel costs jumped by 19.8% to EUR 13.9 million (from 247 to 269 employees) and service costs remained almost unchanged (-1.2% to EUR 8.3 million), EBITDA fell by 28.4% to EUR 5.8 million, EBIT by 48.9% to EUR 2.9 million (after depreciation and amortisation increased from EUR 2.5 million to EUR 2.9 million) and net profit by 56% to EUR 1.57 million after taxes of EUR 934.000 (tax rate up from 29.5% to 37.3%). As at 31 December 2025, net financial debt amounted to EUR 3.5 million, down from EUR 3.7 million at the end of 2024 (despite an increase in working capital from EUR 19.5 million to EUR 22 million due to the need to maintain sufficient inventories given the volatility of procurement of electronic components), resulting in a Debt/Equity ratio of about 0.11 times, thus very low.
