Polish Business Survey
WIG hits 20k
Friday s session crowned the most successful week on the stock market for a long time even if it did show that investors were being very choosy about the type of company they invest in. Profit taking was evident by the increased supply of shares offered but the markets still managed to hit the elusive 20,000 mark.
Budus aims at stock market
Management of Katowice based industrial builders Budus together with its new owner Polcar are discussing ways of bringing the latter onto the stock market.
Dumping goes on
Most of the anti-dumping actions brought about by Polish companies in 1999 still have not been concluded. Of 16 applications, only six have so far been successful. Accusations of dumping concern a variety of sectors from Taiwanese synthetics to Russian chemicals.
Merloni starts centre
The Italian Merloni has begun the construction of a USD10m 10,000sqm logistics centre in Łódż to service all 22 of its European operations. The company will be investing at least PLN75m in Poland next year.
Merloni began to produce cookers in its Łódź factory last year. This factory will soon be the largest that the company has, with production from three other factories in Europe gradually being moved to Poland. Presently 1,800 units are leaving the production lines every day with only 30 percent destined for the domestic market. The company says that the factory is only being used to seventy percent of capacity and by the time that full production is reached in 2002, 3,000 units will be produced daily, 70 percent of which will be exported.
The company is expecting to sell units for PLN27m this year in Poland. Currently Merloni has a two percent share of the Polish market but expects it to reach 15 percent by 2003, something its competitors consider as impossible given the three percent annual growth of the white goods sector in Poland. Growth of this nature, they argue, was only possible in the first half of the 1990s when the white goods market was rapidly expanding.
MerloniŐs factory is based in the Łódź Special Economic Zone where it employs 400 people.
NGKT to increase capital
The Polish-British telecommunications company NGKT has announced that it will increase its capitalisation in the next three months. The company is obliged to do this in order to realise its plans for the company which include investments of around USD300m within the next two years.
IIF hoping to get USD12m
The Internet Investment Fund is reported to be talking to potential investors who may put capital into the fund as well as one of its companies, Billbird.pl. In both cases this would involve a sale of around twenty percent of the shares. which for the fund would be in the order of USD8m and USD4m for Billbird.pl. Both transactions are expected to be finalised before the end of the year.
Radom IT firms merge
Four Radom based IT companies, Copy Con, Info Plus, Eltast Telekom and MG Komputers & Internet Serwis, have merged to form a company called 4 IT with an initial capital value of PLN100,000. The new company will be involved in business programming and internet services. It claims that it will be ready for a stock market entry within three years.
BISE gets control of Cukrobank
The banking watchdog, Komisja Nadzoru Bankowego, has given permission to BISE bank to obtain a further 33 to 50 percent share of Wrocław based Cukrobank. BISE currently has 35.5 percent of the bank. Last month BISE merged with Bank Energetyki.
Analysts see more beer
Analysts from the CASE organisation see the future of the beer industry as increased consumption and rivalisation. They claim that the average Pole will soon be drinking 90 litres annually and there will be a hard fight between brewers Brau-Union and Okocim for third position in the Polish brewing league. Several smaller breweries are also expected to fall by the wayside. There are currently 80 breweries in Poland with a total capacity of between 2.6 - 2.8bn litres and whom manufactured 2.25bn litres last year.
In 1975 the average Pole drank 37.3 litres of beer per year, by 1998 this figure was 54 litres and by 1999 it was 61 litres. Presumably most of the this beer is not consumed in one go.