German wind turbine maker Nordex (ETR:NDX1) on Monday reintroduced its 2020 sales forecast, saying it expects its top line to rise by 33% this year regardless of the pandemic.
Moreover, the company set a sales target of about EUR 5 billion (USD 5.9bn) for 2022, with an 8% earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margin for that year.
For 2020, Nordex anticipates sales of some EUR 4.4 billion compared to EUR 3.3 billion a year earlier, and an EBITDA margin of 2%. Capital expenditures are seen at EUR 170 million compared to EUR 172.5 million a year back, and the working capital ratio as a percentage of consolidated sales will be below minus 4% versus a negative 9.1% in the same period of 2019.
The 2020 forecast is based on preliminary figures for the first nine months of the year, which are summarised in the table below. Nordex stressed that due to the continuing pandemic, the underlying assumptions of its guidance are subject to greater uncertainty than under normal circumstances.
| Figures in EUR, except percentages |
9mo 2020 |
9mo 2019 |
| Consolidated sales |
3.2bn |
1.9bn |
| EBITDA |
70.8m |
60.2m |
| EBITDA margin (%) |
2.2 |
3.1 |
| Working capital ratio as a percentage of consolidated sales (%) |
-5.7 |
-5.2 |
The company said that the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has adversely affected its operations in a variety of ways and that the group also registered a negative impact on third-quarter earnings from a major engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) project in Scandinavia. This was offset by the recently closed sale of Nordex’s European project development pipeline to RWE for a total gross value of about EUR 400 million, which had a positive impact on earnings.
Nordex’s order book for the Projects and Service segments at the end of the period amounted to EUR 7.9 billion compared to EUR 8.1 billion a year earlier.
“With the successful sale of the European project development pipeline to RWE, we have strengthened our core business, whilst at the same time, successfully countering the effects of the COVID-19 crisis,” said Jose Luis Blanco, CEO of the Nordex Group.
Nordex is preparing to publish its complete report for the third quarter of 2020 on November 13.
(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.181)
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Author: Ken Teegardin. Licence: Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.
