The Hook
Behind the Markets, the $49-a-year newsletter run by Dylan Jovine, is running a rearmament pitch with a name that does a lot of the selling for it: “The Arsenal: My #1 Defense Stock for the Rearmament Decade.” The hook is straightforward and timely. Western militaries spent the past three years drawing down munitions and missile-defense stockpiles to support Ukraine and Israel. Now they have to rebuild, and the company at the center of that rebuild has, in Jovine’s telling, a moat that no marketing department could invent: every system it sells has been used in actual combat.
The urgency in the pitch comes not from a countdown clock but from a number. Jovine writes that the company’s order backlog “has swollen past $30 billion for the first time in its history.” That is a concrete, checkable claim, and it turns out to be true.
The Big Claim
The core of the pitch is captured in one blockquote:
“One company arms the most battle-tested air force in the Western world. Every system it sells has been proven in live combat — the ultimate sales brochure. And as NATO re-arms, its order backlog has swollen past $30 billion for the first time in its history. It’s up 121% since our recommendation — the biggest winner in our defense portfolio… and I’ll show you why I believe the run is still early.”
Two claims matter here. The first is the backlog figure, which checks out against the company’s own filings. The second is the “up 121% since our recommendation,” which is a performance claim measured from Jovine’s own entry point, not from any price he is quoting you today.
The Mechanism
StockGumshoe’s Thinkolator identifies the “Arsenal” as Elbit Systems (ESLT), the Israeli defense contractor. This is not the first time Jovine has pitched Elbit. StockGumshoe first uncovered it as the answer to one of his teases back in early 2024, when it was framed as a “laser weapons” company under the headline “Israel’s Brand New Weapon.” Since that first uncover, the stock has more than doubled, from roughly $200 to nearly $800. We have a fuller breakdown of the Elbit Systems story that walks through the numbers.
The mechanism is worth understanding, because it explains why a defense contractor that sat around 30 times earnings in 2024 now trades at 44 times next year’s earnings. Elbit is the company behind several of the systems that have become household names in the past two years: the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile-defense systems, laser counter-weapon programs, and a growing cyber-defense business. But the biggest earnings driver today is not the headline-grabbing missile defense. It is the land-based defense segment, a large portion of which is artillery and shells. That segment is a direct beneficiary of the depletion cycle created by the war in Ukraine, where artillery consumption has far outpaced production across the Western alliance.
There is a genuine diversification story here too. Israel’s own defense forces now account for only a little over a quarter of Elbit’s revenue. The rest comes from a broad set of NATO and allied customers, which reduces the single-country concentration risk that often hangs over Israeli defense names.
It is worth zooming out on the macro backdrop, because the promo is really selling a decade-long theme as much as it is selling one stock. NATO members have spent the past few years moving toward the alliance’s 2% of GDP defense-spending guideline, and several European governments have pushed commitments well past it in the wake of the Ukraine war. That spending has to flow somewhere, and it flows disproportionately toward proven, combat-tested platforms rather than unproven development programs. Elbit sits in the useful middle: it supplies both the high-profile missile-defense systems that make headlines and the unglamorous artillery shells and munitions that get consumed faster than anyone planned. The “combat-proven” framing is not marketing spin in this case; it is a real procurement advantage, because militaries under pressure to rebuild quickly prefer systems that have already worked under fire. That same logic is why Iron Dome and David’s Sling matter to this story: they are the proof of concept.
The financial trajectory tells the re-rating story in numbers. In early 2024, analysts expected Elbit to earn roughly $7 per share by 2026, and the stock traded around $200. Today analysts expect about $17 per share for 2026, with roughly $18 the following year and about 10% revenue growth thereafter. The stock is near $800. In other words, earnings estimates roughly doubled and a half while the stock roughly quadrupled. That is what happens when a company goes from “steady defense supplier” to “combat-proven arsenal of the rearmament cycle” in the market’s mind.
The Real Pick
| Ticker | Company | Current Price | Tease Price | % Since First Tease |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ESLT | Elbit Systems Ltd | $783.62 | ~$200 (early 2024) | +200%+ |
Market cap: roughly $36.7 billion. Current price is the August 17, 2026 close.
Does the Math Check Out?
The “$30 billion backlog” claim is real, but context matters. When Elbit was an $18 billion company a year ago, a $30 billion backlog sounded enormous. Today the company’s market cap is above $35 billion, so the backlog is less than one times the equity value. That does not make it unimpressive, but it changes the optics the promo is trying to create.
The bigger math question is valuation. At roughly $783 per share and next-year earnings estimates near $18, Elbit trades at about 44 times forward earnings. For the “the run is still early” argument to work, analysts have to be undercooking their forecasts. The consensus currently expects growth to decelerate to about 10% after the current surge. Paying 44 times earnings for 10% growth is a demanding setup, even for a company with a genuinely strong backlog and a proven product line.
It also helps to unpack the “121% since our recommendation” claim, because that number does a lot of work in the pitch. If a subscriber bought Elbit when Jovine first recommended it, the position is up about 121%, and that is a legitimate, impressive result. But a reader seeing the ad today is being offered the same stock at roughly $783, after the 121% has already happened. The claim is a track-record argument, not an entry-point argument. To earn a similar return from here, Elbit would need to roughly double again, which at 44 times forward earnings would require either a sustained re-rating, an earnings beat far beyond the current 10% growth consensus, or some combination of both. It is possible, but it is a materially harder setup than the one Jovine’s earlier readers faced at $200.
That said, the past two years have shown how fallible those analyst estimates can be. In early 2024 the same analysts expected $7 of earnings; the world changed, and the actual trajectory roughly doubled and a half. If global rearmament keeps accelerating and munitions replenishment becomes a multi-year structural theme, the “undercooked estimates” scenario is not far-fetched. But that is a bet on the macro cycle continuing to surprise to the upside, not a free lunch.
What They Got Right
- The backlog claim is accurate. Elbit’s order backlog has genuinely topped $30 billion for the first time.
- The “combat-proven” framing is factually sound. Iron Dome and David’s Sling have been operationally tested in ways most defense marketing could only dream of.
- The rearmament thesis is well-timed. Western stockpile depletion from the Ukraine war is real, and artillery and munitions are exactly the categories Elbit’s land segment serves.
- Jovine’s track record on this specific name is strong. Anyone who bought when he first pitched Elbit in early 2024 has more than doubled their money.
- The diversification point is underrated. With only about a quarter of revenue from Israel’s own forces, Elbit is less of a single-country bet than many assume.
What They Got Wrong
- The “up 121%” figure is measured from Jovine’s own recommendation date and is not an entry price available to a reader seeing the ad today. New buyers are not getting 121% of anything on day one.
- The promo leans on the “$30 billion backlog” without noting it sits against a $35 billion-plus market cap, which substantially weakens the headline impression.
- Framing this as a fresh “#1 Defense Stock” understates that it is a re-air of a pitch first made in early 2024. The easy, low-valuation entry was two years ago.
- At 44 times forward earnings with growth expected to slow to about 10%, the “run is still early” claim overstates the risk-reward for a new entrant.
The Verdict
The thesis is real and the company is high quality, but this is not the same entry it was in 2024. Investors buying today are paying 44 times forward earnings for a name that has already more than tripled since Jovine’s first tease. The honest take: Elbit is a legitimate way to express a long-term rearmament view, but the easy money has been made, and the current valuation leaves little room for disappointment. It is a “wait for a pullback” rather than a “buy the re-air at any price.”
The defense-and-aerospace theme runs through the rest of this publisher’s output, too. We ran the same skepticism over Jovine’s aerospace aftermarket basket in our “Flight Royalty Three” teardown, where the cheap name in the group turned out to be the one worth the most attention.
This is not financial advice. NewsletterVetter has no position in any stock mentioned. The promo is a paid advertisement for a subscription newsletter, and past performance claims like “up 121% since our recommendation” are not indicative of future results. Defense spending forecasts, backlog figures, and earnings estimates are forward-looking and subject to change. NewsletterVetter is an independent publication and may receive compensation from some services reviewed through affiliate links. Always do your own research.