Baltic Morning News
Apranga (Acc.) December sales +54% = in line. The Lithuanian clothing retailer Apranga posted December sales of LTL 32m (incl. VAT), equal to y-o-y increase of 53.9%. The highest growth in December was recorded in Estonia where sales increased by 88.7% y-o-y (the company added 2 new stores to the existing one at the end of October). The second fastest growing market was Lithuania with an increase of 53.9% y-o-y, followed by Latvia with an increase of 40.7% y-o-y. By adding together monthly sales, the total revenues in 2006 increased 49.1% to LTL 299m (incl. VAT). For the full year, we are looking for a pre-tax profit of LTL 22.4m, corresponding to a pre-tax margin of 8.8% (in relation to net sales).
Klaipedos Nafta December results. The Lithuanian sea terminal operator Klaipedos Nafta transshipped 388K tons of petroleum products in Dec/06. Hence, the transshipment volume for Q4 is ca 1,213K tons, which is 200k more than in Q3, but approximately 400k less than in Q1 and in Q2. It is also 20% less than Q4/05.
Gas price increase agreed. Yesterday, Latvian Gas announced that they have signed an agreement with Gazprom on natural gas purchase price for 2007, which envisages growth of purchase price for approximately 50% at the current heavy fuel oil prices. Now, Latvian Gas can submit a tariff project to Public Utilities Commission (PUC), after which the tariffs will be decided. We see this as one of the most important short term factors affecting the share price.
CEO of Grindeks to step down. Valdis Jakobsons, CEO of Grindeks, decided to step down as chairman and he will be succeeded by Janis Romanovskis, who is currently working as finance and administrative director. However, Mr. Jakobsons will stay with the company and will be responsible for research and product development including setting up a new research centre.
Rokiskio Suris reorganizes. The Lithuanian dairy company Rokiskio Suris said it wanted to separate fresh milk production from cheese production by transferring LTL 26.85m in fixed assets to its controlled dairy Rokiskio Pienas. The assets comprise production facilities and equipment of dairies Utenos Pienas and Ukmerges Pienine. We do not see this to have any major effect on share price performance.