Wärtsilä Sees 2022 Earnings Drop With 'Decreased Scrubber Volumes'

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Tuesday January 31, 2023

Engineering company Wärtsilä saw a drop in earnings both in the fourth quarter and in 2022 as a whole, with a fall in scrubber sales contributing to the decline.

The company reported a net loss of EUR 26 million in 2022, down from a profit of EUR 339 million the previous year, it said in an earnings release on Tuesday. In Q4 the company saw an EUR 37 million profit, down from EUR 144 million a year earlier.

These figures were dragged down by an EUR 200 million write-down related to the company's exit from Russia.

The company's marine systems unit saw a 22% decline in its order intake last year to EUR 654 million.

This was partly related to 'decreased scrubber volumes', the company said in the statement.

Interest in scrubbers had waned somewhat after the crude price collapse in 2020 delivered a much narrower price spread between VLSFO and HSFO, a key measure of the emissions-cleaning systems' profitability.

But interest may start to rise again this year after the consequences of the war in Ukraine drove a widening of the price spread. The average difference between Ship & Bunker's G20-VLSFO and G20-HSFO indices of prices at 20 leading bunkering ports reached $240/mt last year, up from $112/mt in 2021 and $92/mt in 2020.

The spread stood at $229/mt on Monday.

"[The widening price spread] has improved the business case for scrubbers, although the demand for scrubber systems has remained focused mainly on newbuilds," the company said in the earnings release.

Ship & Bunker News Team
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