韩国船舶发动机厂商订单高景气延续并向AI数据中心发电场景扩张

Korea's ship engine industry is expanding its territory from sea to land, and is expected to achieve record-high orders this year. With demand for shipbuilding engines remaining solid amid a super cycle, orders are also flooding in from the power generation market, where electricity demand is exploding due to artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and other sources, keeping engine makers running at full capacity.
According to the industry on the 3rd, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (329180) recorded $2.449 billion (about 3.5015 trillion won) in new orders in its engine and machinery division in the first half of this year. This amounts to 92% of the annual order target ($2.675 billion) that HD Hyundai Heavy Industries presented earlier this year. Profits in the engine division have also continued to grow significantly recently. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries' engine business operating profit, which was 171.2 billion won in 2022, grew more than fourfold to 693.3 billion won last year over three years.
Recently, the market has been growing rapidly as the company expands its engine supply destinations to AI data centers and beyond. In April, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries signed a 627.1 billion won contract with AEG, a U.S. energy infrastructure company, to supply 33 units of 20-megawatt (MW) HiMSEN engines for AI data centers.
Medium-speed engines have mainly been installed on ships, but recently they have drawn attention for emergency and distributed power generation to keep data centers running 24 hours without interruption. HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, HD Hyundai's (267250) intermediate shipbuilding holding company, has designated the engine division as a future growth engine related to data centers, and is strategically nurturing it to enable integration from design to manufacturing and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO).
As demand for data centers surges, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is reportedly reviewing the expansion of its medium-speed engine facilities, which currently stand at around 3 gigawatts (GW). In fact, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is running its ship engine production facilities at virtually full capacity, and observers say that capacity expansion will be inevitable if additional data center engine orders materialize in the second half.
HD Hyundai Marine Engine (071970), which manufactures small and medium-sized ship engines, won 619.9 billion won in orders in the first half of this year, surpassing last year's performance (615.9 billion won) in just half a year. In particular, more than 70% of these orders came from overseas, including China. While orders for medium-sized oil tankers increased significantly after the Middle East war, China's engine supply capacity failed to keep pace, so benefits are analyzed to be concentrated on Korea's small and medium-sized engine manufacturers.
Hanwha Engine (082740) is expected to post its highest-ever order performance this year, driven by the strong engine business. Hanwha Engine's order volume in the first half was 1.44 trillion won, more than tripling compared to the same period last year. Despite the slow orders from China during the same period, it has already achieved 81% of last year's order value.
Hanwha Engine has shown steep profit growth after successfully turning a profit in 2023. It recorded a deficit of 29.5 billion won in 2022, but after operating profits of 8.7 billion won in 2023 and 71.5 billion won in 2024, it posted operating profit of 130.1 billion won last year.
Hanwha Engine is also pursuing the AI data center engine market. Hanwha Engine has reportedly begun related work aimed at operating production facilities next year to resume production of four-stroke medium-speed engines, which it had halted a decade ago due to deteriorating profitability. This is interpreted as connected to the group-level future growth strategy of entering the U.S. data center business, led by Hanwha Energy.
STX Engine (077970) recently achieved its first ship engine export and is accelerating its efforts to expand global market share. Last month, STX Engine signed a contract with China's NTS Shipyard to supply ship engines for 14 ultra-large container ships (8 confirmed, 6 options) of the 19,000 TEU class (1 TEU is one 20-foot container). STX Engine will alternately supply two eco-friendly dual-fuel (DF) engines and two diesel engines per ship, proving its eco-friendly competitiveness as well.