Profitable Sales Drop Crobex by More Than Five Percent

Today, the Zagreb Stock Exchange experienced profitable sales of shares that caused Crobex to plummet by more than 5 percent. The Crobex index is currently down 5.21 percent, at 2,619 points. The regular trading volume of shares exceeded 46 million kuna by 1 PM.

"After two days of euphoric growth in the market, today’s trading is again marked by a decline in prices of most issues due to profitable sales, and partly due to a slight negative trend in European stock exchanges," says Kristian Korunić, investment advisor at the brokerage firm Šted-Kapital. The most liquid stock today is again T-HT, with a turnover of 11.5 million kuna. Its price fell by 4.71 percent, to 247.5 kuna. Following in liquidity is the stock of Atlantska plovidba, with a turnover of 8.73 million kuna and a price drop of 9.05 percent, to 1,400 kuna.

"By the end of the week, more than 6.2 billion kuna is expected to flow from Hungarian MOL to the accounts of small investors and funds for the sold shares of Ina, which could stimulate a short-term wave of optimism in the domestic market, as part of that money is expected to return to the market," assesses Korunić. He adds that the market is eagerly awaiting the release of financial reports from companies for the third quarter of this year to see if the global financial crisis is affecting the domestic real sector.

"We are particularly interested in the business reports of export-oriented companies, such as shipping companies," emphasizes Korunić. Privredna banka Zagreb (PBZ) reported today that in the first nine months of this year, it achieved a pre-tax profit of 1.05 billion kuna, and a net profit of 869 million kuna. At the same time, the pre-tax profit of the PBZ Group was 1.19 billion kuna, and the net profit of the Group was 949 million kuna.

According to unaudited financial data, PBZ’s net profit is 6 percent higher compared to the same period last year, while the profit at the group level increased by 2 percent compared to the same period last year. "The achieved business result of PBZ is in line with our expectations. Generally, bank profits have been slowing down for some time due to measures by the Croatian National Bank aimed at stopping credit placements, but also due to the slowdown in economic growth and capital investments," says Korunić.

According to him, the first guidelines for budget spending in the next year are also awaited, after Prime Minister Ivo Sanader announced that ministries would have to be more frugal in 2009. "There is great interest in the budget spending plans for 2009, especially regarding the construction sector. The state is the largest investor in infrastructure projects, and domestic builders largely depend on state contracts," explains Korunić.  (H)