Agora gets good news in revenues

Polish media giant Agora, which publishes the popular Gazeta Wyborcza daily, more than tripled its quarterly net profit, as greater advertising revenue and lower costs helped the firm recover from last year's newspaper price war.

The firm's zł.33-million net profit in Q2 beat expectations of zł.21 million in a Reuters poll. Last year it recorded a net profit of just zł.9 million as it slashed prices in a battle with newly launched competition from German publisher Axel Springer. Revenue increased 13 percent to zł.333 million but costs rose just three percent.

"We are controlling costs well, which helped us significantly improve the group's financial results," said deputy chief executive Zbigniew Bàk in a statement.

But the company warned that material costs will be higher than previously expected because of a higher number of copies and larger advertising space.

Moments after the bourse opened on August 9 - following the announcement of the results - shares jumped to a six week high, up 4.7 percent to zł.45.01, outperforming Warsaw's WIG20 index, which was down 0.3 percent.

The firm now has plans to boost its presence in electronic media, through organic growth, strategic alliances or mergers and acquisitions.

"We have zł.360 million in unused credit lines and zł.393 million in cash, so for starters there's more than zł.700 million," said Bàk.

"We can increase our debt and could even do a new [share] issue. So I don't think we would be limited from the financial side," he said. (Reuters)