Exbus H1 profit jumps on revenue from asset sale

Revenue was $21.5 million in H1 2006, including $14.7 million from the sale of vehicles and $6.7 million from the sale of parts and services. In H1 2005, revenue came to $182.3 million.
The big rise in profits was the result of an extraordinary item: the sale of the company's bus-making activities, assets and liabilities for $36.29 million, Exbus noted in the report. Exbus said in the report that the first-half figures are not comparable with the same period a year earlier, as the company no longer makes buses. In February, NABI agreed to sell the shares of its US unit and the assets of its bus factory in Kaposvár, southwest Hungary in a debt-for-equity swap. The buyer, Homerica, agreed to take over $81.1 million in debts owed by the parent company and pay the company's shareholders a $2 million cash premium.
According to earlier plans, NABI would have been wound up after the sale. But at an AGM on April 27, NABI shareholders narrowly rejected a proposal by the board to wind up the company. At the same AGM, a new group of owners proposed that NABI should continue operating and promised to inject new capital in the company to finance acquisitions. The group of shareholders said NABI would start selling auto parts. Shareholders changed the company's name to Exbus in June. In its first-half report, Exbus says profit during the period “is exclusively the mathematical result of the asset transfer agreement.”