Thyssenkrupp Nucera sees profits more than halve, amid ‘challenging situation’ for its green hydrogen business
Source：hydrogeninsight
German electrolyser firm Thyssenkrupp Nucera has reported a net profit of €4.6m for its financial year, which ended in September — less than half the €11.4m it had posted the year before.
Its results were pulled up by its traditional chlor-alkali electrolyser business and financial income, with the manufacturer admitting a “challenging market situation” for its green hydrogen business.
Thyssenkrupp Nucera experienced a 93% collapse in orders to an intake of just €26m for the year, as project developers hesitate to commit to final investment decisions under current economic and regulatory conditions.
The firm is also working its way through its existing flagship orders, with the last electrolyser modules delivered to the 2.2GW Neom project in Saudi Arabia — which had been a big driver for Thyssenkrupp Nucera’s previous recorded electrolyser sales — in September of this year.
Similarly, the German company has delivered the first 200MW of electrolysers to the 740MW Stegra project in Sweden, which accounted for more than €300m in the previous year’s order intake.
As such, Thyssenkrupp Nucera forecasts sales from its green hydrogen business for next year to be between just €150m and €220m, compared to sales this year of €459m.
“Additional orders in the [green hydrogen] segment are not expected to have a significant impact on sales until the following years,” the company noted in its report’s outlook for the coming fiscal year.
Thyssenkrupp Nucera saw earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT, the company’s preferred operating profitability measure) of €2m for the past financial year, but expects this measure to be between €0 and a loss of €30m next year.
The firm’s green hydrogen segment saw an EBIT of minus-€56m for the past year, but Thyssenkrupp Nucera anticipates this figure to sit between minus-€55m and minus-€80m next year.
“Despite challenging conditions, Thyssenkrupp Nucera performed solidly in the past fiscal year and consistently pursued its strategy for implementing the development roadmap,” said the company’s CEO Werner Ponikwar.
“We are investing in a targeted and sustainable manner in our innovative solutions for the hydrogen and chlor-alkali markets while at the same time improving our cost structure. This puts us in an excellent position to immediately take advantage of opportunities arising from the increasing momentum in the green hydrogen market.”
This year, Thyssenkrupp Nucera had acquired key technology assets for pressurised alkaline electrolysers from insolvent rival Green Hydrogen Systems, which it plans to use as the basis to expand its portfolio to offer this solution.
Thyssenkrupp Nucera is also working on high-temperature solid oxide electrolysers, although commercial sales for these have not yet begun.