The energy company Ørsted fell by 25.7 percent at the close of trading on Wednesday after billion-dollar writedowns in the US. According to the business media MarketWire, this is the company's worst trading day ever.
The sharp drop comes after the company, whose largest owner is the Danish state, announced that it is writing down its American activities by 28.4 billion kroner.
The reason is that rising prices and high interest rates have made it much more expensive to build the wind farms Ocean Wind 1 and 2 than Ørsted expected when the contracts were signed. Therefore, it was decided to abandon the construction of the two farms. The writedowns mean that Ørsted has lost 19.9 billion kroner. in the first nine months of the year.
The company has had sales of 64.9 billion kroner. this year so far, which corresponds to a decline of 33 percent compared to the same period last year. And this despite the fact that the company's offshore wind farms have almost doubled their operating profit and earned DKK 13 billion.
Analyst: Impairment losses could have an impact on Ørsted's wind ambitions
Jacob Pedersen, head of equity research at Sydbank, earlier on Wednesday called the impairment loss, which was presented at the same time as the company's interim report, "gigantic". He pointed out that this could have an impact on Ørsted's ambitions for the future.
- This could mean that ambitions to build wind turbines in the future are curtailed because the financial resources cannot support that growth, he said.
Mads Nipper, CEO and President of Ørsted, said earlier Wednesday in a press release that we are "incredibly disappointed" not to proceed with the two offshore wind farms.
Ørsted develops, constructs and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, bioenergy, solar and energy storage plants, as well as plants for the production of renewable hydrogen and green fuels.
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