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Nordex posted net income of €53.6 million in the first quarter, up from €7.9 million a year ago. The stock jumped 12 percent to a 52-week high on April 27. While the Iran war is crushing airlines, chemical producers, and consumer confidence across Europe, the Hamburg-based turbine maker just delivered its best quarter in forty years of existence. The energy crisis is making wind power not just viable, but urgent.
A year ago, Nordex traded at €15.67. On Monday it hit €51.47, a 52-week high on Gettex per Investing.com data. That’s more than 200 percent higher in twelve months, delivered against a backdrop of war, inflation, and an ECB that is about to start raising rates for the first time since 2023. To put this in perspective, the STOXX 600 is up roughly 4 percent over the same period. The S&P 500 is riding AI-driven earnings to multi-year highs, but Intel aside, nothing in the developed world’s equity markets matches Nordex’s YoY trajectory. This isn’t momentum trading. This is a company whose core product just became a matter of national security for half of Europe.
The Numbers That Changed the Conversation
The Q1 2026 results, published on April 27, landed well above expectations. Revenue came in at €1.6 billion, up 10.6 percent year-over-year, per the company’s earnings release. EBITDA hit €130.7 million against a company-provided analyst consensus of €112 million, a 17 percent beat and a 64.3 percent increase from €79.6 million a year earlier. The EBITDA margin expanded to 8.2 percent from 5.5 percent. Projects segment EBIT surged 58.5 percent to €167.4 million with a 12.2 percent margin. Net income of €53.6 million, reported by Renewables Now on April 27, compared to €7.9 million in Q1 2025. That’s not incremental improvement. That’s a phase change.
The operational metrics are equally telling. Nordex produced 1,494 MW of turbines in the quarter, a 23.5 percent increase. It installed 227 turbines across 14 countries, with 86 percent of capacity going into Europe, per the company’s quarterly statement. The order backlog swelled to €17 billion from €13.5 billion a year earlier. Average selling prices per MW ticked higher to €0.91 million, reflecting healthy pricing power rather than volume-driven discounting. CEO José Luis Blanco told analysts the results confirmed the company was “on track to deliver on our guidance for 2026.”
The War Dividend
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. Nordex’s best quarter ever is a direct consequence of the worst energy crisis in Europe since 2022. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent Brent crude above $111 and European gas storage to its lowest level in eight years. Industrial energy costs across the EU remain double their pre-2022 levels. Every utility, every grid operator, every government minister in Europe is looking at the same arithmetic: imported hydrocarbons are unreliable, expensive, and strategically dangerous. Onshore wind is domestic, predictable, and getting cheaper per installed megawatt every year.
The numbers support the thesis. Onshore wind accounted for roughly 90 percent of all installed wind capacity in Europe last year, per Reuters. Nordex, Vestas, and Siemens Energy received approximately two-thirds of all European turbine orders in 2025, according to Mordor Intelligence. Germany alone, which consumes 82 bcm of natural gas annually and just cut its 2026 GDP forecast to 0.5 percent, installed 5,233 MW of new onshore wind last year. Nordex held about 32 percent of that market. The company isn’t just benefiting from the crisis. It’s one of three companies that physically builds the alternative.
What Blanco Said on the Call
The earnings call transcript, published by Investing.com on April 27, is worth reading closely. When Bank of America’s Alexander Jones asked about the Iran war’s impact on costs, Blanco was remarkably candid. The CEO said the situation had “some impact” but that Nordex was able to manage it through contracted pricing and locked logistics. Three-quarters of the company’s 2026 activity is already locked with firm orders. The remaining quarter will depend on competitive pricing at the time of order.
Then came the warning. Blanco said his “biggest concern is security of supply.” If the conflict drags on, the company could start seeing supply chain disruptions that would affect its ability to deliver. Price volatility is one thing. Physical shortages are another. He added that the knock-on inflation effects would “potentially” impact 2027 more than 2026, a rare instance of a CEO flagging next year’s problem in the middle of a beat quarter. That kind of transparency is either confidence or a hedge. Probably both.
The supply chain concern is real. Nordex sources 787 of its 1,172 rotor blades from external suppliers, and the company acknowledged temporary delays at a supplier factory in Türkiye during Q1. Blade production held steady year-over-year, but the dependence on external manufacturing in a region adjacent to the conflict zone is a vulnerability the market hasn’t fully priced. The broader central bank response to the oil shock adds another layer: if the ECB hikes rates aggressively, project financing costs for wind farms rise, which could slow order intake in late 2026 and into 2027.
The Analyst Scramble
The Street moved fast after the print. Deutsche Bank reiterated its Buy rating and raised its price target to €59, per TipRanks on April 28. Citi lifted its target to €48. Jefferies had already raised to €54 earlier in April. But Bank of America went the other direction, downgrading to Neutral from Buy, arguing that much of the upside is now priced in, per Investing.com. The consensus average sits at €44.19, which means the stock is trading roughly 8 percent above where the analysts think it should be. That gap is narrower than Intel’s but the pattern is the same: the market is ahead of the models.
The valuation tells an interesting story. The trailing P/E is 34.9 times, per CNBC, against 2025 full-year earnings of €274 million, themselves a 3,006 percent increase from 2024 (when the company was barely profitable). Revenue in 2025 was €7.55 billion, up 3.5 percent. The stock doesn’t pay a dividend. Net cash stands at €1.5 billion, giving Nordex a financial cushion that most of its competitors lack. Vestas, the closest peer, trades at a similar multiple but with lower margin momentum. Siemens Energy, which also benefits from the energy transition, has a more complex conglomerate structure that dilutes the clean energy narrative.
What the Market Isn’t Pricing
There’s a scenario the bulls haven’t fully considered. If the Strait of Hormuz reopens, if a ceasefire holds, if oil falls back toward $70, the urgency that is driving European wind deployment evaporates overnight. Not the structural case for renewables, which remains intact regardless of the conflict, but the political urgency, the emergency procurement, the accelerated permitting that is currently supercharging order books. Nordex’s €17 billion backlog provides multi-year revenue visibility, but new orders at the margin could slow sharply if the energy crisis de-escalates.
The free cash flow picture also deserves scrutiny. Q1 free cash flow was negative at minus €98.1 million, driven by working capital normalization after year-end 2025. The company has the balance sheet to absorb it, but negative FCF in a beat quarter is a data point that value investors will flag. The semiconductor supercycle has taught investors that structural demand stories can carry negative cash flow quarters for years. Whether wind turbines get the same patience from the market remains to be tested.
Nordex entered 2026 as a €15 stock that nobody outside the European energy sector was watching. It leaves April as a €47 stock with a 52-week high, a €17 billion backlog, and the best margins in the company’s history. The Iran conflict that has paralysed energy markets is the single biggest catalyst for European wind deployment in a decade. The question for the second half of the year is whether Nordex is a war trade or a structural winner. Blanco’s earnings call suggests management is planning for the latter while hedging for the former. At 35 times earnings, the market is paying for structural. If the strait reopens, that premium compresses fast. If it doesn’t, €59 from Deutsche Bank starts looking conservative.
