Nordex sees sales and earnings rise in busy 2020 despite fewer orders

The Nordex Group increased its consolidated sales by 63% year on year in the first nine months of 2020 to €3.167 billion, confirming preliminary figures announced on 9 November.

Operating profit (Ebitda) was €70.8 million, up from €60.2 million, although the Ebitda margin was down to 2%, from 3.1% in the same period in 2019.

The growth is mainly attributable to a “significant increase” in installations and production in its projects, the manufacturer said.

Selling its European project development business to RWE boosted earnings, generating gross proceeds of around €400 million, but the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and significant non-recurring items “depressed “earnings.

Nordex’s order intake of 3,759MW, worth about €2.64 billion, for the first nine months of 2020, was down from €3.31 billion in the same period of 2019. Europe accounted for the majority of new orders (64%) followed by Latin America (20%) and North America (16%). 

By the end of September 2020, Nordex had an order backlog of €7.9 billion, split into €5.1 billion for projects and €2.8 billion in its service segment.

The company’s turbine assembly output has increased further, expanding production by 43% to 4,415MW in the first three quarters of 2020 from 3,095MW in the previous year.

Nordex CEO José Luis Blanco said: “By the end of 2020, we will have evolved the Nordex Group into a 6GW company — despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, our supply chain has largely recovered, production is also returning to normal for the most part and our concepts are effective.

“Demand for our product portfolio is very strong, as we have seen from recent orders for several hundred megawatts in the USA alone. Our focus is now on efficiently implementing our company programme and expanding our capacity and supply chain in India for the global market in order to achieve our strategic targets for 2022.”

Installations have risen compared to last year

Nordex Group has issued new guidance for 2020 and now expects to generate consolidated sales of around €4.4 billion and an Ebitda margin of 2%.

Installation boost

Despite the pandemic, Nordex installed more than twice as many turbines in the first nine months of 2020 than in the same period a year earlier: 1,052 wind turbines in 21 countries totalling 3,817MW, compared with 476 machines in 16 countries with a total output of 1,565 MW in 2019. Europe made up around 43% of installations with 57% in and non-European markets.

Nordex’s projects segment generated sales of €2.85 billion, up from €1.66 billion during the reporting period. Sales in the service segment rose 10.9% to €318.3 million as of the end of September, compared with €287.1 million last year.

• Capital expenditure is expected to be €170 million.
• Sales of €3.2 billion in the first nine months of 2020
• Ebitda margin of 2.2 %
• Sale of European project development business to RWE completed
• Production output rises to 4.4GW by end of September
• Order backlog remains strong at €7.9 billion
• Demand for Delta4000 product series continues
• Target set to achieve Ebitda margin of 8% in 2022