In the first three quarters of this year, the Nordex Group posted a 47 percent increase in sales to approximately $1.4 billion. This growth was underpinned by business in the core EMEA market (Europe plus South Africa), where Nordex generated 91 percent of its sales. Business in the Americas and Asia accounted for six and three percent, respectively, of sales.
This strong operating performance was based on the substantially increased production and installation output. Thus, production rose by 64 percent to 1,002MW, with the volume of new installations climbing by 61 percent to 924MW. With a disproportionately low increase in staff costs, this testifies to the substantial efficiency gains which Nordex has achieved thanks to its reorientation. Together with the execution of more profitable projects, this resulted in a significant improvement in operating profit. The gross profit climbed by some 39 percent to approximately $325 million as of the end of September, accompanied by an increase in earnings before interest and taxes to $41.7 million. Net profit amounted to $7.1 million.
As of September 30, the equity ratio rose slightly to 27.7 percent. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to $186.6 million, with net debt at a still low $72.7 million. Moreover, Nordex achieved a working capital ratio of 11.2 percent, thus remaining within the target range.
New business also remained promising. Firmly financed order intake rose by 85 percent to $1.59 billion. At 79 percent, most of these came from the EMEA region, with the proportion of non-European business widening slightly. Orders from the Americas accounted for 12 percent and those from Asia for 9 percent. All told, the backlog of firm orders amounted to $1.74 billion as of September 30.
“We are very satisfied with our business performance in 2013 and are reaffirming the guidance that we had previously increased in the summer for the current year. As we are even more confident about our order intake, we are now looking for a higher figure of ($1.88 billion — 2.02 billion). At the same time, we confirm our expectation of being able to achieve our medium-term goal in 2015,” says Dr. Jürgen Zeschky, CEO of Nordex SE.
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