The companies listed on BSE have already submitted their annual financial reports, which failed to bring the optimism back to the market in a time when it was severely hit by the corrections on the international stock exchanges.

In the following three months we can expect local indexes to continue to be influenced by the global markets and more specifically, by the markets of the developing countries and the countries in the region.

The 2008 Q1 reports of holding companies may provide the necessary boost, but this effect will only be tangible if it coincides with a positive trend on the international markets.

The steep decline of Bulgarian blue chips started at the end of 2007 and picked up pace amid the growing concerns for a possible recession in the US. This led to a withdrawal of foreign investors from the developing markets, which quite naturally hurt Bulgarian stock indexes.

Moreover, some companies posted quite disappointing results, or at least not as good as investors had been expecting.

However, the long and deep correction we witnessed on BSE, with SOFIX returning to levels from a year ago, seems rather strong.

The P/E ratio of SOFIX companies stands at 21.14 which is not bad for a developing market and for companies posting considerable annual growth each year.

The average growth of companies in SOFIX (excluding the two largest and the two smallest and bearing in mind the results are non-consolidated) stood at a little over 100% last year.

CompanyProfit Growth'07РЕPrice Change (1year)Albena12,63%22,581,27%Elana REIT433,00%16,3666,19Euroins77,00%14,8215,91%IH Bulgaria106,60%91,4328,53%Kaolin108,70%21,738,00%M+S Hydraulic27,90%38,2232,35%Monbat119,530,48177,37%Neochim16,10%54,2521,20%Orgachim-30,40%43,53242,40%Petrol-41,00%78,2542,90%Sopharma40,90%30,84-4,50%Sparky Eltos901,00%23,17427,98%BACB51,70%16,5912,95%CCB70,80%25,92-10,49%Toplivo21,30%19,33-23,05%Chimimport 185,00%19,981,10%