Czechoslovak Group (CSG) & Excalibur Army: Valuation, Ammunition and the Czech Shell Initiative

CSG and Excalibur Army

The group's origins are modest. In 1995 Jaroslav Strnad founded Excalibur Army with fewer than twenty employees and a tiny amount of capital, overhauling Soviet-era military equipment. Over the following decades the business expanded by acquisition into a sprawling conglomerate spanning ammunition, armored vehicles, aerospace components and rail. His son Michal Strnad took control in 2018 and consolidated the defense assets under the Czechoslovak Group banner.

Today CSG produces and refurbishes large-caliber ammunition, artillery, armored vehicles and related systems across plants in Czechia and beyond, having also expanded into the United States. Excalibur Army remains the historical and industrial core of the group, one of the manufacturers underpinning its large-caliber shell output. What makes CSG unusual is the combination of in-house manufacturing with an extensive global trading and sourcing network — a network that proved decisive once Europe's shell shortage became acute.

The Czech Ammunition Initiative

In February 2024, at the Munich Security Conference, Czech President Petr Pavel announced an initiative to buy artillery shells for Ukraine from producers worldwide, using Czech industry's contacts to reach sellers outside Europe that other governments could not easily access. The initial goal was on the order of 800,000 large-caliber rounds, funded by a coalition of donor nations.

CSG and its trading arms were among the key Czech players able to source and broker that ammunition. Delivery figures depend on how they are counted, but by the end of 2024 the initiative had supplied hundreds of thousands of 155mm rounds, reported as meeting around 80% of its first-year target. Roughly 1.5 million large-caliber shells had reached Ukraine by early 2025, and cumulative deliveries of large-caliber ammunition were later reported in the millions. The scheme has drawn some criticism over pricing, quality control and transparency, but it kept a steady flow of shells moving when Western stockpiles were exhausted.

⚠ Shell-delivery counts vary by source and caliber definition (source); treat them as approximate.

Revenue and Growth

CSG's financial trajectory has been extraordinary. Reported consolidated revenue rose from only a few hundred million euros at the start of the decade to about €4 billion in 2024, an increase of roughly 131% in a single year, with operating EBITDA above €1 billion. Defense accounted for the large majority of sales.

Crucially, Ukraine became CSG's second-largest market, with sales there reported at about €1.7 billion in 2024 — a direct measure of how central the war has been to the group's growth. That kind of expansion, combined with public bond issuances that exposed CSG's finances to investors, gradually turned a quiet family firm into one of Europe's most closely watched defense businesses.

⚠ Revenue, EBITDA and Ukraine-sales figures from CSG's 2024 results and Reuters/Bloomberg reporting (source); approximate.

Valuation: From Private to Listed

For most of its history CSG was privately held and not exchange-listed, so it had no daily market price. Analysts therefore inferred its worth from private-company signals: rapid revenue and EBITDA growth, bond issuances, pre-IPO valuation talk and the Strnad family's billionaire estimates. Bloomberg's Billionaires Index has estimated Michal Strnad's fortune in the tens of billions of dollars, ranking him the richest person in the Czech Republic.

That changed on 23 January 2026, when CSG listed on Euronext Amsterdam in what was reported as the largest defense IPO in history, valued at about €25 billion and raising roughly €3.8 billion. The shares jumped about 30% on debut, briefly lifting the market value above €30 billion and making CSG one of the most valuable listed companies in Central Europe. Strnad sold only around a 15% stake and retained majority control, so CSG is now a listed but founder-controlled group rather than a fully float-traded one.

⚠ Pre-IPO values are external estimates; the IPO valuation is from Euronext, CNBC and Bloomberg reporting (source). Approximate. Not investment advice.

Why It Matters for Ukraine

Artillery has been the dominant killer of the war, and Ukrainian shell consumption has at times run far ahead of what allied stockpiles and Western production lines could replace. In that environment, the ability to find, buy and ship 155mm rounds from wherever they exist became as strategically valuable as the ability to make them. CSG combined both, which is why it ended up so central to the Czech initiative and to the broader Western effort to keep Ukrainian guns firing.

The group's rise also illustrates a wider shift: Central European defense industry, long overshadowed by the big Western primes, has moved to the front of the rearmament story. CSG's transformation from a family overhaul business into a multi-billion-euro listed conglomerate is one of the clearest commercial markers of how the war reshaped Europe's defense map.

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