11.   PDVSA can afford some erosion of its domestic market, analysts said, especially as it focuses on more profitable areas.

12.   The company is expanding internationally, Schafer said, and is moving into more profitable areas of its business.

13.   The majority of its earnings come from lending to large corporations, one of the most competitive and least profitable areas of banking.

14.   The university has a strong contingent of professors who deal in polymers, including profitable areas like plastic recycling.

15.   This market, which IBM created and then deserted, now looks less and less like a pipsqueak and more and more like a profitable area.

16.   Other potentially profitable areas of cooperation include manufacturing, agriculture, construction and tourism, he said.

17.   Chekalin said that some illegal immigrants were working in very profitable areas and taking billions of U.S. dollars out of the country each year without paying taxes.

18.   ACEA added that this could lead to concentration of retail business in the cities and most profitable areas, with no clear benefit to the consumer.

19.   Alex Kwan, director of Culturecom, said the magazine had been running at a loss and that they wanted to redirect resources to profitable areas.

20.   But commissions were the most profitable area of activity for the bank.