After TP had announced its fourth quarter results yesterday, its stock jumped 8.42 percent to PLN 23.19 (EUR 6.4) for the highest increase since May 2002. The capitalization of the company rose by PLN 2.5bn. Shares worth PLN 452.6m changed hands yesterday. In 2007, TP had PLN 18.24bn of sales. The decrease amounted to 2 percent against 2.8 percent expected earlier. Fixed telecommunication operations generated PLN 10.9bn, or 8 percent less than a year earlier. Mobile telecommunication generated PLN 8.06bn, or 7.1 percent more than in 2006. The net income rose 8.5 percent to PLN 2.27bn. Maciej Witucki, TP CEO, believes that it was thanks to radical cost cutting.
“These are the first results of the strategy presented by TP CEO. It is nothing new but it is an effective strategy applied by other telecoms in the region. Maciej Witucki follows the suit of the best ones”, Michal Marczak from DI BRE Bank commented.
In 2008, TP CEO expects that sales will fall by 1 percent. Later on, however, the downward trend should stop. Analysts agree that the worst is over for TP. Meanwhile, investment funds have recently withdrawn from TP. Four years ago, they controlled 140.5m TP shares, or 10 percent of the capital. At the end of December 2007, they had 76m shares, or 5.45 percent of the capital. Several days ago, Grzegorz Zatryb, OFE Skarbiec-Emerytura manager explained:
“This is a company no one believes in any longer. New players with new technologies appear on the market. Competition is tough while TP cannot show that it can face it. The fact of being ex-monopolist is not enough”.
Now, he has changed his opinion.
“TP should now be evaluated better. We will again look at it, we will estimate it basing on new data and we’ll see what we have”, Grzegorz Zatryb admitted.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.276)