Maciej Baranski, an analyst at Warsaw-based broker Bank Zachodni Wbk, believes that the Poland’s equities will recover what they lost in the short-term and the economy will do well for the next 2 1/2 years as cheap manufacturing costs have put factories at full capacity.
If you’re betting on a continued global recovery and see that banks are doing well off the March lows, PLND may do better than most. Poland is one of the more advanced Eastern European countries and should benefit from the lower U.S. dollar and higher oil and metals prices.
The largest sector in PLND’s portfolio is financials at 40%. The financial sector trades at a price-to-book value of 2.4 and a calculated 2.2 times book value in 2010, compared to an average 1.6 times book value for financials in other frontier markets. The fund’s largest holding is in PKO bank at 9.3%, and it trades at 2 times it breakup value. [Poland: a good place to start investing?]
For more information on Poland, visit our Poland category.
- Market Vectors Poland (NYSEArca: PLND): down 2.4% in the last week; expense ratio of 0.76%; financials is 40.2%, energy is 13.6%, industrials is 11.0%, consumer staples is 8.6%, materials is 7.8%, telecommunication services is 6.8%, consumer discretionary is 6.7%, information technology is 4.1% health care is 1.2%
Max Chen contributed to this article.