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.
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.
Tallinna Sadam's first-quarter report paints a rather gloomy picture of the situation. The company's operating profit fell by 31.0% year-over-year, and sales revenue decreased by 0.6%. At the same time, operating expenses grew by a whopping 11.8%, indicating that costs are growing much faster than revenues. At first glance, it seems that the company's profitability has taken a very sharp and unexpected fall.
However, this large percentage drop is amplified by an extraordinary event last year. Namely, in 2025, Tallinna Sadam received a one-off insurance compensation of 0.9 million euros, which made the costs at that time artificially low. Without this compensation, this year's drop in profit would not be so drastic. Still, investors must be cautious: although the decline is partly optical, the company's actual costs have genuinely increased due to higher fuel consumption caused by severe ice conditions and more expensive electricity. This concern is also reflected in the share price, which has not recovered despite the recent dividend of 0.073 euros.
Conclusion
These two examples confirm an old truth: the first big numbers in a report do not always tell the whole story. In Infortar's case, a one-off financial transaction made the result artificially beautiful, while for Tallinna Sadam, last year's insurance money made today's decline visually steeper. As an investor, it is always important to read the explanations in the reports and understand whether the profit is backed by a genuinely growing business or just one-off events.
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