The company said it saw an unexpected decrease in its offshore business in the fourth quarter, primarily due to adverse impacts from hedges and delays at its Hornsea 2 project in the UK and Greater Changhua 1 & 2a project in Taiwan. Orsted confirmed its 2023 forecasts for EBITDA excluding new partnerships of 20 billion-23 billion crowns, compared with 21.1 billion achieved last year and below the 24.2 billion crowns expected by analysts.
Its shares, which have shed more than half of their value since peaking in January 2021 and fell more than 8% on Jan. 20 when preliminary numbers were published, were trading 1.9% higher at 1046 GMT. Nipper added on Wednesday that new U.S. subsidies aimed at the renewable energy sector will be a "turning point" for the nascent green hydrogen industry. Orsted has announced plans to build large-scale production facilities for the fuel in Denmark and the United States.
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law last year, included billions of dollars of green hydrogen tax credits.
"With the right incentive, like for example a $3 tax credit per kilogram of green hydrogen in the Inflation Reduction Act, we think that the next few years will be a turning point for green hydrogen," Nipper said. ($1 = 6.8403 Danish crowns) (Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Terje Solsvik, Louise Heavens and Jan Harvey)
