The Nordex Group has presented its figures for the first quarter of 2022. This announcement has been delayed, as announced on 5 May 2022, because the Nordex Group was exposed to a cyber security incident at the end of March.
The Company generated sales of € 933 million (Q1/2021: € 1,251 million). Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) in the first quarter, including costs of € 36.9 million for reconfiguration of production, were minus € 88.9 million (Q1/2021: € 10.4 million). Adjusted for these one-off costs, EBITDA was € minus 52.0 million and the adjusted EBITDA margin was minus 5.6 percent (Q1/2021: 0.8 percent). Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, profitability was impacted by higher raw material and logistics costs.
The Nordex Group installed 197 wind turbines in 12 countries with an aggregate output of 867MW in the first quarter of 2022. In the prior-year quarter, 381 wind turbines with an aggregate output of 1,453MW were installed in 19 countries. In terms of installed capacity (in MW), 82 percent was attributable to Europe, 10 percent to North America and 8 percent to Latin America. As a result of lower installation figures, sales in the Projects segment declined by 28.4 percent to € 819.8 million in the reporting period (Q1/2021: € 1,145.7 million). In contrast, the Service segment continued its positive trend with an increase in sales of 7.1 percent to € 115.7 million (Q1/2021: € 108.0 million).
At 304 turbines, production output in turbine assembly was exactly on the level achieved in the first quarter of the previous year, with the nominal output of 1,300 MW increasing by 15.0 percent to 1,495 MW. The Company produced 270 rotor blades (Q1/2021: 383 units). External suppliers manufactured an additional 702 rotor blades
Order intake (excluding the Service segment) came to € 903 million (Q1/2021: € 911 million), with total nominal output of 1,165 MW (Q1/2021: 1,247 MW). Of this order volume (in MW), 89 percent was attributable to ten countries in Europe and 11 percent to the Latin America reporting region. The largest individual markets were Finland, Germany, Croatia and Peru. At the end of the quarter, the Projects segment reported an order book of € 6.3 billion. This represents a year-on-year increase of around 24 percent (Q1/2021: € 5.1 billion). The order book in the Service segment increased by 7.2 percent, from € 2.8 billion to € 3.0 billion. The total order book for both segments thus came to € 9.3 billion (Q1/2021: € 7.9 billion).
The Company now expects consolidated sales of € 5.2 to 5.7 billion and an operating margin (EBITDA margin) of minus four to zero percent for 2022. This guidance now factors in all the one-off and non-operating costs resulting from the external environment, that currently affects many industries. Some of these one-off expenses namely, direct impacts from the Ukraine war, costs of footprint reconfiguration and costs related to cyber incident should not recur in 2023, thus supporting the expected margin recovery. Some of these other indirect effects from the Ukraine war, supply chain disruptions and lockdowns in China are also included in the current guidance.
