By Christiaan Hetzner
FRANKFURT, June 22 (Reuters) - Porsche could be running out of options to repair its finances, with Berlin set to reject its request for a state loan and a purported stake sale to Daimler unlikely, analysts said on Monday.
"The Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW) wants us to improve it," said a Porsche spokesman, referring to the company's application for a loan.
Indications first emerged on Friday that state-owned development bank KfW had recommended against extending the heavily indebted Porsche an emergency 1.75 billion euro loan ($2.43 billion).
Manager magazin reported later on Friday that Porsche was in advanced talks to sell a stake to fellow Stuttgart carmaker Daimler. Porsche said it was unaware of any move and Daimler responded that "everyone talks to everyone in the industry".
But analysts said that they doubted any sort of deal was likely, since strategically Daimler would be more interested in gaining synergies with Volkswagen even if such a deal were costly and raised anti-trust issues.
"There is an industrial logic for Daimler to do a deal but in the sense of Volkswagen/Audi and not Porsche directly. VW is, however, already well positioned and would not profit from this (a Porsche-VW deal), so a deal appears unlikely," said M.M. Warburg analyst Bjoern Voss.
Porsche has about a 51 percent stake in ordinary shares in VW and wants VW to join it to create an integrated auto group with 10 brands.
Porsche is also in the midst of trying to agree with Qatar about a stake sale, which could shore up its finances enough to make a merger agreeable to cash-rich Volkswagen.
However, VW finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch, in an interview with Reuters on Saturday, cast doubt on whether Porsche and VW were on track to reach a deal to create an integrated carmaker.
"Porsche needs the industrial integration with VW, which started years ago. Daimler sitting at the table at Porsche cannot really help that process," Sal Oppenheim said in a note to clients.
"These press reports (about talks with Daimler) only underline the desperate situation of Porsche," it said.
"With a loan from the KfW government bank becoming increasingly unlikely (according to comments of German government politicians over the weekend), the search for new funds seems to be getting almost 'desperate'. In the end we think that Porsche will have to do a massive rights issue and sell its sports car business to VW," it said.
Daimler has repeatedly stated over the past two years that it was not looking to buy any more car brands after a disastrous alliance with Chrysler and has been conserving capital and slashing costs since the financial crisis began hitting the car industry.
Porsche has been trying to tie up with VW.
It was forced to abandon its plan to amass a 75 percent voting stake in VW that could have given it access to the latter's significant cash reserves, after it racked up 9 billion in debt to buy 51 percent and nearly failed at the end of March to agree with its banks to roll over a 10 billion euro credit line.
Porsche since has had to borrow 700 million euros from VW using the controlling families' Porsche Holding car dealership group as collateral, while also apply for state aid after private banks refused to lend it 1.75 billion.
The recommendation of KfW's internal loan committee is not the final word on a state loan as Berlin could still the give the green light for aid. But Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told Bild am Sonntag over the weekend that Porsche's chances for a loan had diminished.
By 1438 GMT, shares in Daimler were flat. Porsche declined 2.8 percent and VW's ordinary shares dropped 2.9 percent, while rival carmaker BMW fell 4.4 percent.
($1=.7197 Euro) (Reporting by Christiaan Hetzner, Edward Taylor, Hendrik Sackmann and Anna Willard)