Bulgaria’s leading telecom Bulgarian Telecommunication Company (BTC), operating under the brand Vivacom, is collecting preliminary offers for its sale, reports Mergermarket, a specialized platform for corporate transactions, which in turn cites two other sources familiar with the process.
The object of the sale will be 100% of BTC’s capital and the main initiator is the Russian bank VTB. VTB was among the main creditors in the sale of the telecom in 2016, where the current owner Spas Rusev acquired the company for €330 M, €240 M of which he received from the bank. One of the potential participants in the auction is the French telecom Orange who showed interest in BTC at their previous sale back in 2016. According to Mergermarket, in addition to Orange, there is interest also shown by an unknown financial investor who is looking to buy similar assets in the region.
BTC is the leading supplier of IPTV and broadband Internet in the country. Vivacom’s revenue in 2017 reached €445 M making the company number one among its competitors A1 and Telenor. The company offers its services in 253 own offices and 97 other points of sale. The total consumption of the services provided by Vivacom is distributed between 3.1 M subscribers using mobile services, 1.2 M using fixed telephony, 480,000 for fixed internet and 447,000 subscribers using digital TV (IPTV). The company is the leading provider of digital television in Bulgaria with a 61% market share.
