A plain-English look at Lockheed Martin's revenue, profit, and market value, and what they reveal about the company behind the F-35.
A Giant Built on the F-35
Lockheed Martin is the world's largest defense contractor, a title it cemented by winning the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program in 2001. That single aircraft program now generates upward of two-thirds of the revenue in Aeronautics, the company's largest business segment.
More Than Fighter Jets
Beyond the F-35, Lockheed builds rotary and mission systems through its Sikorsky helicopter business, develops missiles and missile defense systems, and produces satellites through its space systems unit, which also collects equity income from the United Launch Alliance joint venture.
What the Company Actually Earns
In fiscal year 2025, Lockheed Martin generated $75.0 billion in revenue and turned that into $5.0 billion in net income. For a company operating at this scale, that means every dollar of sales produced roughly 6.7 cents of profit after all costs, taxes, and expenses were accounted for — its net margin.
Reading the Margins
The company's gross margin sits at 10.2%, a figure that reflects the direct costs of building complex hardware like fighter jets, helicopters, and satellites before overhead and other expenses are layered in. Defense manufacturing is capital- and labor-intensive, and these margins reflect that reality.
Growth Over Five Years
Lockheed's revenue climbed 15% between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2025. That's steady, incremental growth rather than explosive expansion — consistent with a company whose business is tied to long-cycle government contracts rather than fast-moving consumer trends.
A Look at the Balance Sheet
The company reports total assets of $59.8 billion, the accumulated value of its facilities, equipment, contracts, and other holdings. That figure gives a sense of the physical and financial scale required to design, build, and support advanced defense systems for customers around the world.
How the Market Values Lockheed
Lockheed Martin trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker LMT, with shares recently priced at $568.59 on a 15-minute delayed basis. That price puts the company's total market capitalization at $120.8 billion — the collective value investors place on all its outstanding shares.
Price Relative to Earnings
The stock carries a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.5, meaning shares trade at roughly 26.5 times the company's per-share earnings. It's currently trading 16% below its 52-week high, a gap that reflects normal price movement over the past year rather than any specific event noted here.
Dividends and Company Roots
Lockheed Martin pays a dividend yielding about 2.43% annually, a return paid out to shareholders alongside any change in share price. The company traces its modern corporate structure to 1995, when it went public that March, and it's headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, employing approximately 123,000 people across its defense businesses.
The Bottom Line
Lockheed Martin is a profitable, large-scale defense manufacturer with steady revenue growth, a significant employee base, and a market valuation in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This overview is factual reporting drawn from public filings and market data, not investment advice.
