(BFM Stock Exchange) – The Rafale manufacturer will join the CAC Next 20 on Monday while the company specializing in imaging will be part of the second largest index of the Paris Stock Exchange. These changes reflect the leap of the titles of the two companies, supported by the general interest of the market for defense companies.

The last meeting of the Euronext scientific council, held Wednesday evening, will not make history. The body in charge of deciding on the evolution of the composition of the Paris Stock Exchange indices, opted for the status quo on the CAC 40.

But other changes quite well reflect the current dynamics of the market. First of all, an exosens, a company that had entered the stock market last June, will join the SBF 120, the second largest index in the Parisian square (and which brings together the CAC 40 and around 80 other companies) next Monday.

This company formerly baptized photonis specializes in imaging, detection and optronics, especially military. Its main shareholders are the HB investment group (45.8% of capital) and Bpifrance (4.5%) and its market capitalization is tutoring 1.7 billion euros.

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Dassault Aviation is starting to type at the door of the CAC 40

Dassault Aviation, for its part, will join the CAC Next 20, a kind of anteroom of the CAC 40 created in 2005 which brings together the candidates most likely to join the most important index of the Paris Stock Exchange.

In fact, the manufacturer of the Rafale and the Falcon business aircraft displays a higher market capitalization than that of CAC 40 residents. This capitalization is currently at 24 billion euros. The company chaired and managed by Éric Trappier would be in 28th place in the index, between Michelin (24.3 billion) and Publicis (23.3 billion euros) on this simple criterion.

But the scientific council is based not on outright capitalization but on so-called “floating” capitalization, that is to say retired from the capital held by shareholders who are intended to remain in the very long term, such as the State, employees or founding families.

In the case of Dassault Aviation, the industrial group Marcel Dassault, Holding of the Dassault family, has 66.28% of the company’s capital and Airbus 10.56%. The floating thus amounts to 22.94% of the total, so 5.5 billion euros. However, which remains greater than that of Teleperformance (more than 4 billion euros).

Exchange volumes are also taken into account by the Euronext Scientific Council.

These two changes shows how much the defense actions are currently on the rise on the Paris Stock Exchange, as well as in all European markets. Since the beginning of the year, Exosens has been 69% and Dassault Aviation has won 54.8%. Already present on CAC 40, Thales advances 74.54%.

Still potential?

Defense groups have been carried out in recent weeks by the multiplication of advertisements of expenditure on military budgets in Europe. Especially in Germany where the Bundestag, the lower room of the Parliament, approved on Tuesday of the budgetary reforms necessary for the implementation of a mega investment plan of several hundred billion euros in the defense and the infrastructure.

On Wednesday, the Morgan Stanley bank reaffirmed its positive opinion on the European Defense sector on the stock market.

“We are planning that budgetary commitments will be at the center of concerns until the end of 2025, the NATO summit in June being the main catalyst for the formalization of the expected increase in the objective of defense expenses,” the American bank wrote.

“We should then see additional orders flowed in 2026, when we think that the consensus will start to review the estimates (forecasts of results in the sector) upwards, with initial upward revisions for short cycle products in 2027, and for the sector in general from 2028, once the capacity expans understood “, develops the bank. Morgan Stanley had revised, on average, its 45% price targets on the various European actions in the sector.

“Has easy money been earned? In a way, yes, but there is still a lot to do,” said the bank. The latter notably argues that the interest of individual shareholders is growing and that the restrictions linked to the ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) investment are slowly falling.