Polish Kety sees lower 2009 profit after weak Q4

WARSAW, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Polish aluminium products maker Kety expects its sales to fall by a tenth this year and earnings to slip by 4 percent on slumping demand caused by the global slowdown, it said on Wednesday. The company, which reported a 91-percent slump in fourth-quarter net profit, targets 1.05 billion zlotys ($299.3 million) in 2009 sales and a bottom line of 60.7 million. Kety plans to cut investments by a fifth to 68 million zlotys this year. "The 2009 budget may be conservative, but we need to focus on cash, our inventories and loans to maintain a good relationship with banks," Chief Executive Dariusz Manko said in a television interview. The group plans a "symbolic" dividend, he added. Kety shares were flat at 60 zlotys in morning trade after opening 4 percent lower. They are mostly unchanged this year after shedding 63 percent in 2008. Kety, whose portfolio spans from aluminium profiles to flexible packaging, missed its full-year net profit forecast of 65 million zlotys last year, closing the year at 63.4 million, after the fourth-quarter bottom line stood at 2.6 million. The company, which has 30 percent of its debt in foreign currencies, suffered from a sharp depreciation of the Polish zloty in the second half of 2008, which almost tripled its financial costs in the fourth quarter to 29.7 million zlotys. "Weak demand for its core extruded products and the weak zloty blowing apart its bottom line through increased interest payments on Euro-denominated debt have undone Kety," Wood & Co. analyst Annie Krasinska wrote in a note. "But this has been widely flagged by the company." Kety took a 1.5 million zlotys charge in the October-December period to cut 130 jobs, or 5 percent of its workforce, this year. ($1=3.508 Zloty) (Reporting by Adrian Krajewski; Editing by Hans Peters)