By Christoph Steitz
FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Siemens Energy shares fell for a second consecutive session on Monday, hit by a raft of target price cuts and rating downgrades in the wake of deeper-than-expected problems at its wind turbine division that emerged last week.
It share price was down 3.3% at 1252 GMT, at the bottom of Germany’s blue-chip DAX index, taking the group’s loss in market valuation to 7.4 billion euros ($8.1 billion) since it scrapped its profit outlook late on Thursday.
“We are now waiting for the full results of the analysis before drawing any further conclusions,” a spokesperson for the company said in response to a query from Reuters.
Citi cut the company to “neutral” from “buy” while Jefferies downgraded to “hold” from “buy”, following the group’s withdrawal of its 2023 profit guidance and the more than 1 billion euros it says it will cost to fix the issues.
“After the warning, while the stock is now over one-third cheaper, investor confidence in the turnaround has been severely impacted, not just because of difficult-to-quantify risks around fixing past deliveries, but also because of the lack of visibility at (Siemens Gamesa),” Citi analysts wrote.
They said depending on whether reliability issues could be contained or not, a price per share of anywhere between 11 and 34 euros was possible, adding it was key what Siemens Energy would say during third-quarter results on Aug. 7.
Its shares on Monday traded around 14 euros apiece, the lowest level in seven and a half months.
Siemens Energy was forced to publish a brief ad hoc statement late on Thursday based on limited information, withdrawing its profit outlook after it became apparent that the issues would incur costs of more than 1 billion euros.
($1 = 0.9162 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz; editing by Matthias Williams and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
