Citi says $11, UBS says $6 on Fluence: the fault is in delayed Houston plants, not Europe
Fluence just booked Europe's marquee storage work in Germany and Poland, but two guidance cuts in six weeks, a forecast $200 million loss and a securities suit have split Wall Street in two.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Poland breaks ground, Wall Street cuts in half
PGE, Poland's state power group, said on October 23 that construction had begun on Gryfino, a 400 megawatt, 800 megawatt-hour battery plant in Nowy Czarnów, with Fluence Energy+1.08% — Fluence Energy, up 1.08 percent today as technology supplier 1. Fluence, the grid-storage integrator that AES and Siemens founded and remain tied to through a tax agreement, has become the listed proxy for Europe's storage boom 2.
Its shares gained 8.6 percent in German trading on October 28, a move the outlet reporting it declines to tie to the ground-breaking 3. The same week, UBS analyst Jon Windham halved his target to $6 from $12, kept Neutral, folded in roughly $190 million of extra costs from delayed contract plants in Houston, and trimmed his fiscal 2027 and 2028 estimates as well 456.
Two guidance cuts in six weeks
On September 16, Fluence cut fiscal 2026 guidance, for the year ended September 30, to about $2.4 billion of revenue from a $3.0 billion midpoint, and to an adjusted EBITDA loss of about $200 million from about $10 million, blaming the ramp at plants run by its Houston contract manufacturer 2.
The first cut came on August 5: a June quarter of $649.8 million in revenue and 5.9 percent adjusted gross margin, down from 15.4 percent, with $400 million of deliveries pushed into fiscal 2027 78. Reported gross margin has since printed 4.9 and 5.1 percent in two of the last three quarters, against 9.9 to 17.2 percent across the six before 9.
Seven quarters above 9.9 percent, then 4.9 and 5.1 in two of the last three
Data
| Gross margin | |
|---|---|
| Q1 2024 | 10.3% |
| Q2 2024 | 17.2% |
| Q3 2024 | 12.8% |
| Q4 2024 | 11.4% |
| Q1 2025 | 9.9% |
| Q2 2025 | 14.8% |
| Q3 2025 | 13.7% |
| Q4 2025 | 4.9% |
| Q1 2026 | 10% |
| Q2 2026 | 5.1% |
Two banks, two prices
Citi cut its target to $11 from $20 in a October 21 note and kept Buy; UBS's $6 is the other pole 834. Shares closed at $6.01 on October 27, 82 percent below the 52-week high of $33.51, with 23.6 percent of the float sold short 108.
Goldman Sachs+1.42% — Goldman Sachs, up 1.42 percent today went Neutral at $9 and Baird Underperform at $3 the day after the September cut, with Goldman's Brian Lee conceding his call to stick with the stock "has been wrong" 10. Susquehanna at $13, Morgan Stanley+1.62% — Morgan Stanley, up 1.62 percent today at $9 and Truist−0.20% — Truist, down 0.20 percent today at $8 have all lowered targets since 11.
Seven banks, seven cuts: Fluence targets now run $3 to $13
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Baird | 3 |
| UBS | 6 |
| Truist | 8 |
| Goldman Sachs | 9 |
| Morgan Stanley | 9 |
| Citi | 11 |
| Susquehanna | 13 |
The orders are signed, the shipping is not
Vattenfall's Brunsbüttel award, 254 megawatts and more than 1,000 megawatt-hours on the site of a retired nuclear plant, is the Swedish utility's largest battery project and nearly doubles its storage fleet; construction starts in 2027, commissioning is set for end-2028 11. Germany added 6.6 gigawatt-hours of storage in 2025 11. Both flagship projects earn their revenue in 2027 and 2028 11.
In between sits a securities class action filed on September 28 in federal court in Manhattan, alleging, untested, that Fluence hid that its new factories could not produce what guidance assumed; the lead-plaintiff deadline is November 30 73. Fluence says its contract manufacturer's fixes have already lifted daily production 2.
What settles it
Fiscal 2026 results land within weeks, on last year's November 25 calendar, and CFO Ahmed Pasha has staked fiscal 2027 on neutral-to-positive operating cash flow without new capital 2. Europe is ordering batteries faster than Houston can ship them, and the margin line in that report will price both theses.
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