Baltic Market: Whose Q1 results are deceptive?
Have you ever looked at a company's profit figure and thought it seems too good or too bad to be true? Often, that is exactly the case. The Baltic market's first-quarter results for 2026, published in early May, offer exactly such examples. Now, at the end of May, it is a good time to look behind the numbers before the market starts setting expectations for the next quarter. Let's examine two well-known domestic companies whose headline numbers do not quite accurately reflect their actual business operations.
INF1TInfortar (INF1T)
At first glance, Infortar's first-quarter numbers for 2026 are very strong. The company's operating profit grew by a staggering 3364.4% compared to the same period last year, reaching 21.4 million euros, and sales revenue increased by 12.9%. Such a massive jump in profit gives the impression that the company's core business took a miraculous overnight flight, turning last year's 0.7 million euro loss into a hefty profit.
In reality, however, the lion's share of this jump came from a one-off accounting change, not from day-to-day business. The change in the value of financial instruments, or derivative transactions, improved the result by a whole 32.2 million euros. Without this, the picture would be much more modest, as raw material costs grew by 10.0% at the same time. For investors, this means that although Infortar's business is doing well – which is also confirmed by the recently continued share buyback program – one should not expect such profit growth reaching into the thousands of percent to be the new normal.
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The information provided is not investment advice. RYTM analyses are generated with AI assistance and are intended for informational purposes only. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.