Austrian economic news in a flash - 9 November 2010

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Vaccine developer Intercell said it doubled its net loss to EUR 50.9m in the first nine months of 2010, from EUR 25.9m a year earlier. Sales decreased 28.4% to EUR 21.1m. The increase in losses was due to the increasing R&D costs and currency effects. Intercell projects a loss of EUR 40m for full 2010.
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Vienna Insurance Group said its net profit rose 10.6% to EUR 291m for the first three quarters of the year. Premium income went up 7.1% to EUR 6.5bn. The insurer confirmed its outlook of at least 10% increase in pretax profit for full 2010. For 2011 Vienna Insurance projects the same growth in pretax profit as well as a one-digit rise in premiums.
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PC game developer JoWooD said both its net loss and loss from ordinary operations stood at EUR 20.6m for the first half of 2010. Sales came in at 2.596m. The results are under the Austrian regulations and not under the International Financial Reporting Standards. The latter will be published at the end of November. JoWooD is before a capital reduction aiming to cover the high losses.
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Austrian Airlines raised the number of transported passengers by 10.2% in the first ten months of 2010. In October alone AUA serviced 990,100 passengers, up 8.4% in annual terms. The development has shown that the company's focus on regular flights has paid off, AUA said.
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Verbund has officially started its capital increase of EUR 1bn. With the proceeds the country's largest utility aims to finance investments of up to EUR 1.9bn in the next five years. The sum will be spent for power generation and grid improvement in Austria and Germany, in addition further EUR 500m will flow for foreign subsidiaries like those in Turkey and India.
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The launched capital increase at Verbund is expected to raise the company's free float by 1% to 2%, CEO  Wolfgang Anzengruber said. This will come as a result of the decision of the regional group of utilities (Wienstrom, EVN and Tiwag) not to use their subscription rights in full.
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Vienna-listed US Century Casinos said its net gaming revenue grew 20% to USD 45.06m in the first nine months of 2010. The adjusted EBITDA was 5% higher at USD 6.53m. The revenue was boosted by the newly-launched casino in Calgary (Canada) and the new ship casinos of the company.
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Austria's exports stood at EUR 69.59bn for the first eight months of 2010, while imports came in at EUR 71.71bn, Statistics Austria said. This resulted in a foreign trade deficit of EUR 2.12bn for the period.
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Wiener Privatbank said it plans to reduce its core capital to EUR 9.07m in two stages, from EUR 33.5m currently. Via the move, the bank aims to return excess funds to the shareholders and to boost the profitability of its own capital.
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Vienna Insurance Group plans to issue a bond with a volume of up to EUR 500m. CEO Günter Geyer said that there have already been talks with the Austrian financial market authorities and the bank partner, Erste Group. He, however, gave no further details.