Public Power Corporation

The upcoming rebalancing of the MSCI Greek stock indexes and profit taking after five consecutive days of gains led to losses at Athinon Avenue on Friday, with a huge daily turnover. Notably 70% of trading volume took placing during the closing auctions. The benchmark of the Athens stock market ended May with a monthly advance of 3.87%, though banks lost 2.94%.

Early profit-taking at Athinon Avenue gave way to a fresh wave of buying later on Thursday - although banks appeared to have fallen out of favor - taking the benchmark higher for the fifth session in a row. The market is now confidently looking toward more growth, boosted also by the significant increase in daily trading volumes.

On a day when Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange remained closed, the Greek bourse secured a rather satisfactory turnover of almost 50 million euros on Monday, with traders opting to position themselves ahead of this Friday's upcoming index rebalancing. Leading the benchmark to strong gains were bank stocks, which were oversold in previous sessions.

Banking and energy stocks boosted the Greek bourse on the last day of this week, although the benchmark ended up holding onto just a fraction of the gains it had recorded before the closing auctions. Even so its consolidation well above the 600-point mark is a positive omen ahead of next week.

The process for the construction of the first photovoltaic park in Kozani, northwestern Greece, has entered the final stretch. Its capacity will be 15 megawatts and it forms part of a mega-project of 230 MW in the area.

The majority of stock prices recovered from early lows on Wednesday to end the session with gains. However, banks failed to stage a recovery, as buyers appeared more interested in specific blue chips outside the credit sector, such as energy stocks. 

Greek traders seemed to respond to the heat wave on Monday, swimming well in shallow waters, as the local stock market posted significant gains on very limited turnover. Banks and a few select blue chips led the way, as international markets were boosted by news of a possible breakthrough in terms of a coronavirus vaccine.

The union of Public Power Corporation workers (GENOP/DEH) has happily accepted a proposal from the utility's management regarding redundancy incentives for employees with full pension rights working at the West Macedonia Lignite Center and the subsidiaries Meliti Lignite and Megalopoli Lignite that are being prepared for privatization.

After a session of ups and downs for the benchmark, the Greek bourse concluded a rather quiet week with a drop for most indexes and a rise for the majority of its stocks on Friday, as the sudden adjustment of Greece's outlook by Fitch did not seem to have any significant bearing on traders.

Greece's biggest power utility Public Power Corporation (PPC) on Thursday posted a net loss of 1.68 billion euros for 2019 after it wrote down the value of its coal-fired plants.
PPC, which is 51 percent state-owned and plans to switch off all but one of its coal-fired plants by 2023, said the figure compared with a net loss of 903.8 million euros in 2018.