Two representatives of Polish PKN Orlen resigned from their positions on the supervisory board of Unipetrol last Friday without citing a specific reason. The EuroOnline server nevertheless says that the European Commission has not yet approved the privatization transaction, which might be the reason. According to the HN daily, Unipetrol has not even sent all the required information to the EC yet. No more details have been released.
Separately, Unipetrol's main subsidiaries reported their H1 2004 CAS results yesterday; overall, we see the figures as neutral: they were in line with our estimate on the pre-tax level, sales slightly exceeded our forecast, the opposite holds for the operating margins. The results are mostly relevant to those investors who do not want to exercise a post-privatization buy-out option. Still, since this would be done with the intention of obtaining exposure to operational and ownership restructuring of Unipetrol group under the management of PKN Orlen, current quarterly results are of limited importance, even to them.
Jan Hajek