The Polish media group Agora plans to exit the country’s DTT market with the sale of its stake in Stopklatka.
In a regulatory filing it says that it and Kino Polska TV have signed a letter of intent to undertake talks until the end of June about the sale of the 41.14% of shares in Stopklatka that Agora currently owns.
However, this does not imply a binding agreement to undertake a sale, though in the filing Agora says “execution of the transaction shall mean discontinuation of investment in Stopklatka and, thus, discontinuation of Agora’s television activity”.
Kino Polska TV owns 41.5% of Stopklatka, which has operated a channel named Stopklatka TV since March 2014. Agora has already sold Metro TV, another DTT channel, to Discovery Polska. This was undertaken in two stages, with the latter initially acquiring 48.94% in December 2016 and then exercising its option to buy the remaining 51.06% in September last year.
Results just published by Agora show that the company had total sales of PLN1,165.5 million (€277.6 million) in 2017, down by 2.7% on a year earlier. EBITDA was PLN116 million (+2.5%), whole it losses increased from PLN13.2 million to PLN79.3 million.
