The Czech stocks continued to strengthen yesterday, Erste Bank (+5.5%) led the gainers

The PX-50 index gained 1.12% to 813.2 points. Despite our general expectation that the broader market will go up, we underestimated investors’ appetite for Erste Bank. Erste gained 5.5% yesterday on a higher than average volume. The rally follows Erste’s posting of solid 2003 results and a series of brokers’ upgrades. In Cesky Telecom we continue to see net outflow with a number of investors switching to the Hungarian telco operator Matav as the latter raised 2003 dividends on Monday. Komercni banka will continue to be well bid and we expect it will trade above CZK 3,100 in the course of today’s trading. Volume in the SPAD systém reached EUR 52.6m.

Milan Procházka