Nordex SE

Overview

Nordex SE is one of Europe's largest onshore wind turbine manufacturers, headquartered in Hamburg. Founded in 1985 in Norderstedt, it grew through organic expansion and a transformative 2016 merger with Acciona Windpower into a global onshore OEM with installations across more than 40 countries and a workforce above 11,100. Nordex is a pure-play onshore manufacturer and does not compete offshore, which separates it from Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, and GE Vernova and gives it a tighter operational focus.

The 2016 acquisition of Acciona Windpower was the defining event in its modern history. Acciona, the Spanish infrastructure and energy conglomerate, contributed a well-regarded turbine platform, significant manufacturing capacity in Spain and India, and a strong position in Latin America, particularly Brazil. In exchange Acciona became Nordex's largest shareholder and remains so, holding approximately 47%. That structure gives Nordex strategic stability and a built-in customer relationship, since Acciona Energía continues to buy Nordex turbines for its own wind development.

The primary product family is the Delta4000 series, covering turbines from 4 to more than 7 MW with rotor diameters from 133 to 175 meters. The platform is designed to optimize annual energy production across a wide range of wind conditions, from high-wind European coastal sites to low-wind interior markets. Europe remains the core market, and the company says it led European onshore order intake for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, while Canada and a reopened U.S. manufacturing base build out its North American position.

Business segments

Financial performance

Nordex reported FY2025 revenue of €7.55 billion, up 3.5% from €7.3 billion. EBITDA more than doubled to €631 million at an 8.4% margin, from €296 million and 4.1% the year before, and net income jumped to €274 million from €8.8 million. Free cash flow of €863 million left a net cash position of €1.62 billion at year-end. The guidance path tells the story: management entered 2025 guiding to a 5% to 7% EBITDA margin, raised the range to 7.5% to 8.5% in October after a strong third quarter, and still finished above it. The 8.4% result cleared a standing mid-term target of 8% years ahead of plan, and with full-year results in February 2026 management raised that target to 10% to 12%.

Demand kept pace with profitability. Order intake reached a record 10.2 GW, worth €9.3 billion, in 2025, up 22.5%, lifting the combined backlog to €16.1 billion at year-end and to a record €17.0 billion by the end of Q1 2026, split €10.5 billion projects and €6.5 billion service. The first quarter of 2026 continued the margin trend: revenue of €1.59 billion rose 10.6%, the EBITDA margin reached 8.2% against 5.5% a year earlier, and net income came in at €53.6 million. Order intake dipped roughly 14% to 1.9 GW in the quarter, though pricing held. For full-year 2026, management guides to sales of €8.2 billion to €9.0 billion, an EBITDA margin of 8% to 11%, and capital expenditure of roughly €200 million.

The balance sheet turnaround produced the company's first shareholder return policy: alongside FY2025 results, Nordex committed to distributing a minimum of €50 million a year via dividends or buybacks starting in 2027, the delay a function of German accounting rules under which distributable profits only arise in 2026. The stock repriced accordingly, reaching an all-time high of €51.70 on April 27, 2026 and trading near €45.50 in early July 2026, a market capitalization of roughly €10.8 billion and a gain of about 165% over the trailing twelve months.

Strategy & outlook

The strategy is deliberately narrow: lead onshore wind manufacturing in Europe and expand selectively in the Americas. Nordex has pulled back from Southeast Asia and other dispersed markets where it lacked scale, concentrating on Europe, where it supplied approximately 32% of new German onshore installations by MW in 2025, the highest share of any single OEM and its second consecutive year as German market leader by grid-registry data. In North America, the West Branch, Iowa facility restarted nacelle production in mid-2025, adds the N169/5.X in 2026, and is planned to ramp beyond 2.5 GW a year. Orders are following the capacity: Alliant Energy signed for up to 190 turbines, up to 1,060 MW, in December 2025 for Midwest projects installing in 2028 and 2029, and Nordex booked roughly 800 MW of further U.S. orders in June 2026.

Delta4000 is the platform carrying that strategy. Nordex has not announced a next-generation replacement in the near term, and is instead extending the Delta4000 envelope through incremental rotor and rating increases, such as the U.S.-market N169/5.X and the N175/6.X power mode, rather than a clean-sheet design. That is partly cost discipline and partly a reading of the onshore market: unlike offshore, onshore customers generally do not need or want the largest possible turbine, and the 5 to 7 MW range is a practical ceiling for most onshore permitting and logistics.

Nordex has also made a small strategic investment in Renercycle, a blade recycling company, which signals awareness of the end-of-life problem that grows more pressing as the large cohort of early-2000s turbines reaches decommissioning age. It is early-stage, and the direction is consistent with where EU policy and customer sustainability requirements are heading.

Key considerations

The pure-play onshore focus is both the competitive strength and the primary constraint. Onshore wind is a mature, cost-competitive technology with shorter project cycles and lower capital intensity than offshore, which makes the business more predictable than peers carrying offshore exposure. The German pipeline feeding its core market has strengthened considerably: regulators approved a record 20.8 GW of onshore capacity in 2025, up 48% on the prior record, with permitting times down roughly 28%. The cyclical question is whether European auction volumes and pricing discipline both hold long enough to deliver the 10% to 12% margin target, and the roughly 14% dip in Q1 2026 order intake is a reminder that record demand years do not automatically repeat.

The Acciona relationship is a structural feature worth understanding. The 47% stake creates alignment and a degree of dependency: Acciona Energía is both a major customer and the controlling shareholder, which creates potential conflicts around pricing and contract terms. Nordex's ability to hold arms-length commercial relationships with independent developers is the relevant test, one the market has generally accepted and which warrants ongoing scrutiny.

On competition, Nordex faces Chinese OEM expansion primarily in emerging markets rather than its European core. German and broader EU procurement remains largely closed to Chinese turbines for political reasons, which provides near-term insulation that may not persist. The U.S. is the harder policy read: the July 2025 tax law phases out wind tax credits for projects beginning construction after mid-2026, and the administration has halted or slowed federal permitting for wind. Nordex has kept booking U.S. orders regardless, and its Iowa base helps on domestic content, and the post-credit depth of U.S. onshore demand is an open question.

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