RSE (Riga) Market Overviews

Latvian Stock Market Overview
13/02/2006 – 17/02/2006

This week the turnover went down more than twice to 1,506,973.18 EUR in comparison to the last week’s 3,466,710.57 EUR. OMX Riga index went up by +1.14%, which outmatched BALTIX index increase of +0.66%. Grindeks (GRD1R) was the undoubted leader in turnover with 650,090.75 EUR while its share value decreased by -3.23% which was the second largest loss this week. Share price growth was led by Ventspils Nafta (VNF1R) with +5.04%. Meanwhile, Latvijas Balzams (BAL1R) experienced the largest decrease in share price of -4.17%.

The active trade with Grindeks (GRD1R) shares was directly related to the information published on Monday about plans of development in future. According to it, Grindeks is planning to start producing some of its drugs, e.g. “Mildronat”, in Russia. Sales of “Mildronat” are expected to contribute to half of Grindeks turnover in 2009. Since this announcement was correctly expected to lead to large activity in the stock marked, the trade with Grindeks shares was stopped for several hours on Monday morning. It was directly followed by several comparatively small deals and slight price fluctuations. Turnover of the Week with Grindeks shares of 303.27 thousand EUR took place on Tuesday, when price per share also decreased by -2.5% from 8.39 EUR to 8.18 EUR. During most of 2006 Grindeks share price has performed bullish and the trend is not expected to change.

The share price of Ventspils Nafta (VNF1R) is rising largely due to the company’s good performance. On the 7th of February announcement was made that this year’s turnover of load through Ventspils free port increased by 19% compared to the same period last year. Share price increase should continue next week as well.

On Monday and Tuesday Latvijas Balzams (BAL1R) share price fell massively after the last week’s excellent performance. During the rest of the week the share price fluctuated slightly. The share price decrease may have been somewhat slowed by Grand Prix awarded to “Riga Black balsam” in an international food product exhibition in Moscow “Prodexpo - 2006”. The publicity may enhance sales of this essential product and thus contribute to the future profits of the company. Yet, it is hard to predict the share price trends of Latvijas Balzams in the nearest future due to the large fluctuations lately.

By Arturs Kanepajs