News - GTS news

GTS Central Europe has new owners

· "One Region, One Network, One Offer"
· Planning to opening of retail operations in Austria and Germany. France, Italy, Switzerland also in the pipeline.
· GTS Telecom will continue its organic growth remaining positioned in the multinationals and large businesses market segment.

Bucharest, May 30, 2008 - GTS Central European Holding B.V. (GTS CE) the leading Central European alternative fixed-line telecommunications group (GTS CE) announced the successfully closing of the acquisition deal for 100% of GTS CE shares, between the Consortium of private equity funds led by Columbia Capital, M/C Venture Partners and Innova Capital, started with GML last December. No financial details were disclosed..

Columbia Capital and M/C Venture Partners are both US-based financial groups focused on investing in the telecommunications and information technology sectors, while Innova Capital is one of the leading private equity groups focused on Central European Region. Other members of the Consortium include Bessemer Venture Partners together with other selected private equity investors.
The Consortium appointed Mr. Adam Sawicki as the CEO of GTS CE. Prior to joining GTS CE Adam Sawicki served as vice president and head of West Europe and North America with International Carrier TeliaSonera.

GTS CE -Unrivalled footprint in the region
GTS CE is the leading alternative fix-line telecom service provider in the region, with a telecommunications network of almost 60,000 kilometers. GTS CE's primary countries of operation are The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. The group has developed partnerships and network extensions in the neighboring countries of the Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, Slovenia, Croatia, the Balkans, Turkey and Central Asia.
The group is one of the major consolidating factors in the regional telecom sector. GTS CE integrated in the last couple of years telecom operators like: Aliatel (The Czech Republic -2004), Energis (Poland -2004), Contactel (The Czech Republic -2005), Telenor /Nextra (The Czech Republic and Slovakia -2005). In 2007 GTS CE launched the unique MPLS network, a unique, robust, and high-quality region wide asset. While covering all five GTS countries the MPLS network has one single Network Operation Centre (NOC) located in Prague and offers centralized performance management and pro-active network maintenance.
With an unrivalled footprint in the region, and the cutting edge technologies implemented, the MPLS network provides GTS CE with a unique competitive advantage that strengthens the company's leading positioning on regional fixed-lines telecom market.

Compelling financials
The GTS CE consolidated revenues tripled in the 2003 - 2007 interval. The group closed the 2007 fiscal year with a sustained growth of 3.6 percent compared to 2006, reporting Eur396 million in revenue, while EBITDA grew 21 percent to Eur 71 million.
As revenue structure, GTS Novera, the Czech subsidiary, delivered 51 percent of the group revenues, while the Polish subsidiary GTS Energis contributed with 26 percent. Hungarian subsidiary GTS-Datanet, Slovakian GTS Nextra and Romanian GTS Telecom accounted for 14 percent, 6 percent and 4 percent of the total group revenues.

GTS CE -Strategic plans
"One region, one network, one offer - this will be our strategy for the next years. Our objective is to capitalize on the excellent opportunities offered by the unique, region-wide network of the company" - said Adam Sawicki, recently appointed CEO of GTS CE. "Our cross-borders retail MPLS service offered to multinational companies has been very successful, and therefore we are to further expand the range of regional retail telecommunications services. In order to support regional sales, we plan to broaden our horizons with the opening of retail operations in Austria and Germany. Moreover, France, Italy and Switzerland are also in pipeline. Besides this, we do not rule out the possibility of further acquisitions in the region, either" - added Sawicki.

GTS Telecom The Romanian Quality Leader
GTS Telecom the Romanian subsidiary of GTS CE is the Quality Leader on the alternative telecom market in Romania, playing a major role in broadening the group service delivery footprint. On the local market GTS Telecom delivers the most reliable and stable telecom services with a constant customer's satisfaction level of 6.4 on a 7 points scale.
On the regional scale GTS Telecom is playing a crucial role in the group widening service delivery opportunities and extending the regional footprint in Bulgaria, Moldavia and Turkey.
Financial figures reported in 2007 reflect for GTS Telecom the correct strategy path, and its outstanding performance in delivering on key objectives to date. The company reported for 2007 revenues increased by 27.7% when compared with 2006, reaching Eur 16.1 million, with EBITDA of Eur 3.9 million.

"Our strategic objectives for 2008 are to continue the organic growth, by increasing sales revenues and efficiency." said Dan Mihãescu, Country Manager with GTS Telecom. "We will continue concentrate on multinationals and large businesses delivering quality, not only in terms of telecom services, but also backing them up with scalable, flexible and customized data-voice-internet-hosting solutions, able to sustain the business development and geographical expansion in Romania and abroad of our customers." added Mihãescu

About GTS Central Europe

GTS Central Europe (GTS CE) is a multi-layered infrastructure based provider of integrated telecommunications solutions for those countries of Central and Eastern Europe lying between Frankfurt and Istanbul. Using its own regional fiber network GTS CE provides fixed voice, data, IP (Internet Protocol), MPLS and broadband services primarily to business customers as well as services to other telecoms carriers, mobile operators and providers of content. GTS CE's primary countries of operation are Czech, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania with network extensions and local partnerships into the neighboring countries of the, Baltic States, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine. GTS CE has more than 1500 employees and reached EUR 396 m revenue and EUR 71 m EBITDA in 2007.
For further information, please visit www.gtsce.com .

About GTS Telecom

GTS Telecom is part of Central Europe, the largest alternative telecom operator in Central Europe, which owns and operates five alternative carriers in Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.

Positioned as Business AcceleratorTM, the company deploys the most stabile communications solutions in Romania, managed up to the connection interface of the clients (end-to-end).
GTS Telecom delivers to the business market a full range of carrier solutions based on SDH, DWDM, and corporate networking solutions MPLS, TCP/IP, X.25 and Frame Relay, Internet services, hosting and voice services.

The company owns and operates the fibre-optic metropolitan network in Bucharest with a capacity of 15Gbit/sec. The MPLS national network with ring topology, has a capacity of 37.5Gbit/sec. GTS Telecom is directly interconnected with GTS Central Europe infrastructure through company's own fibre-optic cross-border network of 82.5Gbit/sec installed in Arad, Oradea, Timisoara and Giurgiu, with back-up connection in Arad PoP.

GTS Telecom owns and operates own DataCenters, first launched in 2000. Built on top of the 15Gbit/sec metropolitan ring DataCenters are the ideal hosting platform providing maximum security, environmental monitoring systems, and guaranteed redundancy for both IP connectivity and power supply

For further detail, please contact
Cristian Copilau
GTS Telecom
Marcom Manager
[t] 031-2.200.200; 021-4.100.100
[f] 031-2.200.222; 021-410.3883
[m] 0740-55.44.04
[e] cristian.copilau@gtstelecom.ro
[i] www.gtstelecom.ro

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