The business of making parts for military aircraft and aerospace engines is booming right now, and companies that supply that hardware are rushing to sell shares while investors are still hungry.

Doncasters, a British manufacturer founded in Sheffield in 1778, filed for a US stock market listing on Tuesday. The company reported $237 million in revenue for the first three months of 2026, up 26% from the same period a year earlier. It still posted a net loss of $47 million for the quarter, but that loss shrank from $53 million in the same period a year before.

The company plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "DPC," with Jefferies and Morgan Stanley running the offering.

Why now

Doncasters is not the only one moving quickly. Applied Aerospace and Defense, a space and defense hardware provider, kicked off its own US IPO roadshow on the same day. Reuters noted that both filings are part of a broader wave of defense-linked companies flocking to public markets to capture investor enthusiasm generated by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

When a conflict raises the probability of sustained military spending, investors start repricing companies that sit inside the supply chain. For firms like Doncasters, which makes complex components for aerospace engines using nickel- and cobalt-based superalloys, the timing of a public offering can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in valuation. Going public during a hot market for the sector means selling shares to investors who are willing to pay a premium for future growth, rather than waiting for that enthusiasm to cool.

What Doncasters actually makes

The company started as a file-making business in the 18th century and gradually moved into steel converting and forging. Today it runs 14 manufacturing facilities across North America, Europe, the UK, and Asia, producing the kinds of highly engineered parts that sit inside jet engines and industrial gas turbines. These are not commodity components. Superalloy castings and precision forgings require specialized materials and long-established process know-how, which is why Doncasters has customers who cannot easily switch suppliers.

The company went through a debt restructuring in 2020 after its former owner, the private equity firm Dubai International Capital, collapsed. Its lenders took over the business, restructured its finances, and have now positioned it for a public exit.

The bigger pattern

Defense supply chains are not just about weapons. A large portion of the value in aerospace and defense spending flows to manufacturers that make structural components, engine parts, and advanced materials. These companies often fly under the radar during peacetime, when defense budgets grow slowly and investor attention drifts toward software and consumer technology. When that calculus shifts, they can move fast.

The rush of defense-linked IPOs also reflects something broader: public markets are one of the few places where the consequences of geopolitical decisions become immediately visible in dollar terms. Investors buying shares in Doncasters or Applied Aerospace are, in effect, making a bet that military procurement spending will stay elevated and that the companies supplying it will convert that revenue into profit.

Doncasters has not done that yet. A 26% revenue jump alongside a continuing net loss means costs are still running high relative to sales. The question for investors, and for the workers and communities that depend on its 14 factories, is whether that gap closes as volume grows, or whether the debt load and operating complexity of a 248-year-old industrial business prove harder to shrink than its top-line growth makes it look.