Orsted recorded operating profit of Dkr3.6bn (€495m) for the second quarter, up 18% on the Dkr3.1bn on the same period in 2018.
The Danish offshore wind developer said the increase was driven by a 29% jump in earnings from offshore wind farms in operation, mainly due to the ramp up of its Borkum Riffgrund 2, Walney 3 and Hornsea 1 wind farms.
The inclusion of its onshore wind business in the US and strong margins in its gas portfolio also contributed.
The result came despite a 12% dip in revenue for the quarter to Dkr16.4bn. This mirrored a fall in revenue for the first half of the year to Dkr33.7bn, down from Dkr38.4bn in the same six months in 2018.
Orsted partly blamed offshore wind generation figures. While output from offshore and onshore wind farms increased 45% to seven terrawatt-hours, the company said it was “not fully satisfied” with its generation in the first half of the year.
A number of outages and curtailments across its portfolio was higher than normal.
This was mainly due to a platform fire at Horns Rev 1 in October 2018, with all 79 turbines not back in operation until June 2019.
Orsted also suffered converter station outages at Borkum Riffgrund 2 and had various array and export cable outages at Race Bank, West of Duddon Sands and Burbo Bank, as well as having to carry out an array cable repair campaign at the London Array.
The issues resulted in a shortfall of about 0.3TWh in the first half of the year, the company said.
Some of these issues are expected to persist in the third quarter of the year, it added.
Operating profit for the first six months was Dkr8.8bn, 2% up year-on-year.
Orsted said its guidance for the full-year remains unchanged with operating profit expected to be in the range of Dkr15.5bn to Dkr16.5bn.
Orsted chief executive Henrik Poulsen said: “Over the past decade, we have undertaken one of the most ambitious green transformations in the global energy industry, guided by our vision of creating a world that runs entirely on green energy and our strong commitment to the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“We are fully on track to meet our target of a 98% reduction of the carbon emission intensity from our energy generation by 2025, making it essentially carbon free.
“We now take the next major step in our decarbonisation strategy and announce a new target that covers the indirect carbon emissions related to our business, which primarily relate to the sale of natural gas and fossil-based power in our customer business, and to the goods and services we source for construction of wind farms.
“By 2032, we want to reduce our indirect emissions by 50%, compared to 2018.”
