Telekom spends EUR 310 million buying cable operators

Telekom Srbija has paid EUR 108 million for the Radijus Vektor cable operator and around EUR 12.5 million for AVcom, the company told Danas.

Their expansion in the cable internet market in the past few months is now worth around EUR 310 million after the purchase of Kopernikus in November 2018 for around EUR 195 million.

As previously stated by Vladimir Lucic, Telekom’s coordinator for the internet and multimedia, the national telecom has thereby gained 120,000 new internet and TV users, formerly users of Radijus Vektor, as well as 18,000 former AVcom users.

This makes the price per user for Radijus Vektor close to the price paid for Kopernikus, which was slightly under EUR 1,000 per user. Telekom paid around EUR 900 for each former Radijus Vektor user and around EUR 700 for each AVcom user.

However, according to the latest available report by RATEL, the one for the third quarter of 2018, Radijus Vektor was the fourth biggest player in the market of fixed broadband internet, with 2.6% of the market, and the fifth biggest cable TV provider when it comes to the number of users, with a 3% share.

Although RATEL doesn’t provide data on the individual number of users of every company, calculations based on the company’s market share put the number of users of Radijus Vektor at the end of the third quarter of 2018 at around 94,000.

Using this parameter, it turns out that Telekom paid around EUR 1,050 per user.

There was some confusion about the number of users during the purchase of Kopernikus as well. According to RATEL’s report for the second quarter of 2018, Kopernikus had around 59,170 internet users and around 51,000 cable TV users, whereas Telekom announced that it had bought an operator with 200,000 users.

The report for the third quarter, however, claims that Kopernikus has 8%, not 3% of the cable TV market, that is, 145,000 instead of 49,170 users.

As France Pesetnik, the former owner of AVcom, told Danas, Telekom took over the operator in mid-December. On the other hand, Zoran Bulatovic is still registered as the owner of Radijus Vektor. The Commission for Protection of Competition approved the takeover of AVcom on December 13 and Radijus Vektor on December 31, 2018.

As Telekom has announced, the company will buy another five smaller cable operators by the end of the first quarter. The remaining major operator is the Post of Serbia with 4% of the cable TV market (around 72,400 users), according to the data from the end of September 2018, as well as 1.7% of internet subscribers (around 26,000 users).

This acquisition would bring Telekom considerably closer to its target of one million users. The recent acquisitions have brought the number of users up to 750,000.

Telekom Srbija a.d. Beograd

Radijus vektor Beograd

RATEL Beograd

AVcom d.o.o. Beograd

Kopernikus Cable Network Niš

JP Pošta Srbije Beograd

Komisija za zaštitu konkurencije Srbije

purchase of telecom operators

Vladimir Lucic

price of Radijus Vektora

price of AVcom

France Pesetnik

Zoran Bulatovic