Ruch moves forward

The Treasury Ministry is expected to sell a minority stake in press distributor Ruch soon. Last week the company's CEO, Adam Pawłowicz, announced that four investors, including both domestic and foreign firms, have expressed interest in taking a stake in Ruch. However, the company is remaining tight-lipped about who those investors might be.

"This is a very attractive offer - Ruch is a very big brand with a consistently growing market share," comments Paweł Burzyński of brokerage firm BZ WBK. According to Burzyński, Ruch is going to focus on FMCG distribution because the press market is not developing fast enough.

Due to the increased sales revenues and successful cost reduction, Ruch closed the first quarter of the year with positive results. The company's revenues grew by 3.6 percent y-o-y, amounting to zł.1.014 billion. Operational profit was 114-percent higher than Q1 2006. The press distributor has already achieved 24 percent of its annual goal, which was positively received by the stock market - its share price increased by 21 percent after the news.

This year's development plan includes the opening of a chain of coffee shops in H2. Pawłowicz is convinced this is a good step. "We believe that having our own coffee-shop chain would help us show that Ruch is constantly changing for the better," he says.

Currently Ruch has 43 percent of the market, which has forced Kolporter, its main competitor, to reconsider its plan to debut on the stock market. "In the near future, it's going to be all about the big chains of kiosks and the small players will be forced to leave," Paweł Burzyński concludes.