"Blues" on the bourse

Ruch Chorzów (RC), a soccer club from Upper Silesia, debuted last Thursday on NewConnect, the WSE's alternative trading platform. The club's stock cost zł.1.70 per share in its private placement, debuted at zł.2.30 and closed its first day at zł.1.84. It is the first sports team listed on a Polish bourse.

The current management, headed by Katarzyna Sobstyl, has turned RC around. The team, which three years ago did not have enough money to pay its players, now has a net income of zł.233,681.

"We want to follow the examples of foreign clubs, such as Real Madrid, to make soccer matches a show everybody can be interested in and which could boost financial results," Sobstyl said in a statement.

Before its New Connect debut, RC earned just zł.1.8 million from private placement of an 11-percent stake instead of the zł.5 million it had expected to get. The money will be spent on new transfers and junior training.

The team's debut was postponed for nine months due to a delay in signing this season's TV broadcasting contract with Canal+ and TP, to broadcast the games, the main source of income for most Polish soccer teams. The corruption scandals which have rocked Polish soccer further delayed the IPO.

Mariusz Klimek, one of two major shareholders in RC, hopes that some of the team's fans will buy shares in the club as a long-term investment and sign of their support. He also plans to move to the main bourse floor within a few years.

"It is very hard to point out Polish clubs that are regularly profitable," noted Tomasz Kaczmarek, an investment analyst at BZ WBK. "I also don't know anybody who would make a stock investment based not on perspective earnings, but just on sentiment," he added.

RC, whose players are called "the Blues" because of the color of their jerseys, was established in 1920. It is one of the 16 teams playing in Poland's premier league, the Ekstraklasa, and it has won the national championship a total of 14 times.