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Ørsted has announced plans to raise DKr60bn ($9.4bn) selling new shares, blaming the Trump administration’s opposition to offshore wind development for derailing the business model that made the Danish group an industry pioneer.
The world’s largest offshore wind developer said on Monday that it had opted to raise new funds after “recent material developments in the US” scuppered efforts to sell a stake in its Sunrise Wind project off the New York coast.
Ørsted relies on selling stakes in projects to share the financial burden of them and to help fund the rest of its portfolio. The steep downturn in the US industry, where the Trump administration has suspended the issuance of new offshore leases, has damaged the market for stakes in offshore wind projects.
Shares in Ørsted tumbled 18 per cent in early trading in Copenhagen.
Analysts at RBC said that the rights issue would be “taken negatively by the market” and that “most of the rights issue [is] consumed by the additional requirements for Sunrise Wind, a project which is already materially squeezed on returns”.
The company said that the Danish state, the company’s largest shareholder with a 50.1 per cent stake, had agreed to back the rights issue.
Rasmus Errboe, chief executive, said: “Ørsted and our industry are in an extraordinary situation with the adverse market development in the US on top of the past years’ macroeconomic and supply chain challenges.”
Errboe, who replaced the company’s long-standing chief Mads Nipper this year, added that “the rights issue will reinforce our ability to realise the full value potential of our existing portfolio and capture future value-creating opportunities in offshore wind”.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has deepened the company’s challenges in the US, where high interest rates and supply chain disruptions had already threatened its aggressive expansion.
In a sign that the strains facing the company extend beyond the US, Ørsted on Monday also launched a sales process for its European onshore wind business, as it tries to focus on its core work in offshore wind.
It said it was aiming to raise about DKr35bn from divestments in 2025-26.
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