Vestas delivers terrible 2011 result

Three members of wind turbine maker’s board, including chairman, announce their departure after declaring billion kroner loss

Wind turbine maker Vestas suffered pretax losses of 1.1billion kroner in 2011, far higher than the 450 million kroner loss which was expected.

The numbers were announced on Wednesday and were followed by the news that chairman Bent Erik Carlsen, his deputy chairman, and the company’s head of finance will leave after the annual general meeting in March.

The company had already lowered its earnings forecast, but after the loss turned out to be almost triple what was expected, the company has now decided not to publish its expected number of orders for coming years.

“After input from several of the company’s large shareholders, we have decided to reduce the number of parameters that Vestas publishes information about in 2012,” the company said in a press release.

Vestas share prices tumbled almost 15 percent overnight, wiping about two billion kroner off the companyÂ’s value.

Increased production costs and the postponement of major orders have been voiced as the major causes of the losses which stood in stark contrast to 2010Â’s pretax profit of 118 million kroner.

To tackle spiraling costs the company announced this January that they would be firing 2,335 employees of which 1,300 would be in Denmark.

Vestas CEO, Ditlev Engel, was spared in the management cull, but remains cautious about what 2012 will bring.

“2012 will be a challenging year, not least because we have to tackle two things at once,” Engel told the Ritzau news bureau. “The first is an increase in activity from 2011. At the same time we have to be prepared for 2012 being a challenging year, not least because of what is happening in the US.”

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