January 9 (SeeNews) - Romania’s power grid operator Transelectrica [BSE:TEL] said it sees its gross profit rising to 51.7 million lei ($15 million/11.9 million euro) this year from 25 million lei estimated for 2011.
The company sees this year’s revenues falling to 2.62 billion lei from 2.78 billion lei budgeted for 2011. Total costs are projected at 2.57 billion lei compared to 2.75 billion expected for last year, Transelectrica said in a statement on Friday.
Last month Transelectrica revised its 2011 budget and cut by 40% its forecast for last year’s gross profit to 25 million lei.
Company’s shareholders will vote on the revised 2011 budget and on the proposed 2012 budget at a general shareholders’ meeting on January 19.
“We remind that so far the regulatory authority did not release the 2012 tariffs which could mean that they will be maintained at the 2011 level, while we were foreseeing a 4.0% year-on-year increase,” Raiffeisen Capital & Investment (RCI) said in its daily note to investors.
“The company [Transelectrica] is usually conservative in drafting the budget but given the large discrepancy between our figures and the budgeted amount we see the news as negative,” RCI added.
Transelectrica’s projected 2012 gross profit is three times lower than RCI's estimate.
Transelectrica is a component of the blue-chip BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Its shares were trading down 0.91% at 17.34 lei by 1009 GMT on Monday.
(1 euro = 4.3527 Romanian lei)