ZAGREB (Croatia), September 27 (SeeNews) – Croatian blue-chip engineering and construction company Ingra expects strong growth of some 20 million kuna ($3.9 million/2.7 million euro), or 50%, in its net profit this year thanks to expansion of operations, the company’s CEO Igor Oppenheim said.
"We expect a really significant rise in the net profit. We had planned that this year’s net profit will be some 50 to 60 million kuna, and it could be even higher, but certainly will be up by some 20 million from last year’s," Oppenheim told SeeNews in an interview this week in Zagreb. The rise in this year’s net profit will reflect the rising volume of the company’s operations, which will mean also higher revenue and costs, he added.
The company's success is underlined by its share price which has soared this year, making it the best performer on the local stock exchange.
According to the company’s non-consolidated financial report for last year, its net profit surged to some 39 million kuna from 12.6 million a year earlier as revenue went up to 383 million kuna from 302 million. This year Ingra’s revenue will reach 600 to 700 million kuna, Oppenheim said, without elaborating if that projection refers to consolidated or non-consolidated figures.
The projects that the company is carrying out include the construction of a sports hall worth 87 million euro in Zagreb, that should be completed next year; residential and office buildings in Dubrovnik, southern Croatia; a hotel reconstruction in Dubrovnik; the construction of a holiday village in Istria, on the northern Croatian Adriatic coast, as well as construction of power plants and marinas.
Ingra currently has signed contracts for work worth almost 400 million euro in Croatia and abroad. "All these works are being completed in the planned terms and new projects are under way and we consider that our performance will improve further and along with it investors' interest in our shares will rise," Oppenheim said, asked to comment on the all-time high values of the company’s shares this week.
The shares hit an all-time high intraday of 55,000 on Thursday, to close at 54,992, up 2.03% from Wednesday.
Ingra's shares on Thursday moved from a lower tier to the most transparent level of the Zagreb Stock Exchange. Ingra is the 10th company listed there.
"This was our goal since we entered the capital market, to go to the highest tier because besides offering maximum transparency, it gives to the pension funds and other institutional investors an option to buy these shares," he added. "In this way, the shareholders’ structure enlarges and the widest range of investors is enabled to trade in company’s shares."
Ingra’s share price rose 375% since the beginning of the year, making it the biggest advancer on the bourse. It is one of the most liquid shares in the construction sector.
"A stock split is one of the options in the near future as the value of the share is already now significant," he added but declined to give a time framework.
Ingra group has some 300 employees. Oppenheim estimates that it is among Croatia’s top ten companies in the construction and engineering sector by revenue with a "significant" market share that is some 30% in the road construction sector alone.
Ingra plans some acquisitions but it was too early to speak about them in detail, Oppenheim said. These plans concern partly production units in the construction sector and partly companies related to other activities of Ingra.
"The prospects of the construction market in Croatia are good. A lot of construction projects are under way in Croatia and with the country’s accession to the European Union that intensity will certainly persist particularly in the segments of infrastructure, tourism, residential buildings."
The Adriatic country of 4.4 million people started accession talks with the European Union in October 2005 and hopes to join the Union in 2009.
(1 euro=7.2770 Croatian kuna)