By G. Sakkas
[email protected]
First half 2017 results posted by listed companies on the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) point to a return to higher profitability – up by 25.5 percent, in one case – and turnover.
The budding recovery of listed companies’ results is even more encouraging, given the continued bearish performance of banks’ shares on the Athens bourse over the current year. Nevertheless, losses by bank shares over 2017 reached 31 million euros, paling before the 2.9 billion euros lost in listed banks’ capitalization in the first half of 2016.
The only deviation from overall trend in listed companies’ results was a marginal decrease in operational profits, down by 1.3 percent – a development that analysts say is exclusively due to the results posted by the state-run Public Power Corp. (PPC).
If PPC, the dominant electricity utility in the country, is excluded, then operational profits for companies listed on the ASE is up by 5 percent.
