BrokerCreditService looked at the state of events in the consumer sector of Russian market of shares in January-March 2007; the shares of companies dealing in consumer goods appear to be doing much better than the stock market on the whole (the RTS index only went up .7% since the beginning of the year). A lot of such producers came up with very impressive annual reports for 2006 and drew up statements regarding their development strategies for 2007.

‘There were, however, a few sad occasions. The report produced by Kalina (RTS: KLNA), the cosmetics giant, turned out to be the first quarter’s greatest disappointment. Its net profits suddenly dropped by 37% in 2006, and their profitability now constitutes only half of what it used to be. This is why Kalina’s shares dropped by 23.4% - the figure unknown to any other company within January-March 2007,’ BrokerCreditService experts say.

All in all, the consumer sector of the share market looks good, with turnovers increasing by 65% compared to October-November 2006; the bond turnovers of consumer goods producers, grocery retailers, real estate entities, and pharmaceutical companies rose from $3.3 million to $4.5 million; the number of transactions went up 36%. People’s disposable incomes grew 12.7%.