PPWK digitally plots its course

With a 30-percent market share, PPWK is the leading map producer in Poland. The company also offers navigation products, a segment in which the company wants to reach a 10-percent share of the market in 2007. To achieve this, PPWK has bought EL2, a leader in the sector.

"The company wants to benefit from its good financial situation and enter a new, dynamically growing mobile-technology market, particularly services added to mobile telephony," says Rafał Berliński, president of PPWK.

According to Andrzej Zieliński, president of EL2, within the next two years his firm's revenues should exceed zł.50 million. This will be possible thanks to the growth of EL2 and further acquisitions.

PPWK financed 15 percent of the zł.70-million transaction from its own resources. This month, PPKW's general shareholders' meeting will make a decision concerning the issue of shares, whose value is estimated at zł.64-85 million. This will cover the remaining 85 percent of the transaction and other acquisitions. The issue of new shares, which has already been confirmed by the main shareholders of both companies, Supernova Capital and Maciej Radziwiłł, should be carried out in Q1 2007.

Established in 1921, PPWK is the oldest map producer in Poland. The company's sales through three quarters of 2006 reached zł.10.3 million and increased by eight percent compared to the same period last year. In 2006 EL2's revenues should reach zł.16.1 million, compared to the zł.12.2 million earned in 2005, while net profit will double from zł.700,000 in 2005 to zł.1.5 million this year.