Siemens Energy fell 37% on the stock market on Friday after correcting its 2023 profit forecasts due to problems with turbines made by its subsidiary, Siemens Gamesa. The company has admitted that the governance between the two companies after the takeover bid “has not worked” as it should.
The firm had estimated a provisional cost of 1,000 million euros -for now, the figure is an estimate and could be higher- to deal with the failures of this turbine that led to this downward correction. The CEO of Siemens Energy, Christian Bruch, and the CEO of Siemens Gamesa, Jochen Eickholt, appeared at a press conference in which they discussed these problems.
Eickholt pointed out that when the company presents its quarterly results, on August 7, there will be more details on this matter. He did advance that the conclusions are “worse than expected, much worse than we could think, something never seen so far” and that there seems to be a problem of unusual vibrations in the components provided by Gamesa. “It cannot be excluded that there are design problems,” lamented a manager who also described the “quality failures” as “disappointing.”
Meanwhile, Bruch acknowledged that it is “bad news”, although he also wanted to avoid giving more details because the investigation has not finished and it is still unknown what has happened to the wind turbines. Bruch also admitted that there have been communication problems after the takeover bid and acknowledged these governance problems, although he believes that “one must not come to hasty conclusions,” according to Efe. “We did not see it before because the problems have materialized when we have started them,” the CEO of Siemens Energy excused himself.