Petzetakis, Goodyear sign deal
Plastic-pipes manufacturer Petzetakis has signed an accord with tire manufacturer Goodyear, it announced yesterday. Specifically, the accord calls for trade cooperation between the two firms to sell special industrial pipes to the US and elastic pipes in Europe and Africa. Expected revenue for Petzetakis is about 20 million euros. Subsequently, the two companies will cooperate in the development and production of new products, mainly industrial pipelines. Petzetakis yesterday announced that the parent company’s first-quarter sales increased 28 percent, to 16.9 million euros, and that net pretax profit more than doubled, to 700,000 euros from 300,000 during the same period in 2003. Group sales rose 14 percent, to 50.4 million euros, while earnings before interest, tax and amortization rose 97.9 percent, to 2.1 million euros and exports increased 40 percent. Management estimates that consolidated sales will rise to 218 million for the whole of 2004, while pretax profit will rise to 8.69 million euros from 4.4 million in 2003. The company has also managed to reduce its heavy debt to 97.3 million euros in the first quarter and aims at reducing it to 89.6 million by the end of the year. In order to restructure its debt, Petzetakis has agreed a 60-million-euro, four-year syndicated loan with National Bank, Alpha Bank, EFG Eurobank and Citibank.
