Zagreb Brewery Stock is the Star of the Day

In lethargic trading on the Zagreb Stock Exchange today, only the stock of Zagreb Brewery stands out, attracting the attention of investors following the announcement of the call for the company’s General Assembly.

The Crobex index at 12:00 was at 2,134 points, što je 0,11 posto manje nego jučer, dok je Crobex10 dosegnuo 1,152 boda, zabilježivši blagi gubitak od 0,03 posto. The regular trading volume was 9 million kuna, što je otprilike 4 milijuna više nego jučer u ovo doba. “The star of the day on the domestic market is the stock of Zagreb Brewery, as the call for the General Assembly of shareholders of the company was announced with a proposal to withdraw its shares from the stock exchange. However, the rest of the market is recording very thin trading volume, and the movement of stock indices can be represented by a flat line,” emphasizes Stjepan Laća, broker and investment advisor at the investment company Finesa Capital.

Zagreb Brewery announced a call for the General Assembly of shareholders, which will be held on May 12 of this year, and on the agenda is, among other things, a proposal to withdraw its shares from listing on the Zagreb Stock Exchange. The company commits to buy back shares from all shareholders who oppose this decision at a fair compensation, which will be determined by calculating the average share price as a weighted average of all prices achieved on the regular market of the Zagreb Stock Exchange in the last three months before the announcement of the call for the General Assembly in the company’s bulletin.

At the same time, the Management and Supervisory Board propose that last year’s profit of 196.4 million kuna not be paid out as a dividend, but retained. The stock of Zagreb Brewery has so far achieved a turnover of 5.3 million kuna, and its price is 3,791.3 kuna, što je 3,84 posto više nego jučer. This is the price that the company Cervesia, the acquirer of Zagreb Brewery, commits to pay in its takeover offer. The closest to a million turnover is the preferred stock of Adris, which achieved 916,000 kuna, and its price is down 0.4 percent, at 287.10 kuna.

A somewhat larger price jump is also recorded today by the stocks of Liburnia Riviera Holding (LRH) and SN Holding, due to media reports that after years of negotiations, a final resolution of the Liburnia affair and the signing of an agreement between the Government and SN Holding is approaching. The price of LRH stock strengthened by 4.6 percent, to 2,100 kuna, and Sunčanog Hvara by 15.5 percent, to 176 kuna. On European stock exchanges, the main indices are stagnating, but with a positive sign. Among the latest indicators, the data on the rise in consumer prices in the eurozone in March by 1.5 percent year-on-year stands out, which is higher than expected. Economists had estimated inflation growth of 1.1 percent.

However, the unemployment rate in the eurozone, which was 10 percent in March, was in line with expectations. “It is also quite calm on global stock exchanges ahead of the Easter holidays. New guidelines for investors should be provided by the ADP data on employment in the American private sector, and on Friday the U.S. government’s report on employment in the U.S. this month. Only next week will we see how the market reacts to this data, as most exchanges will not operate on Friday,” Laća notes. He adds that at the end of the first quarter, the Fed’s mortgage bond purchase program, which has injected more than 1 trillion fresh money into the local financial system, is also coming to an end. “Investors are cautious until they see how the end of this Fed program will affect interest rates in the U.S.,” concludes Laća. (H)