News Parkiet

Petrochemicals

Grupa Lotos to buy Petrobaltic

and southern refineries

Gdańsk-based Grupa Lotos oil refinery will pay just 10 zloty or less for each of the three smaller, cash-strapped oil producers from southern Poland, sources close to the situation told PARKIET yesterday.

It will pay more for Petrobaltic, an offshore oil exploration company that is being sold by the government before Grupa Lotos? IPO scheduled later this year.

Equity market

Zelmer announces IPO price range

Zelmer SA, a home appliance manufacturers that controls a sizable chunk of the market for vacuum cleaners and other smaller home appliances, priced its IPO at between 11.9 and 13.2 zloty, with a 2 percent discount to retail investors. Polish government plans to sell 12.9 million shares of Zelmer in this year?s first privatization IPO.

Utilities

Wrocław to decide on MPEC sale ?within days?

Local authorities in the southern Polish city of Wrocław say they will announce their final decision on the sale of 57 percent stake in MPEC, a district heating utility listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in ?a few days?. Wrocław?s stake in MPEC has market value of approximately 300 million zloty ($96.7 million).

EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg, the other major shareholder of MPEC, said earlier it may buy add to its 33 percent stake.

Automotive industry

7bulls.com cuts debt

7bulls.com, a publicly traded Warsaw delivery truck dealer says it has no more outstanding debt with Iveco after its main supplier agreed to forgive the company over 1.4 million zloty. It now plans to sell 5% stake in PTR, a small reinsurer, using the proceeds to pay some of its other creditors.

7bulls.com, which tried to reinvent itself as a Linux software provider during the Internet mania five years ago, posted stronger fourth quarter sales, vice CEO Jacek Łuczak told PARKIET without providing specific figures. The company reported a profit of 900.000 zloty on 67 percent increase in sales for the third quarter of 2004.

Food processing

Polmos Białystok to file for IPO this month

Polmos Białystok vodka maker plans to file for IPO as early as this month, senior official at the Privatization Ministry said on Thursday. The government said it would sell 93 percent of Polmos, including a majority stake offered to trade buyer.

Potential bidders for 51 percent stake in Polmos include France?s Belvedere, Miami-based Central European Distribution Corporation and Polish businessman Janusz Palikot, who already owns competing Polmos Lublin.

State-owned company reported preliminary profits of some 60 million zloty ($19.3 million) last year. With annual sales of 1.18 billion zloty, Polmos Białystok has 22 percent market share.

Retailing

LPP?s sales could top 1 billion zloty next year

Sales at top Polish casual clothing retailer LPP S.A. could grow to one billion zloty for the first time ever next year, company officials said at a news conference yesterday. Based in Gdańsk in northern Poland, LPP reported preliminary earnings of 41 million zloty on sales of PLN 544 million for 2004. LPP also provided earnings guidance for this year. It said it expects profits of 60 million zloty on revenues of PLN 750 million.

LPP?s ?Reserved? brand continues to generate most of group sales, the company said. It has more than 100 sales outlets in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Shares of LPP rose 6.7 percent closing at 567 zloty on yesterday?s earnings news.

The stock first begun trading on the WSE five years ago at 48.4 zloty.

Banking

Bank Austria sees another strong year in 2005

Bank Austria Creditanstalt is expecting another bumper year in 2005 thanks to expansion in Eastern Europe and a cost-cutting program at home, senior board member told PARKIET earlier this week. ?It was a good year for our operationShe declined to say if the company met its annual target of 800 million euros in earnings before taxes citing securities regulations.

Bank Austria reported nine-month after-tax earnings of 434 million euros while its interest income rose 11 percent to 1.8 billion euros.

Bank Austria has operations in eleven countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including Serbia and Bulgaria, where it bought local banks last year.

Its shares rose more than 125 percent since their dual-listing in Warsaw in late 2003, months after its IPO in Vienna.