Vattenfall's wind earnings grow on new capacity, higher prices

Offshore wind farm. Author: Vattenfall. License: Creative Commons, Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic

Vattenfall AB’s wind segment delivered strong earnings performance in the first nine months of 2021 due to new capacity and higher electricity prices, somewhat offset by lower wind speeds, the Swedish utility said in its interim report on Thursday.

The unit develops, builds and operates the company’s wind farms, as well as large-scale and decentralised solar power and batteries.

Underlying operating profit (EBIT) increased by 41% year-over-year in the January-September period and by 339% in the third quarter, while net sales were up 11% and 34%, respectively.

Electricity generation declined 4% in the nine-month period, but increased 9% in the third quarter, when lower wind speeds were outbalanced by capacity additions from the Princess Ariane onshore wind farm in the Netherlands and the 605-MW Kriegers Flak offshore wind farm in Denmark, which was inaugurated in September.

Key figures for the wind business area:

in SEK million unless noted otherwise	9-mo 2021	9-mo 2020	Q3 2021	Q3 2020
Net sales	10,615	9,606	3,559	2,656
External net sales	3,641	4,855	1,022	1,303
Underlying EBITDA	7,332	6,443	2,566	1,663
Underlying EBIT	3,188	2,255	1,110	253
Electricity generation - wind power TWh	7.5	7.8	2.3	2.1
Sales of electricity, TWh	0.7	0.9	0.2	0.2

Overall the company said its operating activities are showing stable performance in a turbulent market with exceptional fluctuations in electricity and gas prices in several European markets.

Nine-month profit jumped to SEK 41.9 billion (USD 4.87bn/EUR 4.2bn) from SEK 2 billion a year ago, boosted by significant one-off effects, while underlying operating profit increased to SEK 22.1 billion from SEK 17.8 billion.

Total electricity generation declined by 1.6 TWh to 80.6 TWh.

(SEK 1 = USD 0.116/EUR 0.100)

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