How I Made $5000 in the Stock Market

Offshore Wind Is a Mess. A Hedge Fund Sees the Perfect Time to Buy.

Sep 30, 2025 02:30:00 -0400 by Avi Salzman | #Energy

Wind-turbine foundation components are shown at the Revolution Wind construction hub in Rhode Island last year. (Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg)

Key Points

Hedge fund founder Charles Lemonides is making a bet on an industry most investors wouldn’t touch today: offshore wind.

Under President Donald Trump, the outlook for almost every kind of renewable energy is bleak, but offshore wind is in the worst shape of all. Trump calls the industry a scam and wants it stopped in its tracks. His administration has revoked permits for projects, pulled back money for port upgrades, and stopped new leasing and permitting. Officials have even halted projects that were in the middle of construction.

Most investors abandoned the offshore wind industry when Trump was elected, and have stayed away since. But Lemonides, the chief investment officer and founder of the New York hedge fund ValueWorks, sees a buying opportunity.

While several companies have invested in offshore wind projects, including European energy company Equinor and the investment firm BlackRock , the only real pure-play stock in the industry is Orsted , a Danish firm that develops wind projects around the world. Lemonides has been buying Orsted shares, and plans to invest in a rights offering where the company is selling even more equity to existing shareholders.

Orsted stock trading in Denmark is down 64% this year.

“We try to buy growth stocks at value prices,” he said in an interview. “Orsted used to be perceived as a great growth stock, and I think it will be perceived that way again.”

ValueWorks owns about $10 million worth of the stock, a stake Lemonides began amassing in July. His bullish case is based largely on the value of Orsted’s non-U. S. assets. As of last year, the company was working on more than twice as many projects outside the U.S. as it had in the U.S. Even if Lemonides values the U.S. assets at zero, the overseas assets are worth much more than the entire value of the company today, he said.

The headlines about offshore wind may be scary, but “you typically get stuff cheap when that happens,” he said.

Indeed, Orsted’s stock chart shows signs of panic selling at several moments this year. In late August, Orsted shares plunged after the Trump administration suddenly ordered construction to stop on Revolution Wind, an offshore project near Rhode Island that Orsted owns along with a unit of BlackRock. The project was about 80% complete.

Shares also fell hard after Orsted said it was seeking to raise $9.4 billion from a rights offering that will allow shareholders to buy new equity at a steep discount to current prices. Orsted needs the money because it hasn’t been able to find partners to help fund its U.S. projects, particularly Sunrise Wind, a project near New York. The Danish government, which owns a majority of Orsted’s shares, will buy 50.1% of the offering.

Lemonides is buying into the rights offering too, and he expects the new shares to significantly reduce the overall cost basis for ValueWorks’ Orsted shares. While he said ValueWorks has already purchased shares at between 178 Danish kroner ($27.96) and 314 Danish kroner, the Copenhagen-traded stock was trading around 116 kroner on Monday. It traded as low as 102 kroner earlier this month.

Lemonides says that the stock has been trading based on the share dilution expected from the rights offering.

Orsted also has a U.S. over-the-counter stock listing, with the ticker DNNGY. Both the U.S. and Copenhagen listings have been rising in recent days after a judge allowed Revolution Wind to start construction again, and news leaked that Orsted is close to selling a stake in one of its U.K. projects.

Lemonides has profited before by betting on seemingly doomed projects. He bought shares in the natural-gas pipeline company Equitrans Midstream after its pipeline through Appalachia was blocked by courts, and the stock price dropped. A political deal eventually led to the pipeline’s completion, and shares jumped.

“Maybe it took us five years to get a triple on it,” he said. “And maybe we never knew when that turn was going to come, and maybe it wouldn’t have ever. But it did. And usually they do.”

Lemonides knows that offshore wind may not bounce back soon, but he is willing to wait.

“There was a moment when they were loved, and there’ll be a moment when they’re loved again in the future—could be six months, could be six years,” he said. “We don’t mind that much one way or the other.”

Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com