Cocor’s half year loss rises 4.6 times to EUR 1.75 mln

Newsroom 21/08/2012 | 11:03

Cocor Bucharest (COCR), the company which owns the Cocor shopping center in downtown Bucharest, has reported losses worth RON 7.9 million (approximately EUR 1.75 million) up 464 percent y-o-y, according to a company report sent to the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

Cocor’s revenues for the first half year amounted to RON 9 million (approximately EUR 2 million) down 43 percent y-o-y, whereas its expenses have decreased only by 5 percent, totaling RON 16.9 (approximately EUR 3.75 million). In the first half of 2011, the company reported revenues worth RON 16 million while expenses amounted to RON 17.8 million.

Rent revenues totaled RON 5.4 million in H1 2012 (59.8 percent of total revenues) down from RON 6.9 million (43 percent of total revenues) in H1 2011.

For the same time period the company’s turnover has dropped by almost 50 percent, totaling RON 12 million (approximately).

Shareholders of Cocor Bucuresti announced this July they plan to sell several of the company’s assets, including the Cocor store following difficulties in paying back a credit to BCR.

The Cocor department store was built in 1970 and was relaunched in October 2010, after a EUR 24.5 million facelift meant to attract more affluent customers. The tenant mix was changed and its sales surface extended to 10,000 sqm, but the economic crisis combined with the new positioning strategy didn’t generate the results expected and the company started having financial difficulties.

EUR 19 million of the money invested in refurbishing the shopping center was a BCR loan which the Cocor Bucharest company now has difficulties paying back due to reduced rents and a decrease of its occupancy rate.