PPF Telecom Group

Yettel, O2, and CETIN – PPF Telecom Group’s companies in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia – operate their enduser and infrastructure services separately. PPF pioneered this approach in 2015, when it split infrastructure owner-ship and operation from commercial services in the Czech Republic.

The group’s commercial arm serves endusers in the consumer, corporate, and public sectors through the O2 and Yettel brands, which offer mobile voice, data and text messaging, fixed broadband, multiplatform internet television, fixed voice lines, and corporate data networks.

CETIN’s branches provide wholesale telecommunications infrastructure services, equitably, to all operators in the market. In the Czech Republic, CETIN owns and operates the country’s largest fixed network, with nationwide coverage. CETIN’s Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian branches operate radio access networks for mobile services under network sharing agreements. This improves network coverage and capacity, accelerates modernisation, and generates energy savings.

PPF Telecom Group’s long-term strategy rests on the highest-quality telecommunications networks and the delivery of a superior customer experience. The group operates in stable markets with positive trends supporting sustainable business growth. At the end of 2023, 18 million customers relied on PPF Telecom Group’s mobile services, and more than a million customers used the group’s fixed broadband.

State-of-the-art 5G mobile networks are in operation in most of the group’s markets. The group has accelerated the rapid roll-out of 5G networks by sharing expertise and resources within the group’s infrastruc-ture arm. 5G services will continue driving the wave of innovation and growth in telecommunications for years to come. The group pursues fixed-mobile convergence through its own fixed network in the Czech Re-public, which it recently expanded via a significant acquisition, wholesale access in Serbia, and fixed wireless access in other markets, coupled with the group’s own, next-generation TV platform. 

The group is investing to develop a fully digitised customer journey and product suite. This includes integrating partner companies’ complementing services, such as financial services or media and entertainment, to further improve the customer experience.

As a result, the group’s customer base is growing and maturing, and the group again reported solid revenue and EBITDA growth in 2023. The group’s companies generate predictable cash flows that are resilient to business-cycle fluctuations and adverse global influences, most recently the Covid pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine.

In 2023, PPF announced a partnership with Emirates Telecommunication Group Company (e&), in which e& will acquire a stake of 50% plus one share in a company that will control PPF Telecom Group’s as-sets in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Serbia. The joint venture, leveraging PPF’s regional know-how and experience and e&’s global scale and expertise, will be seeking to unlock synergies and enhance customer offerings in order to drive further growth. The transaction is expected to close in a few months.