Markets and finance

Orsted 'in talks' to sell stake in Hornsea 3 to US fund

Sale of stake in £8.5bn ($11.4bn) offshore wind project critical to Orsted, with S&P having warned it could downgrade renewables giant if it failed to do so this year

Orsted routinely sells off stakes in its offshore wind projects to finance building new ones.
Orsted routinely sells off stakes in its offshore wind projects to finance building new ones.Photo: Cosmo Sanderson
Journalist

Orsted is reportedly in talks to sell a 50% stake in its UK Hornsea 3 project, among the world’s largest offshore wind farms, to US investment fund Apollo Global Management.

Orsted is currently discussing a deal to offload half of the 2.9GW project to the New York-based asset manager, the FT reported today, citing people familiar with the matter.

Orsted has been working hard this year to find a buyer for a stake in the £8.5bn ($11.4bn) project in the UK North Sea.

Selling stakes in offshore wind projects – ‘farm downs,’ as the developer calls it – is crucial to Orsted’s business model.

But as Orsted’s chief financial officer Trond Westlie noted in February, it has become a buyer’s market for offshore wind assets amid challenging macroeconomic conditions for the sector.

Orsted was forced into an ongoing DKr60bn (9.4bn) rights issue earlier this year after it was unexpectedly unable to find a buyer for a stake in its 924MW Sunrise Wind project in the US.

This came as Donald Trump waged his war against the US offshore wind sector, making such an asset a highly risky proposition – as was shown when the US President hit another Orsted project, Revolution Wind, with a stop-work order last month.

A sale of Hornsea 3 would therefore come as another boost to the beleaguered offshore wind giant after it won a preliminary injunction allowing it to get back to work on Revolution Wind last week.

Ratings giant S&P had said it could downgrade Orsted if it failed to execute on its planned partial sale of Hornsea 3 by the end of the year. In 2024, Orsted agreed to sell a minority stake in four UK offshore wind farms to asset manager Brookfield for £1.75bn.

Pierre-Alexandre Ramondenc, equity research analyst at AlphaValue, told Recharge the divestment would if completed be consistent with Orsted's plan to raise at least DKr35bn this year and next through asset sales. Those assets include a 50% stake in Hornsea 3, a potential 50%+ stake in its Greater Changhua 2 offshore wind project in Taiwan, and its European onshore wind and solar portfolio.

News of talks "doesn’t carry much weight yet since the terms remain undisclosed," cautioned Ramondenc. "Infrastructure funds have plenty of appetite, and finding a partner is not the hard part — the real question is at what price."

It is also unclear what Orsted has spent on the project so far, although he said the developer estimates the remaining capex at DKr50bn, to be split 50-50 with a prospective partner.

Orsted was also buoyed this week by the news that one of its major shareholders, Danish utility Andel, would participate in its ongoing rights issue. Orsted’s owner, the Danish state, and second largest shareholder, supermajor Equinor, had already said they would participate.
Earlier this month, Apollo entered a formed a long-term partnership with RWE to secure the German utility’s funding of its stake in German transmission system operator (TSO) Amprion.
(Copyright)

Related

Published 26 September 2025, 13:56Updated 26 September 2025, 14:18
OrstedDenmarkApollo Global ManagementUSEurope