News - GTS news

GTS Central Europe has new owners

• "One Region, One Network, One Offer"
• Opening new subsidiaries in Austria and Germania. Are also considered France, Italy, Switserland.
• GTS Telecom will continue the organic growth trend and will continue positioning on the business market

Bucharest May 30, 2008 – GTS Central Europe, the leading Central European alternative fixed-line telecommunications group (GTS CE) announced the successfully closing of the acquisition deal for 100% of GTS CE shares, between the Consortium of private equity funds led by Columbia Capital, M/C Venture Partners and Innova Capital, started with GML last December. No financial details were disclosed.

Columbia Capital and M/C Venture Partners are both US-based investor groups focused on investing in the telecommunication and information technology sectors, while Innova Capital is one of the leading private equity groups in Central Europe. Other members of the Consortium include Bessemer Venture Partners and selected private equity investors.

The Consortium appointed Mr. Adam Sawicki to the position of CEO for GTS CE. Adam Sawicki joins the company as CEO from TeliaSonera International Carrier, where he served as vice president and head of West Europe and North America.

GTS CE -unrivalled footprint in the region
GTS CE is the leading alternative telecommunications service provider in the region, with a telecommunications network of almost 60,000 kilometers. GTS CE’s primary countries of operation are Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania with network extensions and local partnerships into the neighbouring countries of the Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, Slovenia, Croatia, the Balkans, Turkey and Central Asia. GTS CE played a major role in consolidating the alternative telecommunications sector in Central Eastern Europe in the last couple of years. GTS CE acquired several telecommunications companies operating in the region: Aliatel (Czech Republic) in 2004, and Energis (Poland), Contactel (Czech Republic), Telenor/Nextra (Czech Republic and Slovakia) in 2005.

Apart from these acquisitions, GTS CE has undergone major organizational changes in the last years. From a loose network of Czech, Slovakian, Polish, Hungarian and Romanian subsidiaries at the beginning of the decade, the company has become a well-organized Central European group with a single network and a uniform regional sales and technical team.
Presently, GTS CE has an unrivalled footprint within the region, and it provides an excellent competitive advantage for the company in the CEE telecommunications market.

Compelling financials
Due to the acquisitions and the restructuring of the company, revenues of GTS CE have tripled between 2003 and 2007.
The company closed the fiscal year 2007 with outstanding results: consolidated revenues of the group increased by 3.6 percent compared to 2006 and reached € 396 million, while the EBITDA grew by 21 percent to € 71 million.
This significant growth was boosted primarily by GTS Novera: 51 percent of the group revenues came from the Czech subsidiary in 2007.
In Poland, GTS Energis also delivered excellent results and contributed 26 percent to group revenues.
Hungarian subsidiary GTS-Datanet, Slovakian GTS Nextra and Romanian GTS Telecom accounted for 14, 6 and 4 percent of total group revenues.

Strategic plans for the future
“One region, one network, one offer – this will be our strategy for the next years. Our objective is to capitalize on the excellent opportunities offered by the unique, region-wide network of the company” – said Adam Sawicki, recently appointed CEO of GTS CE.
“Our cross-border retail MPLS service offered to multinational companies has been very successful, and therefore we are to further expand the range of regional retail telecommunications services. In order to support regional sales, we plan to broaden our horizons with the opening of retail operations in Austria and Germany. Besides this, we do not rule out the possibility of further acquisitions in the region, either” – he added.

GTS Telecom: the Romanian quality leader
GTS Telecom, the Romanian subsidiary of GTS CE is the quality leader on the alternative telecoms market in Romania, playing a major role in broadening the group service delivery footprint. On the local market GTS Telecom delivers the most reliable and stable telecom services with a constant customer satisfaction level of 6.4 on a 7 point scale.
On the regional scale GTS Telecom is playing a crucial role in the widening of group service delivery opportunities and extending the regional footprint in Bulgaria, Moldavia and Turkey. Financial figures reported in 2007 reflect for GTS Telecom the effectiveness of the current strategy, and its outstanding performance in delievering on key objectives to date. The company reported revenues, which increased by 27.7% when compared with 2006, reaching € 16.1 million, with an EBITDA of € 3.9 million. For the fiscal year 2008 the company will continue its organic growth, the business plan forecasting increased revenues of 10%. "Our strategic objectives in 2008 are to continue the company's development by increasing sales revenues and efficiency" said Dan Mihăescu, Country Manager of GTS Telecom. "We will continue to concentrate on multinationals and large businesses delivering quality, not only in terms of telecom services, but also backing them up with scalable, flexible and customized data-voice-internet services which can sustain their business development and geographical expansion in Romania and abroad" he added.

About GTS Central Europe
GTS Central Europe (GTS CE) is a multi-layered infrastructure based provider of integrated telecommunications solutions for those countries of Central and Eastern Europe lying between Frankfurt and Istanbul. Using its own regional fiber network GTS CE provides fixed voice, data, IP (Internet Protocol), MPLS and broadband services primarily to business customers as well as services to other telecoms carriers, mobile operators and providers of content. GTS CE’s primary countries of operation are Czech, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania with network extensions and local partnerships into the neighboring countries of the, Baltic States, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine. GTS CE has more than 1500 employees and reached EUR 396 m revenue and EUR 71 m EBITDA in 2007. For further information, please visit www.gtsce.com.
www.gtsce.com.

About GTS Telecom
GTS Telecom is part of Central Europe, the largest alternative telecom operator in Central Europe, which owns and operates five alternative carriers in Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.
Positioned as Business AcceleratorTM, the company deploys the most stabile communications solutions in Romania, managed up to the connection interface of the clients (end-to-end). GTS Telecom delivers to the business market a full range of carrier solutions based on SDH, DWDM, and corporate networking solutions MPLS, TCP/IP, X.25 and Frame Relay, Internet services, hosting and voice services.
The company owns and operates the fibre-optic metropolitan network in Bucharest with a capacity of 15Gbit/sec. The MPLS national network with ring topology, has a capacity of 37.5Gbit/sec. GTS Telecom is directly interconnected with GTS Central Europe infrastructure through company’s own fibre-optic cross-border network of 82.5Gbit/sec installed in Arad, Oradea, Timisoara and Giurgiu, with back-up connection in Arad PoP.
GTS Telecom owns and operates own DataCenters, first launched in 2000. Built on top of the 15Gbit/sec metropolitan ring DataCenters are the ideal hosting platform providing maximum security, environmental monitoring systems, and guaranteed redundancy for both IP connectivity and power supply.
For more information please contact

Cristian Copilău
GTS Telecom
Marcom Manager
[t] 031-2.200.200; 021-4.100.100
[f] 031-2.200.222; 021-410.3883
[m] 0740-55.44.04
[e] cristian.copilau@gtstelecom.ro
[i] www.gtstelecom.ro

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