Vestas completes turnround as turbine maker pays dividend

Vestas will pay its first dividend in a dozen years after the Danish wind turbine maker posted its first full-year profit since 2010.

The world's largest maker of windmills confirmed its strong rebound from its brush with financial collapse in recent years as it said it would pay out DKr3.90 (€0.52) per share to shareholders, the first dividend since 2003.

After recording more than €1bn in net losses in the past three years, Vestas said it had made a net profit of €392m, slightly ahead of analysts' expectations. But it disappointed investors with a weak outlook for the current year, sending shares down 5 per cent in early trading on Wednesday.

The Danish company became the poster child for the rise and fall of the wind turbine industry as a combination of falling government subsidies, management missteps and fierce Chinese competition.

But after cutting a third of its workforce and focusing relentlessly on cash flow under new chief executive, Anders Runevad, Vestas executed a turnround helped by buoyant sales in the US and the renewal of its subsidy regime.

"We have a strong net cash position, we have strong earnings, we have confidence in the business model, we have generated solid cash flow now two years in a row," Mr Runevad told the Financial Times.

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"We are early in the year. This is our best estimate at this point of time. It is a minimum guidance," said Mr Runevad. He added that last year had been particularly strong with an order intake up by 10 per cent. "We expect 2015 to be a stable market, not of course the type of percentage we saw last year," he said.

Vestas is pushing into offshore turbines, the big growth area for the industry, through a joint venture with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries while the Danish group is also trying to boost its higher-margin service business. Mr Runevad said another focus was to make turbines more energy efficient, helping boost their share of the energy market.

Shares in Vestas, which have risen 39 per cent in the past year, were down 5 per cent at DKr273 in early trading on Wednesday. The dividend proposal amounts to 30 per cent of net profits for last year, Vestas said.

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