Vestas Wind Systems: Don tilts at windmills
It’s been an interesting decade so far for Europe’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, with its share price going on a mighty roar to hit record highs in January 2021, then giving all the gains back as it faced rising costs and the Return of Trump to bottom out in April 2025. But the good times have started to roll again.
The share has now done 150% off its lows, and the company has announced an absolute belter of a second quarter.
Despite all of Donald Trump’s bluster that he intends “not to let any windmill be built,” Vestas delivered 1.1GW’s worth to the US in the second quarter as developers rushed to take advantage of Joe Biden’s green energy tax credits that required wind projects to start construction by July 4 to qualify. Demand for electricity is surging ahead in the US, driven by big tech’s endlessly voracious data centres, and according to Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen, they’ll take “more of everything”, wherever it comes from.
Vestas announced that new orders for the second quarter came in at 3.35GW’s worth, and its total turbine order backlog was at a healthy 32.5GW, worth about €36bn.
European markets have been backing the sector in a bid to reduce their vulnerability to fossil fuel price rises caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but their investment is nothing like the scale achieved by the Chinese, who installed around three times more wind power than the rest of the world combined last year, at prices 30%-40% cheaper than the Europeans.
Jaguar Land Rover: Betting big on the US
After posting a loss of £244m in the year to March, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) did manage to sneak back into the black with profits after tax of £66m in the quarter to end-June, but sales volumes were down 9% overall and 25% in China.
JLR is by no means the only European automaker to be mauled by the seemingly unstoppable charge of the Chinese manufacturers, and it appears to be raising the white flag in the region and pivoting to concentrate on the US market.
After four years with no new product launches, much depends on the five EV models it is planning to launch in the next 18 months, including the Range Rover Electric that is expected later this year, and an all-new Jaguar called the Type 01 that will lead the brand to an all-electric future.
The Jaguar brand has struggled to find much of a raison d’être in recent decades, struggling along on distant memories of the glory days of the E Type, so let’s hope the Type 01 harks back to the time when Jaguar had something fresh and exciting to offer the market.
JLR’s CEO PB Balaji insists that the launch of the EV range will in no way mean that Land Rover is phasing out pure petrol models, particularly for the US and Middle East markets. He believes that the US offers the biggest growth opportunities for a premium brand, and he doesn’t rule out a move to start manufacturing in the US, particularly as he predicts that “the US business from a value perspective will be as big as JLR today.”