December 3 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian engineering, construction and energy group Enemona plans to sell its majority stake in local brewery Lomsko Pivo by the end of 2008 and with the proceeds to finance the development of a coal mining project, a company official said on Monday.
“We are currently in talks with a potential buyer which is conducting a due diligence in the brewery,” Enemona’s investor relations officer Rumen Rashkov told SeeNews, but declined to name the interested buyer. "The reason for sale is that Lomsko Pivo is not part of Enemona's core business," he added.
Lomsko Pivo is majority-owned by Agro Invest Engineering company, in which Enemona has a 99.9% stake. Agro Invest Engineering company held 98.3% of Lomsko Pivo before an initial public offering (IPO) of 20% of its shares on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) in July. Enemona said last week it will double on Thursday Lomsko Pivo's free-float to 40%. A total of 900,000 shares will be offered at an auction at an issue price of 3.5 levs each.
Lomsko Pivo boosted its nine-month net profit over five-fold to 960,000 levs ($720,000/492,000 euro), backed by almost doubling revenues.
Shares in the company traded at 3.99 levs at 0945 GMT, a 5.0% increase from Friday's close.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)