German precision injection moulder Balda (Bad Oeynhausen; www.balda.de) has forecast sales of around EUR 414m and pretax earnings of EUR 24m for 2008. As this was significantly below the expectations of some analysts, the announcement resulted in a dramatic collapse in the share price of more than 20%. On top of this, there were rumours in British financial circles of further operating losses amounting to EUR 40m at the German Infocom facilities.

Balda's CEO Joachim Gut corrected this estimate to "a small double-digit million figure." Nevertheless, it does appear to suggest that Balda will have to pay the industrial holding Aurelius (Munich / Germany; www.aureliusinvest.de) to take over the three plants about which the companies are negotiating and must make further write-offs of an unknown dimension.

On 19 March 2008, Balda will present detailed figures for 2007. At present, it is only known that the Medical segment exceeded the budgeted sales revenue of EUR 25m in 2007 and that a pretax profit with increased sales can be expected for the company as a whole.