The Bucharest Stock Exchange’s (BVB) net profit dropped 37% to RON5.5M in the first nine months of 2021, compared to the same period a year ago, with a net margin of 30%, BVB said in its financial report on Thursday (Nov. 11).
Operating revenues stood at RON 8.40M, down 9%, while operating expenses stood at RON 13.5M, up 13% compared to January-September 2020, following the new projects implemented aimed to promote BVB and the capital market.
At the same time, the Romanian capital market surged by 29% in the first nine months of this year when looking at the BVB’s blue-chip BET index, and by 35.6% when taking into account the BET-TR, which includes also dividends. This compares favorably with the performance of major European and US exchanges indices. US’ S&P 500 increased by 14.7% in the same period while the Pan-european STOXX600 was up by 14%. The Romanian capital market also outperformed the MSCI Frontier Markets index (+ 15%) or the FTSE Emerging Markets index (-1%).
Furthermore, the total trading value for all the financial instruments traded on the Romanian bourse amounted to RON 13 billion (€2.6billion), a 4.2% year-on-year increase.
On top of this, the BVB has seen an explosion of new bond and equity listings. Since the beginning of this year, 22 bond issues and 6 new government securities issues totaling EUR 1 billion, and 19 new companies listed their shares on the exchange with a cumulative capitalization of EUR 1 billion.
And for the first time in history, the cumulative capitalization of all companies listed on the Regulated Market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) reached RON 204.9 billion, the equivalent of EUR 41.5 billion.
Romanian companies have become increasingly visible on the radar of international investors. Starting from September 20, 2021, Romania has five companies in the indices of the global index provider FTSE Russell.
Romania’s largest bank by assets Banca Transilvania (TLV), state-owned nuclear energy company Nuclearelectrica (SNN), Southeast Europe’s largest oil and gas company OMV Petrom (SNP), and plastics producer TeraPlast (TRP) in the indices FTSE Global All-Cap, and BIT company Bittnet (BNET) was included in the FTSE Global Micro-Cap index.
Regarding the domestic market, BVB launched in October the BET AeRO, the first index dedicated to the multilateral trading segment that includes 20 Romanian companies. It also launched two more indices for the Regulated Market: BET-TRN and BET-XT-TRN as the net total return variants of the existing BET and BET-XT indices.
Last month, the BVB also revealed a new identity, aiming to reposition the brand as a suitable choice for the investments of each Romanian and a catalyst for the development of companies in Romania.
All in all, the BVB is enjoying a record year so far, having benefitted from the global stock market rally as well as from the upgrade of Romania from frontier to emerging market status by FTSE Russell, which came into effect in late 2020.
