Ruling Czech Soc-Dem unveils election manifesto

Regional Overview

Macro: Ruling Czech Soc-Dem unveils election manifesto

CZ) POLITICS: Czech Social Democratic Party (ruling party) unveiled its election program. CSSD reiterates among others the plan for tax-system overhaul, including progressive taxation of large companies and special levies on bank assets. Income taxes will change so that top 2% earners will pay more, taxes for rest will decline, party said. Please note CSSD shuffled its leadership last week in last ditch effort to close popularity gap to their main rival, ANO party, after CSSD fell to 10% in the latest Kantar TNS opinion poll.

Please also note as preferences of CSSD has decreased so far, we see the probability of imposing special bank taxation as fairly low; Czech Parliamentary elections are scheduled to October 20-21.

Equities: Unipetrol's Benzina EBITDA above CZK 1bn?

(CZ) UNIPE: Unipetrol's Benzina 2017 EBITDA may exceed CZK 1bn, CEO said. Also, Benzina will probably have more than 20% market share in Czech Republic by end- 2017 after incorporating remaining petrol stations it acquired from OMV. Benzina CEO also said it is interested in buying more Czech petrol stations from OMV. Note, Benzina's 2016 EBITDA was CZK 960mn.

(HU) Waberer: IPO in Hungary offers 11.7mn shares at HUF 5 100-6 300/share price. Subscription period for investors starts Jun-19, expected to end at midday Jun-29. Joint book runners are Citi, Berenberg, Renaissance Securities, lead manager Erste. Please note, the Budapest-based hauler, one of the largest in Europe with over EUR 572mn in revenues, EUR 69mn in EBITDA in 2016 and more than 3,500 trucks, plans to raise about EUR 50mn in fresh capital through the offering. In addition, private equity firm Mid Europa Partners, which indirectly owns 97% of the company, plans to sell more than half of its existing shares via CEE Transport holding B.V. Free-float will be at least 50% of all shares.

Weekly Preview: NBH meeting and Polish macro data

(HU) Rates: The regular NBH's interest-rate setting meeting scheduled for the Tuesday. In our view all the latest developments confirms our view that NBH may cut further the cap of 3-month deposit in June. We expect that the maximum limit might be moderated to HUF250bn till the end of September from the current level of HUF500bn. Also the FX swap tenders might be continued probably focusing more on the 3 month and 6 month tenors. It might limit the HUF strengthening, while the internal bank interest rates and the short-end of the yield curve may moderate by 10-15bp in the coming weeks. If the NBH introduces further interbank HUF liquidity boosting measures, the probability of further HUF strengthening may weaken.

(PL) Macro: There will be a lot of interesting macro figures released in Poland this week, including labour market data, retail sales and industrial output in May.

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