Wärtsilä's third-quarter report, published on 27 October, reads like the report of a company whose order book is growing faster than its deliveries. Group order intake was EUR 2,368 million, up 33% on EUR 1,779 million a year earlier, or 41% organically. The order book stood at EUR 9,876 million at the end of September, 22% above the EUR 8,064 million of twelve months before. Net sales rose 7% to EUR 1,493 million, and the comparable operating result was EUR 212 million, 14.2% of sales.
Orders Are Ahead Of The Factory
The report does not give a stand-alone order figure for the Energy business. It says only that Energy orders increased while Marine stayed stable. Two plants named in it show what kind of orders are meant. One is a 282 MW onsite power plant for a data center in the United States, built around 15 Wärtsilä 50SG gas engines. The other is a 300 MW grid balancing plant in Australia with 13 engines of the newer 46TS-SG platform, which Wärtsilä calls Australia's largest-ever reciprocating engine power plant. Both were announced earlier and we reported them at the time (the US data center plant, the Australian plant).
The more telling sentence is about time. Wärtsilä writes that equipment delivery times continued to increase and that the order book will therefore turn into sales further in the future. Engine lead times, it says, keep rising because Energy orders are so strong. The report puts no number of months on it.
What The Chief Executive Points To
In his comments the chief executive says interest from the data center segment stayed strong and the pipeline of opportunities is lively. He expects the momentum in balancing and data centers to last for the next few years. He also leans on the International Energy Agency, which expects electricity demand to grow at least 2.5 times faster than total energy demand between 2026 and 2030, and notes that more wind and solar means more need for flexible capacity that can follow the grid.
Not all of the growth is new plant. Service order intake grew 13% organically, helped by large retrofit orders in Energy and by spare parts. For the next twelve months, to the third quarter of 2027, Wärtsilä expects demand at about the level of the comparison period, after a run of high order quarters. The company has also moved its energy storage business out of the continuing figures, so last year's numbers were restated.
A Long Engine Slot Moves Everything Else
For anyone planning an engine plant, the figures matter less than the calendar behind them. Cooling, exhaust, ventilation and the electrical package are all sized from the data of the engine that is finally chosen, so they cannot be frozen before the engine type and rating are. When the engine slot is far out, that decision is made early, and changing it late costs time. It is worth asking each supplier which date the engine data is fixed for the contract, not only when the engine ships. For more on engine-driven power plants and onsite supply to data centers, see our application pages.
Sources: Wärtsilä, Hellenic Shipping News
