e&
UAE telecommunications company e&, formerly Etisalat, has agreed to acquire 100 percent of SBB d.o.o. Serbia (SBB), a cable television and broadband internet service company, for €825 million ($854 million).
The deal will allow e& PPF Telecom to combine SBB with its Serbian mobile subsidiary Yettel, offering mobile, fixed broadband and pay-TV services.
The acquisition will be funded through debt to be raised by e& subsidiary. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals.
SBB reported a revenue of €244.1 million in 2023 and has more than 700,000 customers.
In September 2024, e& said that the European Commission had approved the acquisition of Czech PPF Group’s telecoms business across four European countries.
The UAE telco signed a binding agreement with PPF Group to acquire a 50 percent plus 1 share economic stake in both the service and infrastructure companies of PPF Telecom’s assets in Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia.
The company, which trades on the Abu Dhabi stock exchange, owns a 14.6 percent stake in London-listed Vodafone. In July, e& confirmed plans to buy a stake in Ethio, a state-controlled operator in Ethiopia.
The share closed at AED17.02 on Tuesday.
The Serbian deal is part of e&’s continued expansion into Europe. Matt Smith, a senior editor at AGBI, said in a column this week that Gulf telcos’ international plans had not been very successful.
“STC and Etisalat should ease their minority shareholders’ angst by focusing on home comforts instead. That way, they will avoid making further vanity investments and can raise dividends,” Smith said.