Latvian Development Finance Institution Altum Posts Eur 4.3 Million in 2018 Profit

RIGA, Feb 28 (LETA) - Latvian development finance institution Altum made EUR 4.289 million in profit last year, which is a reduction of 36.8 percent from 2017, according to the company's unaudited financial report to Nasdaq Riga.

The profit of Altum Group contracted 55 percent year-on-year to EUR 3.919 million in 2018.

The state-owned company's assets were worth EUR 501.966 million at the end of last year, down 10.6 percent from the end of 2017 when they were worth EUR 453.668 million.

"In the previous year, Altum issued funding EUR 159.4 million under various State aid programs, while the total financial instrument portfolio already exceeded half a billion euros. Compared to the previous year, in 2018 the volume of new transactions grew by 44 percent moreover, in line with the business strategy, the share of indirect financial instruments or guarantees in the new transactions considerably exceeded the share of loans and constituted 56 percent of the new transactions. In the previous year, we finalized the selection of all new generation venture capital funds managers, launched a new loan program for small and medium-sized enterprises in rural territories, improved funding conditions for a number of guarantee instruments as well as successfully introduced a new instrument portfolio guarantees which enable credit...