In the first four months of this year, PKP Intercity had PLN 15.1m (EUR 3.9m) of net income against PLN 5.8m of net loss last year.
“We had 500,000 more passengers than a year earlier and our sales grew by PLN 30m”, Czeslaw Warsewicz, PKP IC CEO said.
He promises PLN 50m of net income in 2007. Last year, the company had PLN 34.8m of net income.
The company needs lots of funds. It is going to invest PLN 2.5 billion over the next five years. PLN 1.5 billion will be spent to buy fast trains (half of this amount should come from EU funds). The rest will be spent to buy new carriages (30 of them), new locomotives (10) and to modernize the trains used today (250-300 carriages). Besides, the company could take credits worth PLN 1 billion, Czeslaw Warsewicz estimates. The company hopes also to raise funds on the WSE. Jerzy Polaczek, the Minister of Trasnport, said yesterday that they could amount to PLN 1 billion but not all of the funds would come back to the company. According to the new strategy for the railways section, PLN 400m will be spent to pay debts of PKP group. Jerzy Polaczek believes that the IPO is possible in 2009 or earlier.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.262)