News Parkiet

Steel industry

Karkosik buys Batory steel plant

Polish businessman Roman Karkosik bought the assets of Huta Batory from the company?s bankruptcy administrator yesterday, snatching the steel plant from Złomrex steel and scrap metal trading group, which made its own bid for the company. Best known as the owner of Boryszew antifreeze and chemicals manufacturing group, Karkosik outbid Złomrex by offering 107 million zloty, or $35 million for Huta Batory. Częstochowa-based Złomrex came in second offering 105 million zloty.

The bidding for Huta Batory, a major producer of steel cast products, started at 65 million zloty.

Złomrex, which is in the middle of its 260 to 360 million zloty IPO, planned to use part of the proceeds from an offering to buy Huta Batory.

Earlier this year Mr. Karkosik became the main shareholder of Impexmetal, a 2.7-billion zloty metals trading group previously controlled by the government.

Media

Broker FM gets two ?buy? ratings

Two major brokerage houses issued new research reports that give a ?buy? rating to Broker FM, one of Poland?s two radio stocks. One analyst, BDM PKO BP, estimates that shares of Broker FM are worth 94.6 zloty. The other, Millennium DM expects the stock to climb to as much as 97.5 zloty. Shares of Broker FM, which owns Poland?s no. 1 commercial radio station RMF FM, closed at 80.2 zloty yesterday, gaining less than 1 percent.

BDM PKO BP is the market-maker for Broker FM.

Both valuations are based on a combination of DCF estimates and Broker FM?s value compared to selected international radio stations traded on other exchanges.

Broker FM went public in July 2004. Kraków-based company sold 1.25 million existing shares at 83 zloty each.

Information Technology

ComputerLand moves east

Poland?s no. 2 information technology company ComputerLand SA signed a partnership agreement with India?s financial services IT provider i-flex solutions yesterday, in yet another attempt to expand eastward. Polish firm, already the leading IT provider for banking and financial services industry at home, said it will become a ?privileged partner? of Bangalore-based i-flex, selling its flagship product, Flexcube backoffice systems, to banks in Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic States. The two firms have already worked together to implement IT systems at Kredyt Bank and PKO BP.

The Russian market is over twice the size of Poland, i-flex said. It estimates that up to 300 out of the more than 2000 banks there may be willing to buy i-flex products.

ComputerLand, whose shares are part of WIG20 blue-chip index, said it expects i-flex contracts to contribute to its plans to double this year?s earnings from last year?s 14 million zloty. It will start to implement i-flex software at the International Bank of Moscow by the middle of this year, company officials said.

Despite the news of i-flex partnership, ComputerLand lost 2.2 percent yesterday. Based on Thursday?s closing price of 110 zloty, the company is worth around 750 million zloty, or 245 million dollars.

Metals

Ferrum to announce stock offering

Steel pipe manufacturer Huta Ferrum says it will announce detailed plans to sell up to 50 million zloty worth of new stock in an offering set to begin early next month. Its shareholders have already approved plans to sell between 1.9 and 5 million new shares. If the offering is successful, new shareholders will own between 15 and 32.5 percent of the company. Proceeds are to be used to increase Huta Ferrum?s working capital.

Katowice, Upper Silesia-based Huta Ferrum reported its first profits last year after five years of consecutive losses. It posted earnings of 11.3 million zloty on sales that were almost double the figure for 2003 when its revenues totaled 120 million zloty.

Chief executive Jan Waszczak told PARKIET his company expects to maintain strong growt