EnBW, Germany's third-biggest power supplier, said on Friday that third-quarter profits plunged owing to the shutdown of two of its nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

EnBW said in its third-quarter earnings report that it booked net profit of 37.9 million euros ($51.6 million) in the period from July to September from 346.4 million euros a year earlier.

Revenues, on the other hand, were up 8.8 percent at 4.351 billion euros in the three-month period.

Taking the nine months to September as a whole, EnBW booked a bottom-line loss of 551.9 million euros, compared with a profit of 1.245 billion euros a year earlier.

"Despite our overall stable operating business in the third quarter, changed political conditions in the energy industry reduced earnings in the reporting period as expected," EnBW said.

In March, the government ordered the shutdown of eight of Germany's nuclear power plants in the wake of the nuclear catastrophe in Japan. Two of the plants belonged to EnBW.

"Extraordinary expenses arising from the immediate shutdown of the plants and impairment losses" were the cause of the nine-month net loss, EnBW explained.

Its bigger rivals, EON and RWE, also saw their third-quarter earnings plummet for the same reason.

Looking ahead to the full year, EnBW said the new energy policy in Germany would cause a considerable loss in earnings.

"We continue to work on the assumption that operating profit will fall by between 20-25 percent" for the whole of 2011, it said.