Vestas Wind Systems

Overview

Vestas Wind Systems A/S is the world's leading wind energy solutions provider. Founded in 1945 in Lem, Denmark, initially as a manufacturer of household appliances and agricultural equipment, Vestas pivoted to wind turbines in the late 1970s and has since manufactured and installed more wind capacity than any company in history. Today, Vestas turbines generate electricity in 88 countries across six continents, and in December 2025 the company became the first to install more than 200 gigawatts of wind capacity worldwide. The company designs, manufactures, installs, and services wind turbines at scale, with an expanding service business that provides long-term revenue visibility and margin stability.

The company is led by CEO Henrik Andersen, who joined Vestas in 2019 and has presided over both a period of severe industry headwinds in 2022 and 2023 and the subsequent recovery. Jakob Wegge-Larsen took over as chief financial officer in 2025. Vestas is listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen under the ticker VWS and is part of the OMX Copenhagen 25 index. It remains a majority-Danish company with deep roots in Jutland, where many of its turbine component factories are located, and an engineering culture that has made it consistently the dominant player in a highly competitive global industry.

Vestas fully consolidated its offshore wind operations in 2021 by acquiring Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' 50% stake in their joint venture MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, renamed Vestas Offshore A/S. The offshore segment has faced particular challenges, as the broader offshore wind industry grappled with cost inflation, supply chain disruption, and project cancellations between 2022 and 2024. Vestas has responded by emphasizing contract discipline, selective project acceptance, and a return to profitability before volume.

Business segments

Financial performance

Vestas reported FY2025 revenue of €18.8 billion, an all-time high and up 9% year-over-year, with growth across onshore, offshore, and service. EBIT before special items rose 44% to €1.07 billion, lifting the EBIT margin before special items to 5.7% from 4.3% in 2024, driven mainly by improved onshore execution. Net profit climbed 58% to €780 million and return on capital employed reached 11.8%. It was a decisive step further from the double-digit losses of 2022, when raw material cost spikes, fixed-price contract losses, and logistics disruptions combined to inflict the worst financial performance in the company's modern history. For 2026, Vestas guides to revenue of €20 to €22 billion and an EBIT margin before special items of 6 to 8%.

The Service segment remains the most stable part of the business. On revenue of €3.77 billion in 2025, roughly a fifth of the group total, Service generated €626 million of EBIT, close to 60% of company EBIT before special items. Its margin of about 17%, though still above turbine manufacturing, sits below prior years: the Service recovery plan launched in 2025 is trimming or renegotiating underpriced long-term contracts, and management has made restoring Service profitability a central priority through 2026. Group adjusted free cash flow was €830 million, and Vestas ended the year with a net cash position of about €1.2 billion, having resumed its dividend and completed two share buybacks.

Order intake in 2025 was 16.3 GW worth €17.4 billion, down 9% by value from 2024 as lower offshore orders offset stronger onshore demand in EMEA and the Americas. Even so, the combined order backlog across Power Solutions and Service reached a record €71.9 billion, giving multi-year production visibility. The average selling price of new turbine orders settled near €1.0 million per megawatt, well above the lows of 2020 and 2021 though modestly below 2024 as project mix shifted, and firmer pricing on the backlog has been a central driver of the margin recovery.

Strategy & outlook

Vestas's medium-term strategy rests on three pillars: restoring and expanding Power Solutions profitability, growing the Service business as a proportion of the total, and exercising disciplined order selection to avoid repeating the fixed-price contract losses of 2021 and 2022. Management has been explicit that volume maximization is no longer the goal, and that earning adequate returns on capital through the cycle is the precondition for all else. This is a cultural and commercial shift for a company that spent a decade competing aggressively on price to win share. In late 2025 Vestas launched an Operating Model Reset, a restructuring that included roughly 900 office job cuts, to simplify the organization and lower costs.

On the product side, the V236-15.0 MW platform is the centerpiece of Vestas's near-term commercial portfolio. With a rotor diameter of 236 meters and 15 megawatts of nameplate capacity, it sets the benchmark for onshore power density and is being qualified for offshore deployment as well. Vestas has also announced development of next-generation platforms targeting 15 to 20+ MW for offshore applications, as the market moves toward ever-larger turbines capable of driving down the levelized cost of offshore electricity.

In its 2025 annual report Vestas revised its 2030 sustainability targets, moving from an earlier carbon-neutral ambition for its own operations to a 50% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions and a 45% cut in scope 3 emissions intensity, both against a 2022 baseline; it reported a 42% reduction in own-operations emissions to date. The company continues to develop processes to recycle epoxy turbine blades at end of life, addressing a persistent criticism of the wind industry. Geographically, Vestas operates local manufacturing in key markets including the United States, where its blade, nacelle, and tower plants are clustered in Colorado, alongside facilities in India and Brazil, both to meet local content requirements and to reduce supply chain exposure.

Key considerations

The offshore wind segment remains a source of execution risk. Offshore projects are larger, longer-duration, and more capital-intensive than onshore, and the broader offshore supply chain, from installation vessels to subsea cables, remains capacity-constrained. U.S. offshore wind in particular stalled after the Trump administration in January 2025 withdrew federal waters from new leasing and paused permits, with further suspensions of projects under construction in December 2025; CEO Henrik Andersen described the U.S. offshore market as having come "to a stop, more or less with immediate effect." Vestas's offshore order backlog of about €10 billion sits largely outside the United States, but the policy reversal removed a growth market and keeps contract terms and project risk allocation under close scrutiny.

Vestas competes in an industry with intense Chinese competition. Goldwind, Envision, and CSSC Haizhuang have achieved dominant positions in China and are beginning to expand internationally, often with state-backed financing and pricing that incumbent Western manufacturers struggle to match. While Chinese turbines remain largely excluded from European and U.S. markets for geopolitical reasons, the long-term competitive dynamic in emerging markets could weigh on Vestas's ability to maintain pricing discipline globally.

On the upside, Vestas's installed base of more than 200 GW is a durable competitive advantage. As turbines age and require maintenance, upgrades, and eventual repowering, Vestas is ideally positioned to capture that work, particularly given its long-term service contract relationships. The energy transition's structural tailwinds are substantial: the International Energy Agency estimates that global wind capacity needs to triple by 2030 to meet net-zero pathways. If policy support, grid investment, and permitting processes cooperate, Vestas sits at the center of a decades-long demand cycle.

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