FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX Broker) - After withdrawn forecasts of Siemens Energy, the shares of the power engineering group crashed on Friday. At the start, they lost more than a third and, at just over 15 euros, cost as little as they last did in November. Trading was interrupted several times due to excessive fluctuations.

Most recently, the shares of the energy technology group lost 31.6 percent to 16 euros. The shares of major shareholder Siemens also came under pressure in the wake of Energy, falling three percent. The leading Dax index continued its weak week by losing almost one percent.

Wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa remains the Dax group's problem child. There have been significantly increased failure rates in wind turbine components, Siemens Energy said. A technical review suggests that fixing the problems with certain onshore platforms will cost significantly more than previously thought, it added. Siemens Energy currently expects additional costs to exceed one billion euros. In January, the cost had been put at 472 million.

This is very bad news, said one trader. If there was no indication of where the costs were going, how should the market assess it, the trader worried. He spoke of "total uncertainty." The new problems at subsidiary Gamesa put a dark cloud in front of the group's revaluation story, Goldman Sachs analyst Ajay Patel wrote in an initial reaction. He views the news as "clearly negative."

If Siemens Energy's share price continues to fall at the current rate at the end of trading, the company will be one of the biggest daily losers ever on the DAX. Measured in terms of the stock's value, the loss is currently around six billion euros.

Until the previous day, the shares had been among the biggest winners in the Dax since the beginning of the year. They started their rally in mid-October and posted a peak gain of 140 percent in the period up to the end of May. Now, however, they are down by around nine percent since the beginning of the year, putting them at the bottom of the Dax.

The wind power subsidiary Gamesa is a well-known problem for Siemens Energy, explained the capital market expert Jürgen Molnar of the broker RoboMarkets. After the complete takeover at the beginning of the year, however, Gamesa has so far proved to be a black hole in the balance sheet. "The future of Siemens Energy depends more and more on whether it gets a grip on the problem child." The bitter part of the current sell-off in Energy shares is that it brings the strong recovery since last October to an abrupt end, the expert said./ajx/tih/jha/

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