Asseco joins the list of companies with excellent Q1 results

Shares in Asseco, Poland's biggest IT group, yesterday jumped by 2.5% after the company reported better-than expected first-quarter profits and said it was fully on track to achieve a net profit for the year of zł.250 million. Sales revenues came in at zł.414.68 million, compared to the mean forecast of zł.401.8 million, and net profit totaled zł.51 million, compared to zł.37.8 million.

Both sales and profits were almost twice higher than in the same period a year ago as Asseco consolidated the results of Prokom Software, which it acquired last year. Adam Goral, the CEO, said Asseco managed to secure cost savings of zł.79 million thanks to restructuring at Prokom, significantly higher than the zł.63 million originally envisaged.

Asseco has an order book for 2008 worth zł.1.6 billion, mainly in software projects, and is pressing ahead with its foreign expansion: the company is in talks with potential targets in Spain and Germany and is also eyeing opportunities in the US.

Asseco is also preparing to consolidate its foreign subsidiaries into two new companies, Asseco South Easter Europe and Asseco Germany, to be listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in Q3 2008 and in mid-2009, respectively. (Puls Biznesu, p. 12; Parkiet, p. 1, 5) R.M.