News Parkiet

Equity markets

Daytraders complain about volatility swings

Polish futures traders and other retail investors are blaming market-makers and domestic brokers for higher volatility on Warsaw Stock Exchange. During recent months institutional investors engaging in arbitrage between index futures and fair value of underlying stocks have caused sudden, sharp drops or short-lived rallies on the market. Daytraders using trading systems often end up losing money because of sudden swings of popular WIG20 contracts.

Macroeconomics

December industrial output up 13.9 pct

Poland?s industrial output was up sharply in December thanks to higher car sales at the year?s end and one extra business day last month. After adjusting for one-time factors, manufacturing production rose 11.6 percent.

Pulp & paper

DI BRE cuts Świecie to ?reduce?

Dom Inwestycyjny BRE Banku brokerage house has downgraded top Polish paper producer Frantschach Świecie to ?reduce? from ?hold? citing lower 4Q sales. BRE?s equity analyst Michał Marczak says Świecie?s bottom line suffered because of lower paper prices on the European markets.

Information Technology

Oracle Polska sees 5 pct sales growth in 2004

Oracle?s Polish unit announced on Tuesday its sales rose just 1 percent last year to 273 million zloty. Database maker expects 5 percent revenue growth this year thanks to stronger license sales, CEO Paweł Piwowar said at a news conference.

Most of Oracle?s Polish sales this year will come from large contracts with Telekomunikacja Polska phone company and PZU insurance group, the head of Oracle Polska said.

Power industry

PSE owes 90 million zloty in back taxes,

government says

UKS tax administration says Poland?s largest power producer, state-owned PSE owes some 90 million zloty in unpaid taxes. Fiscal authorities claim PSE, which makes 18 percent of Poland?s electricity received excessive tax refunds during the merger of five southern Polish power plants that created the company four years ago.

Information Technology

Ster-Projekt eyes no. 2 spot on the market

Ster-Projekt group has reiterated plans to become Poland?s second largest provider of IT services by leading industry consolidation. Warsaw-based firm, which announced talks on a stock swap with Telmax software house on Monday said it could merge with publicly traded Emax group, which has a similar business profile. The two firms, together with Telmax and other recently acquired companies would have combined annual sales of some 600 million zloty. That figure compares with 550 to 570 million zloty consolidated revenue of ComputerLand S.A., Poland?s second largest computer company. Poland?s top IT firm, Prokom Software retains the top spot in all industry rankings with over 1.1 billion zloty in annual sales.