Most large companies that have filed reports with the Bucharest Stock Exchange so far have posted weaker results in the third quarter against the same time last year.

The nine-month financial results, which investors and brokers alike eagerly awaited to end the downward trend of the Bucharest Stock Exchange of the last few months, have been disappointing for the most part until now.

Losses and reduced profits reported by companies overlapping the bad news in the macroeconomy department and the still troubled international markets are hardly reassuring for investors, after three and a half months of decline during which the market lost 7.7 billion euros of its capitalisation.

Until now, out of the 16 companies that reported their nine-month results, seven posted losses in the third quarter, and four more saw their profit go down.

At the same time, half of them posted declines in turnover.

Grid company Transelectrica Bucharest (TEL), the fifth largest company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in terms of capitalisation, posted 21.9 million RON (6.5 million euro) losses in the third quarter, compared with 53.6 million RON (15 million euro) profit during the same period in 2006.

"The decline in Transelectrica's profit comes as a surprise, considering that utility companies are generally among the most stable in terms of the trend of results. I believe this decline is already showing in prices, considering shares have been constantly going down when traded in large volumes for the last couple of months now, while I think they could drop even further in the coming days," says Adrian Ceuca, deputy general manager of Broker Cluj.

Transelectrica's nine-month profit is five times lower compared with the same period last year. Company officials say the slump in profit was caused by its own power consumption and by the regulated rates, whi