Vestas posted net profit of €25m in the first quarter of 2019, down from €102m in the same period last year.
The company said the decline was mainly down to lower average margins in the power solutions business, which was impacted by orders received during price declines in 2017.
Profit was also hit by external factors such as tariffs and raw material prices, which increased costs.
However, improved profitability in the service business partly offset the decline, Vestas said.
Revenue in the period was €1.73bn, up 2% on last year’s €1.69bn, reflecting a positive impact of about €46m from foreign exchange, the company said.
EBITDA was €169m, falling from €225m in the first three months of 2018.
Vestas order backlog was 17.175MW at the end of March 2019, up from 11,899MW at the same time last year.
Firm and unconditional orders amounted to 3004MW in the first quarter of 2019.
The value of the order backlog amounted to €13.3bn, up from €9.3bn last year.
Vestas said it had service agreements with expected contractual future revenue of €15.0bn at the end of March 2019.
Approximately 43,000 turbines equivalent to 88GW were under service at the end of the period, the company said.
The combined backlog of orders and service agreements stood at €28.3bn – an increase of €6.7bn compared with the year-earlier period.
Vestas chief executive Anders Runevad said: “The strong global demand for wind energy continued in the first quarter of 2019 with Vestas growing its order intake with 84% to 3GW and reaching an all-time high order backlog of €28bn.
“While underlying prices remain fairly stable and our service business continues to grow in both revenue and profit, our results were as expected negatively impacted by orders received during the price decline in 2017.
“Furthermore, external factors such as tariffs and raw material prices increased cost as projected in the quarter.
“With activity levels planned to be significantly higher in the second half of 2019, we leverage our market-leading position to ramp up for executing an extraordinarily busy 2019, while introducing new solutions that accelerate the energy transition.”