An at-sea Glamox reports strong fourth quarter and year

Norwegian LED lighting company Glamox reported a 15.9% growth in revenue to NOK (Norwegian kroner) 1.05 billion ($103.4 million) for the fourth quarter ending Dec. 31, as sales picked up across the board — especially in the firm’s marine sector, which includes the growth market of offshore wind farms.

Glamox also eked out an NOK 6 million ($592,000) profit, compared with an NOK 103 million ($9.9 million) loss in the same quarter of 2021.

The privately held Oslo-based company reports its financial results publicly because it trades bonds on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The reporting entity is Glamox Holding AS, which owns Glamox AS, which in turn operates lighting company Glamox Group.

Almost all of Glamox Holding AS financial numbers come from the lighting operations, where CEO Astrid Simonsen Joos has reaffirmed the company’s commitment to the marine sector. She joined last August, and soon made clear that the offshore wind market will be one of the key growth areas as the company aims not only to light offshore wind vessels, substations, and turbines, but also endeavors to provide wind operators with IoT services.

Simonsen Joos reiterated that late last week, citing a forecast from London-based Clarksons Research.

“The number of offshore wind farms is set to rise to 900 globally by 2030 (about 275 by the end of 2022), of which 230 will be in European waters (about 125 by the end of 2022),” Glamox stated in its fourth-quarter reported. “The Glamox Group is at the forefront of enabling this green transition.”

While the company has long provided offshore vessels with lighting, the move into illumination for substations and turbines is new, Simonsen Joos told LEDs Magazine. A recent win to provide over 15,000 light points to two future wind farms in the North Sea’s Dogger Bank includes all three of those aspects. Glamox even aims to help wind farm operators gather data that will help determine how to better position turbine blades, although it has not yet announced a contract that includes that activity.

Offshore wind farms are part of a growing customer sector in the company’s Marine, Offshore & Wind business (MOW), where sales to navies are increasing as military expenditures increase in the current war climate. Glamox recently secured a contract with the Finnish navy (LEDs hopes to bring you more on this in a separate article).

MOW sales leapt by 45.4% in the quarter compared to a year ago, to NOK 301 million ($29 million).

The larger landlubbing side, known as Professional Building Solutions (PBS) grew by 7.3% to NOK 748 million ($72 million) in the quarter, although order intake slipped slightly because customers pre-ordered in the fourth quarter a year ago owing to components scarcity, Glamox said.

Simonsen Joos told LEDs that she expects strong PBS performance this year, in part because of the current high energy prices (with efficient LED lighting reducing energy consumption) and an upcoming European fluorescent ban in September that will “definitely be a driver for the whole industry.”

The company is also preparing a new initiative around human-centric lighting, she said. It is also hoping for more commercial office IoT business, an area that has been challenging for Glamox and the lighting industry in general.

Glamox attributed its NOK 6 million profit to price rises and cost controls. Price increases ranged from 3% to 8%, and cost controls pertained to reductions in travel and hiring, as well as to increased digitalization of business processes, Simonsen Joos told LEDs.

For the full year on a preliminary reporting basis, sales rose 11.7% to NOK 3.78 billion ($371.9 million), and Glamox lost NOK 10 million (about $962,700), a big improvement over 2021’s loss of NOK 246 million ($23.7 million).

As an outlook, the company stated that “The Glamox Group’s fundamental growth prospects are positive.” Simonsen Joos declined to quantify the expected growth. She noted that supply chain difficulties are easing but are not over.

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MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist ([email protected]).

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