The Bulgarian operator Bulsatcom has denied recent reports in the local and international media that the company is facing bankruptcy.
In an official statement provided to Broadband TV News, it said: “With its 35% market share Bulsatcom is Bulgaria’s undisputed pay-TV market leader, as well as the country’s third largest provider of broadband services. The company is a financially stable, growth-oriented and strongly performing asset, controlled by a group of top-tier institutional investors, such as BlackRock, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Blantyre Capital, the Bulgarian Development Bank and Integral Venture Partners. In March 2020, after having completed a financial restructuring of the company, the investors’ group brought in new professional management, led by Stanislav Georgiev as a CEO, to push through measures to operationally restructure the company, stabilise its financial performance and steer the business back to growth. At present the measures bear fruit, namely Bulsatcom is on a successful track to upgrade its DTH clients to interactive TV (via network-agnostic IPTV and streaming services), delivers to its clients rich and diverse content portfolio, including its own movie channels, a channel dedicated to Bulgarian sports, numerous 4K channels, as well as an Android TV-based service. “b-box” is arguably among the most advanced and feature-packed products in the region, also capable to cater to the Bulgarian diaspora abroad.
“Bulsatcom’s founders and former co-owners started the company as a family-run, small-town cable TV distributor some 17 years ago. Within just a decade they steered the company towards a market dominant position, initially by offering satellite-based TV services and later on, IPTV. Despite its undisputed market leadership, Bulsatcom temporarily struggled through a period of some financial instability in the years 2016-2019. The founders and then co-owners of the company undertook two ambitious projects, foreign to the core-business of the company. They invested in two simultaneous, internally competing and investment-intensive ventures: launched their own satellite, called “Bulgaria Sat”, as well acquired a 4G licence and established an MNO. Financed by loans that were only partially served, the two ventures eventually brought Bulsatcom to a financial hardship, which demanded the intervention by the company’s creditors, resulting in financial restructuring. BlackRock, Blantyre Capital and EBRD recognised the market leader Bulsatcom as a promising opportunity to enter this Eastern European market and opted, along with the Bulgarian Development Bank, also an institutional investor, to invest and transform the company back into the financially and operationally stable asset that it is today.
“Bulsatcom’s retained market leadership, its recovered financial stability and its constantly improving business performance motivated also one of Bulsatcom’s former co-owners, a minority shareholder after the restructuring, to attempt to reacquire the company. What ensued was an unsuccessful execution of a pre-determined buy-back option in Dec 2020, due to a lacking approach. Disputes in court followed, as well as multiple public statements and legal actions, seemingly aimed to destabilise and devalue the asset, in order to reduce Bulsatcom’s attractiveness to other investors.
“Most recently, pulling out a previously unannounced “Golden parachute” and combining it with some inflated invoices issued by friendly companies, which Bulsatcom refused to recognise, the former owner submitted a claim for insolvency of Bulsatcom to the Bulgarian court. This tactic is unfortunately not unpopular in the Bulgarian business and legal environment, where the submission of such claims is simply the matter of a court fee of £110. With regards to this claim, Bulsatcom’s management remains confident that the truth will prevail and that the Bulgarian court will very soon rule this insolvency claim as unsubstantiated.
“Today Bulsatcom is operationally well capitalised and benefits from close engagement and continued financial support from its investor group. The company stays firmly in its market-leader position, constantly expanding its TV channels content portfolio and curating prime drama titles in its self-run movie channels action.box, cine.box and comedy.box, with the mission to deliver the best TV entertainment to its clients’ homes. Under its new management, Bulsatcom has been the first operator to introduce in Bulgaria Eurosport 4K, the Turkish-drama channel Dizi, BBC Earth, LoveNature 4K. Using innovative broadcast technologies, Bulsatcom was the first company to deliver live coverage of the cycling tour of Bulgaria on its b1b.box channel, fully dedicated to promoting and broadcasting Bulgarian sports”.
