October 24 (SeeNews) - Bosnian pharmaceuticals company Bosnalijek said on Wednesday it expected its net profit to rise 9.77% to 8.5 million marka ($6.2 million/4.4 million euro) this year, mainly due to a significant rise in exports.
“We expect our 2007 sales to rise by some 3.0% to 87 million marka and net profit to go up by 9.77% to 8.5 million marka,” Bosnalijek’s investor relations director, Nedim Vilogorac, told an international conference organised by the Sarajevo Stock Exchange (SASE) in Sarajevo.
Vilogorac said the company expected its exports this year to increase by 30% to 22 million marka, while domestic sales would fall by 2.98% to 65 million marka due to a drop in the prices of some medicines in Bosnia.
Bosnalijek’s exports totalled 16.74 million marka in 2006, Vilogorac said.
Bosnalijek exports its products to the countries of former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Russia, Albania, Moldova, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya. Ukraine is the company's biggest foreign market which accounts for 25% of its 2006 exports, followed by Russia with 16%.
The company said last year it also planned to enter the European Union market.
“In 2008, we plan to increase our sales by 11.5% and bring exports to 50% of total sales,” Vilogorac said.
He said Bosnalijek controlled 13.7% of the Bosnian pharmaceuticals market and 18.6% of the market of the Muslim-Croat Federation, where it is based.
The Federation is one of the two autonomous parts of war-divided Bosnia, forming two-thirds of the country’s economy and population. The other is the Serb Republic.
Vilogorac said Bosnia’s pharmaceutical market was estimated at 350.3 million marka in 2006, up from 322.9 million marka the previous year.
Bosnalijek has some 200 products, of which 80%, and the main source of revenue for the company, are tablets. It produces some one billion tablets annually, Vilogorac said.
Bosnalijek is based in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and is one of the country's two major drug producers. The other is a unit of Serbia's Hemofarm, based in the northwestern Bosnian city of Banja Luka, which German generic drugs maker Stada acquired in September 2006.
The government of the Muslim-Croat Federation is the biggest single shareholder in the company with a 19.8% stake. The World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), owns 9.5% of Bosnalijek, and the Libyan government holds a 9.0% stake. The remaining shareholders are domestic and foreign private and institutional investment funds.
(1 euro=1.95583 Bosnian marka)