Page 24 - bne_Magazine_September_2018

24 I Companies & Markets bne September 2018
Greece's OTE for €717mn, later merging the two companies. In the first nine months of 2017, Telenor Bulgaria's Ebitda edged down 0.2% y/y to €99mn. On the Bulgarian market, Telenor competes with Mtel - the local unit of Telekom Austria, and Bulgarian telecommunications group BTC, which operates under the brand Vivacom.
Telenor entered the Serbian market in 2006, acquiring a
70% stake in Mobi63 for €1bn. Subsequently, the Norwegian company also acquired the remaining 30% stake. Its wireless unit competes with Telekom Srbija's mobile arm, MTS, and VIP Mobile, a unit of Telekom Austria Group. The company said in 2016 that it planned to invest over €40mn in the development of 4G services for the Serbian market during the year, and could launch 5G services by 2020.
In Montenegro, Telenor has owned the biggest telecommunica- tions company since 2004. It competes with T-Mobile, owned by
French car share BlaBlaCar buys Russian rival BeepCar of Mail.ru
IntelliNews Pro
French online car pooling service BlaBlaCar will acquire its rival in Russia BeepCar owned by internet services major Mail.ru Group, Kommersant daily reported citing the announcement of the companies. The deal will start a partnership under which BlaBlaCar will be promoted across Mail.ru platforms.
Car pooling is an emerging segment in Russia's rapidly growing digitally-enhanced transportation market. Boosted by the economic crisis, BlaBlaCar wants to modernize travelling in Russia. Mail.ru and taxi-aggregator Vezyot have recently concluded a convertible loan agreement
in preparation for a new investment round.
Earlier in 2018 Mail.Ru Group along with the MegaFon mobile major invested in taxi-aggregator CityMobil, with Mail.ru purchasing 26% for $12mn.
Sberbank CIB expects the car-pooling market in Russia to expand by RUB377bn by 2025, as it will compete with tradi- tional public transportation and by RUB474bn by replacing personal transportation. The total car sharing and taxi market in 2017-2025 is seen growing 2.5-fold to RUB1.6 trillion.
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the Hungarian unit of Deutsche Telekom, Magyar Telekom, and with M:tel, which is majority owned by Telekom Srbija.
Hungary's Telenor is the second largest player on the market with a 27.5% market share, far behind market leader Telekom, which has 47.5% of the market. Telenor Hungary's market value could be between HUF235-325bn, according to esti- mates of Hungarian business portal Portfolio.hu.
Telenor and PPF have agreed on a deferred purchase price, where €400mn of the proceeds will be paid in four instalments over four years. The agreed transaction price corresponds to an enter- prise value (EV)/Ebitda multiple of 6.4 based on 2017 Ebitda.
PPF's plans for another media sector deal in Bulgaria were thwarted recently, when the antitrust body banned the sale of Nova Broadcasting Group, which includes Nova TV and is con- trolled by Swedish Modern Times Group (MTG), to PPF Group.
BlaBlaCar plans to double the activity in Russia after the acquisition of BeepCar, according to the CE of BlaBlaCar Nicholas Brusson. An estimated number of users in Russia for the French company stands at 15mn users out of 65mn globally.
BeepCar had 2mn registered users as of end of 2017 and had over 5mn app downloads on iOs and Android devices.
Yandex also wants to compete in the car pooling market with its pilot Yandex.Poputka app launched in the beginning of 2018 in Krasnoyarsk and Rostov-on-Don, with about 10,000 downloads in Google Play.
The analysts were sceptical of Mail.ru taxi market ambi- tions given the given the considerable first-mover advantage Yandex whose Yandex.Taxi service closed a mega-deal with Uber in Russia and CIS.
Another rival on the market online taxi booking service Gett said in June it raised an extra $80mn for operations in Russia from Access Industries of Leonid Blavatnik, Baring Vostok, MCI, and Volkswagen Group among the investors.