SOFIA (Bulgaria), September 1 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria's largest paint and varnish manufacturer Orgachim on Monday said its sales proceeds from finished goods for the first seven months of the year rose by an annual 23% to 76.7 million levs ($57.6 million/39.3 million euro).
Finished goods sales in July increased by the same margin, reaching 14.5 million levs, Orgachim said in a filing with the Bulgarian Stock Exchange’s information service X3 News.
The structure of receivables and liabilities remains unchanged, the company said.
Orgachim halved its first-half net profit to 3.0 million levs as costs rose faster than revenue.
The company's CEO, Ivan Sokolov, earlier this year said Orgachim expects its sales to grow by around 24% in 2008 on the back of rising exports and the launch of new products. Orgachim’s 2007 net profit fell 16.4% to 6.764 million levs.
The company ships mainly to Turkey, Greece, Romania, Egypt, central Europe, the ex-Soviet republics and the Middle East.
Orgachim shares, part of the blue-chip SOFIX index of the Sofia stock exchange, lost 5.0% to 163 levs in a volume of 367 stocks on Monday. The filing was made before the end of trading on Monday.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)