Vestas maintains its full-year guidance and the focus on cost reductions, low investments and increased capacity utilisation continues.
In the first quarter of 2013, Vestas generated revenue of € 1,096 million, a decrease of 1 per cent to the year-earlier period. EBIT before special items increased by € 96 million to € (108) million. The EBIT margin before special items was (9.9) per cent, an improvement of 8.6 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2012. The free cash flow increased by € 235 million to € (60) million. The intake of firm and unconditional wind turbine orders was 644MW in the first quarter of 2013 and the value of the wind turbine backlog amounted to € 7.0 billion at 31 March 2013. In addition to the wind turbine order backlog, Vestas had service agreements with contractual future revenue of € 5.4 billion at the end of March 2013, and thus the value of the combined backlog of wind turbine orders and service agreements stood at € 12.4 billion which equals the level at the end of 2012. Over the last 12 months, warranty consumption as a percentage of revenue was less than 1.5 per cent.
