Baltic, Good for Business, Markets and Companies, Textile

In the third quarter, Baltika succeeded in evening up growth in its market portfolio. The Baltic region continued to post strong results with the Latvian and Estonian markets maintaining their former growth rates. In addition the Lithuanian market, which had been slower to recover, showed very good growth rates. Third quarter sales per square metre increased in all the markets and the average increase of 15% was 1%age point better than the 9 month total. The 18% increase achieved in the Russian market is highly significant, as it reflects a more profitable development of the Russian market.

In addition to sales growth, which was in line with expectations, the notable improvement in Baltika’s third quarter performance was underpinned by the gross margin, which rose to 52%, three%age points up on the comparative period.

Good sales results and significantly improved gross margin helped Baltika achieve in the third quarter 728,000 euros EBITDA (2011 third quarter EBITDA –103 thousand euros). All performance indicators including nine-month EBITDA, which was 1.851 million euros, show that Baltika is on track to meet its financial targets for 2012 even though the property sale, which has reduced rental income and has increased rental costs, is rendering this more complicated, the company said.

In the first nine months of the year, Baltika posted a net loss of 270,000 euros versus a loss of 3.98 million euros at the same time last year.

The third quarter revenue was 14.344 million euros versus 13.511 at the same time last year. The nine months revenue was 40.144 million euros versus 37.924 million euros at the same time last year.