Norwegian telecom operator Telenor is looking to grow outside its traditional business in Serbia and is looking for potential acquisition targets, the CEO of the company's Serbian arm told EMIS.
“We will always be looking in Serbia if there are some acquisitions to be made. That could be business-to-business type of services, providing connectivity, fixed infrastructure and so on,” Ove Fredheim said in an interview.
“In Telenor, we traditionally talk about ourselves as about a mobile network operator and what we have been engaged in is to sell connectivity to our customers. What we are focusing on more and more, is still to be excellent in that connectivity, but it is also converging more and more towards services. These services are our ambition, to grow within that space,” the executive explained.
When asked about the profile of the target, Fredheim said: “We never comment on the specifics of concrete initiatives before they are concluded. It will be sectors that have synergies with what we are already doing or sectors that are in telco-convergence-gaming.”
Norwegian Telenor has been operating in Serbia since 2006. Its wholly-owned subsidiary, Telenor Serbia, claims to be the largest mobile operator in the country with over 3.5mn subscriptions. The company’s total revenues for the first quarter of 2015 amounted to NOK 853mn.
Telenor itself is one of the world’s largest mobile operators with 192mn subscriptions. The company has strong positions in Central and Eastern Europe, where it operates in Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro.