United Group’s latest annual report provides some fascinating insights into the largest and most dynamic provider of electronic communication services in South-East Europe.
Founded as a Serbian cable TV operator in 2000 by Dragan Solak, currently the chairman of the group’s advisory board, it has grown significantly in recent years and especially since securing the international investment firm BC Partners as a majority shareholder in March 2019. Indeed, it now has key media and telecom assets in all the countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as in Bulgaria and most recently Greece.
Digging down into the numbers, we see that United Group’s revenues grew by an impressive 63% in FY2021. This was thanks to several factors including the acquisitions of Telemach in Croatia, Nova in Greece and Vivacom and Nova in Bulgaria, as well as the migration of subscribers to multi-play packages.
Serbia Broadband (SBB) was the leading generator of revenues among United Group’s operators in FY2021, accounting for 12% of the total. However, an even larger share (16%) of revenues was claimed by the content company United Media.
In Revenue Generating Unit (RGU) terms, United Group ended 2021 with 11.33 million, or 4% more than a year earlier. Again, this was down to several factors, including its acquisitions in Bulgaria.
Interestingly, the group says that it currently produces 50% of the total content on its national (terrestrial) and most of its pay-TV operations, with its primetime programmes typically receiving ratings of between 20-50%.
Cable pay-TV is one of United Group’s core businesses and as of the end of 2021 it had around 1.624 million subscribers, with the highest numbers being in Serbia (735,000) and Bulgaria (453,000). Meanwhile, its DTH platform Total TV had 1.013 million subscribers at year’s end.
United Group also operates two OTT content platforms, namely the regional service Eon and international NetTV Plus. As of the end of 2021, the latter had 100,000 subscribers.
Investment in network infrastructure is key to the group’s future and it already classifies Slovenia as a ‘Giga’ country. A growing number of cities in Serbia are also connected to Giga services and Bosnia & Herzegovina will become a ‘97% Giga country’ at some stage this year.
United Group is clearly growing at a rapid rate and in 2023 is likely to report even more impressive figures.
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