Austrian economic news in a flash - 28 October 2010

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EVN has priced the shares for its current capital hike at EUR 11 apiece. The company plans to issue above 16.35m shares and thus to raise gross proceeds of EUR 179.88m. The province of Lower Austria, as a majority shareholder, will subscribe for 51% of the shares.
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Builder Strabag and Austrian Federal Railways have signed the contract for the construction of the Koralm Tunnel. The EUR 570m worth order is the biggest contract awarded in Austria ever, Strabag said. The company will receive 85% of the value and build two parallel tunnels with a length of 20 km each.
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Verbund reduced its earnings forecasts for 2010 and said it expects its net profit to be by 35% lower than in 2009 due to negative one-off items (especially related to Verbund's stake in French Poweo). The operating result is seen lower by 25% at the most. In the first nine months of the year, the EBIT fell 22.1% to EUR 625.6m and the net profit decreased 39.5% to EUR 334m -- results which met analysts' expectations. Sales went down 1.7% to EUR 2.406bn.
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Notebook producer Quanmax said its sales grew 18% to EUR 18.7m in the third quarter of 2010, with its net profit standing at EUR 2.52m for the first nine months of 2010. In view of the strong order backlog, the company projects an increase in sales and profit in the last three months of the year. Quanmax expects at least EUR 73m in sales for full 2010, up from EUR 70m forecast before.
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The purchasing manager index PMI of Bank Austria, which measures the sentiment among the country's industry stood at the healthy 56-point level in October, compared to 56.1 points in September. Following the good order intake, now the companies will start increasing their staff and widen production, the economists said. Newcoming orders will continue to grow but at a smaller pace.
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Mirko Kovats is ready to dispose of a controlling stake of 25.1% in his industrial holding A-Tec in order to save it from collapse. The company said surprisingly last week it had decided to file for insolvency and now is negotiating its refinancing strategy. 
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IT services provider S&T widened its EBIT loss to EUR 14m in the first three quarters of 2010 from EUR 1.3m a year earlier. Sales decreased to EUR 264.4m from EUR 283.1m. The company's CEO said the restructuring of the firm has started to show positive results and he expects a successful performance in 2012.

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Crane maker Palfinger said it had taken over the marine and wind crane business of Palfinger systems GmbH, which has been owned so far by the Palfinger family. Palfinger will pay initially EUR 15m and provide future earn-outs based on the achievement of certain targets.
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Austrian Airlines will have to take part of the new flight taxes by itself as to avoid the transferring of clients to the nearby Bratislava airport, its CEOs told a telephone conference. With the new tax, the Austrian government wants to raise EUR 60m per year to be used for environmental issues. The aviation sector however fears that the move will have an extremely negative impact on the business. 
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Struggling webfreetv.com has agreed with its shareholder Connexia on a new loan in the form of mezzanine capital. No details were given.