Vestas says confident can meet 2011 order target

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas announced a flurry of new orders on Friday as it strove to meet its full-year 2011 guidance for an order intake of 7,000-8,000 megawatts of turbines.

By late afternoon Vestas had announced half a dozen orders with a total capacity of 310 MW, taking the company's year-to-date announced orders to 6,245 MW, still below the guided range.

"We are confident ... we stand by our 7,000-8,000 MW target," Head of Investor Relations Peter Kruse told Reuters. "Historically, we receive many unannounced orders in the fourth quarter."

Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world's largest wind turbine maker, has stood by its guidance on orders through a difficult year in which it has had to lower revenue and earnings expectations and abandon its long-term targets for 2015.

The company's policy is to announce only orders worth more than 250 million crowns ($43.43 million), but it always accumulates some smaller unannounced orders that can help close the gap to the target range for order intake.

"The unannounced orders have a tendency to be larger at the end of the year than in the beginning," Kruse said.

On Friday, Vestas said it won a 69 MW turbine order from Sweden, a 24 MW order from France, a 50 MW order in Pakistan, a 54 MW order from the UK and a 62 MW order from Germany and Italy and a 51 MW order from Poland.

On Thursday, Vestas secured a Brazilian order for turbines with capacity of 254 MW. [ID:nL6E7NT3D7]

Vestas' shares closed up 4.9 percent at 62.0 crowns, outperforming a 1.1 percent rise in the Copenhagen bourse's bluechip index of most traded and most valuable stocks.

The stock lost nearly 65 percent of its value in 2011, against an almost 15 percent drop in the index. It peaked at 232.5 crowns in March and hit a year low of 58.05 crowns on Thursday.

Sydbank analyst Jacob Pedersen said Vestas could be very close to its target.

"If they land just under the target, at around 6,800 MW or 6,900 MW, I don't think they will adjust the target downwards before the full-year report," Pedersen said.

Vestas is scheduled to report 2011 results on February 8.

Pedersen added that the company had previously used the term "confident" but failed to deliver.

"Even with this large order, Vestas needs to have quite a lot of orders announced before New Year to reach its full-year order intake target," Nordea said in a note to clients.

"It looks somewhat strained with only two days left of the year," Nordea said.

($1 = 5.7562 Danish crowns)

(Reporting by Mette Fraende and Henriette Jacobsen; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter and David Holmes)