Earnings of the Baltic List companies

‰ AS Eesti Telekom is going to pay out nearly 550 million kroons ($32 million) of an undistributed profit of 1,332 million kroons as dividends to shareholders.

The Telecom council Friday approved the board's proposal to distribute 203,337,103 kroons or 35.04 percent of the net profit among shareholders as dividends.

Telecom has a total of 137,383,178 dividend-entitled A-shares and will thus pay 1.48 kroon dividends per share.

One state-owned B-share is to receive 10,000 kroons in dividends.

In addition, Telecom will pay extraordinary dividends to holders of A-shares in the sum of 346,205,609 kroons (59.66 percent of the net profit), or 2.52 kroons per share.

Thus, the state as the owner of 27.29 percent of Telecom shares will receive a total of 150 million kroons of dividend income.

Telecom will further allocate 68,111,379 kroons or 10 percent of the net profit to legal reserve. The remainder of the 1999 profit in the sum of 715,086,182 kroons will be carried forward in the balance sheet as retained profit.

Eesti Telekom (Estonian Telecom) intends to use its retained profit of 715 million kroons ($41.7 million) to launch new projects above all in the field of Internet, finance director Krister Bjorkqvist said.

‰ Uhispanga Elukindlustus collected 2.2 million kroons ($125,000) in premiums last month.

Board chairman Indrek Holst said the results did not quite come up to expectations.

The premiums showed a year-on-year growth of more than one million kroons or nearly 50 percent. Claim settlements in April totaled 58,280 kroons.

The company has garnered 8.5 million kroons' worth of premiums this year. The number of new policies in April was up by 63 percent from the same month a year before.

Uhispank Life Assurance is the country's third largest life assurance company in terms of premiums with a 12.2 percent share of the market.

Latvia

‰ Ventspils Nafta (VN, Ventspils Oil) company reloaded 1.5 million tons of oil and oil products in April, VN spokeswoman Gundega Varpa said.

In April the company reloaded 0.9 million tons of crude oil, 0.4 million tons of diesel fuel and 0.1 million tons of other oil products.

The results achieved in April meet earlier forecasts made by VN management, voicing cautious attitude towards the relatively significant increase in reloading volumes the company saw in March.

"The outward restrictions to VN operations we were taking into account while drafting the company's budget for this year are still in effect. The most important reason behind our cautiousness, of course, is the unclear politically economic situation in Russia. Although VN's reloading volume can be regarded as stable, Russian oil companies still feel restriction for oil and oil products export stemming from the unfavorable economic situation in Russia. And this situation has most direct effect on VN," stressed VN President Igors Skoks.

Since the beginning of the year VN reloaded 7 million tons of oil and oil products. In February the port of Ventspils was closed due to the stormy weather, in addition, February is a short month, Varpa pointed out.

"Reloading of oil and oil products in so big volumes in March was possible thanks to investment program implemented by VN, which has significantly increased capacity of the company's reservoirs in two years," Varpa reminded.

VN's net profit in the first quarter of 2000 was 6.4 million lats ($10.59 million) on a net turnover of 13.9 million lats. The company's net profit this year is approximately as high as in 1999 while the turnover has increased by 0.9 million lats, which can be explained by the purchase of Naftas Parks (Oil Park) company that has increased VN's revenues from reloading of diesel fuel.

Lithuania

‰ Rokiskio Suris will pay out a total of 2.373 million litas ($0.59 million) in dividends from its 1999 profit, an official confirmed on Monday.

The per-share dividend will amount to 0.5 litas.

Ukmerges Pienine, a subsidiary of Rokiskio Suris, reported a profit of 45,000 litas ($12,250) for the first quarter of 2000, down from 70,000 litas posted for the same period of 1999.

‰ Utenos Trikotazas, Lithuania's leading knitwear producer, saw a 17 percent increase in turnover in the first four months of 2000 versus the respective 1999 period.

Nerijus Datkunas, Utenos Trikotazas' director for finance, said the company's sales kept growing at a rapid pace and exceeded projections despite the weak euro.

Utenos Trikotazas sold production and services worth 41.5 million litas ($10.38 million) in the first four months of this year, up from 35.5 million litas in the same period of 1999.

The company's January-April exports rose by 20 percent in 2000 against the respective figure for the previous year. The four-month exports totalled 36.4 million litas this year, up from 30.3 million litas reported a year ago.

In April 2000, Utenos Trikotazas sold production and services for 10.1 million litas, up from 8.5 million litas in April 1999.

‰ Vilniaus Bankas announced a pre-tax profit of 18.2 million litas ($4.55 million) and a net profit of 16.7 million litas for the first quarter of this year, according to audited data.

The bank's profit was 17.2 million litas in the first quarter of 1999. The decline in the profit this year was due to extra expenditure related to the takeover of Hermis Bank, Vilniaus Bankas said in a statement.

Vilniaus Bankas' consolidated assets totaled 4.87 billion litas in late March, a 1.7 percent decline over three months. The bank's share of the Lithuanian banking market amounted to 43 percent.

Vilniaus Bankas' net loan portfolio was 2.19 billion litas as of March 31, a ten percent decrease over the quarter. The decline was due to the repayment of loans that were later renewed.

Deposits amounted to 2.84 billion litas in late March, a 0.6 percent rise over the January-March period. The increase was due to a 8.6 percent growth in individual deposits - to 1.36 billion litas.

The shareholder equity rose by 3.4 percent to 508 million litas during the quarter.

According to the statement, the group's return on equity (ROE) was 13.22 percent, return on assets (ROA) was 1.36 percent, and earnings per share amounted to 4.4 litas. The bank's capital adequacy was 12.59 percent, and the group's capital adequacy was 14.04 percent.

Vilniaus Bankas employed 1,680 people at the end of March, a 22 percent decline from the number before the merger with Hermis.