Tele Columbus

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Tele Columbus AG

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN DE000TCAG172
founding 1985
Seat Berlin , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management
  • Dr. Daniel Ritz (CEO)
  • Eike Walters (CFO)
Number of employees 1,216
sales 495 million euros (2018)
Branch Cable operators , Internet service providers
Website www.telecolumbus.com
As of December 31, 2018

The Tele Columbus AG is a publicly traded company in the field of cable television and telecommunications . It is a Tier 3 provider. Tele Columbus' services have been offered under the newly created umbrella brand Pÿur since September 2017 .

activity

The Tele-Columbus Group looks after around 3.6 million connected households nationwide. Tele Columbus abolished its so-called basic encryption for digital programs in autumn 2013 . The NDS Videoguard access authorization system has been used for encryption since 2008 . In addition, Tele Columbus encrypted with Conax in the Simulcrypt process until further notice .

Since September 2015, Tele Columbus has also integrated mobile communications products into its own portfolio for the first time, which can be booked at the "2" and "3" combination tariffs. The mobile network partner was MBA-MVNO 1 & 1 Drillisch , who made the O 2 network available to Tele Columbus customers via its mobile bitstream access .

history

Since 1985, Tele Columbus, based in Berlin, has acted as a holding company for cable service companies in Germany, which provided television and radio reception with various concepts in cities and regions and also cooperated with the housing industry. The companies of the Tele-Columbus Group offer analogue cable TV , digital TV , Internet access and cable telephony via broadband cable.

In 1994, Tele Columbus was taken over by VEBA , then sold by Deutsche Bank in 1999 and finally in 2003 to a group of investors. In 2005 Unitymedia (originally Unity Media) took over what was then Tele Columbus.

Escaline Holding and Orion Cable

A consortium of investment firms and banks (Aletheia Capital Partners, ABN AMRO Ventures, Kingsbridge Capital Management GP, Quilvest, Alcentra and Société Générale) founded Orion Cable GmbH in 2005 as a subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based Escáline S. arl and initially acquired over 50 million euros for 629 million euros Percentage of the cable network operator EWT GmbH from the Stritzl family; a little later the remaining shares were acquired. In 2006 Orion Cable took over the Tele-Columbus group from Unity Media; at the same time, part of the group was sold to the regional operators ish and Kabel BW .

Since 2007 Tele Columbus and ewt have been presenting to customers under a uniform brand design, expanding the product range and changing their focus from a technically oriented infrastructure operator to a customer-centric telecommunications service provider.

In September 2007 Orion Cable acquired almost 91 percent of the shares in Primacom , with the wish to merge the company with the Tele-Columbus Group. Orion Cable's attempts to integrate were stopped in 2009 because the integration successes at that time were assessed as too low.

At that time, Orion Cable had around 3.2 million customers, but also debts of 1.7 billion euros. The Tele-Columbus Group alone had a debt of around one billion euros.

Failed takeover by Kabel Deutschland

Tele-Columbus-Haus on Ernst-Reuter-Platz in Berlin

In the summer of 2009 Orion Cable announced its intention to sell its subsidiary Tele Columbus Group in order to avoid bankruptcy itself. In December 2009, a consortium of hedge funds and banks finally acquired the company for only 2.5 million euros. On May 21, 2012 it was announced that Tele Columbus was to be taken over by Kabel Deutschland AG for 618 million euros . However, the final approval for the takeover had to be given by the Federal Cartel Office . At the beginning of December 2012, the Federal Cartel Office issued a press release in which the merger was assessed critically. A final decision should initially be made by January 16, 2013, but the Cartel Office extended the deadline to February 15, 2013. After this period, Kabel Deutschland announced that it would forego the takeover. The company assumed that the Federal Cartel Office would prohibit the merger, since Kabel Deutschland could not meet the required conditions for economic reasons.

initial public offering

Tele Columbus has been listed on the regulated market and Prime Standard on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since January 23, 2015 . The capital increase for the initial public offering generated gross proceeds of 367 million euros. Between June 23, 2015 and March 18, 2019, and again since July 14, 2020, the share has been part of the SDAX .

Acquisitions

Logo from Pÿur

In July 2015 Tele Columbus took over Primacom GmbH , at that time the fourth largest cable network operator in Germany, and thus reached the order of 2.8 million connected households. In November of the same year, the company also acquired the cable network operator Pepcom and increased its customer base to 3.7 million connected households. The takeovers were financed, among other things, with a capital increase of 383 million. After the takeover, Tele Columbus remains the second largest German cable network operator after Vodafone Kabel Deutschland .

Since October 4, 2017, their brands Tele Columbus, primacom, HL komm and pepcom have been combined under the name Pÿur . The letter Ÿ ( Y  with  trema ) is a rare  letter in  the  Latin writing system  in  GermanFrench  and  Hungarian . According to Marketing Director Tobias Schmidt, Pÿur should be pronounced like the English "pure" and stand for simplicity and performance. Press spokesman Rudoph Attlfellner spoke of a "cheeky colon". The name of the company remains unchanged Tele Columbus.

United Internet joins the company

In February 2016, United Internet announced that it had acquired a stake of 9.8% in Tele Columbus and that it had concluded a contract for the acquisition of a further 15.31%, subject to antitrust approval. The takeover of the additional shares was approved by antitrust law in March 2016. This makes United Internet the largest single shareholder of Tele Columbus with a 29.7% share.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Cablevision Europe: Daniel Ritz succeeds Timm Degenhardt as the new CEO at Tele Columbus , notification dated January 27, 2020
  2. a b key figures. Tele Columbus AG, accessed on August 8, 2019 .
  3. heise online: Digital cable: RTL & Co soon also with Tele Columbus unencrypted. In: heise.de. October 1, 2013, accessed October 22, 2019 .
  4. Successful start for the Tele Columbus digital platform. (pdf; 51 kB) Tele Columbus, August 28, 2008, accessed on January 20, 2013 .
  5. Tele Columbus launches mobile phone service , at www.tele-columbus.de ( memento from September 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 14, 2015
  6. Orion Cable - Our Company ( Memento of March 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  7. Tele Columbus is being sold for 2.5 million euros ( Memento from January 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  8. Network operator: Kabel Deutschland takes over Tele Columbus. Handelsblatt.com, May 21, 2012, accessed October 22, 2019 .
  9. Bundeskartellamt is critical of the takeover of Tele Columbus by Kabel Deutschland - the final decision is still pending. Bundeskartellamt, December 7, 2012, accessed on October 22, 2019 .
  10. Kabel Deutschland fails to take over Tele Columbus. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. February 19, 2013, accessed March 2, 2013 .
  11. a b Annual Report 2017. Tele Columbus AG, accessed on December 10, 2018 .
  12. Tele Columbus will be called "PŸUR" in future , teltarif.de, article from August 31, 2017.
  13. ^ Digitalfernsehen.de: Tele Columbus becomes Pÿur
  14. New cable brand PŸUR: Interview with Marketing Director Tobias Schmidt. Retrieved January 8, 2018 .
  15. Matthias Bartl: The new name stands for transparency: Tele Columbus becomes Pÿur . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . ( mz-web.de [accessed on January 8, 2018]).
  16. United Internet buys 25.1% stake in Tele Columbus AG. In: Tele Columbus press release. February 11, 2016, accessed May 20, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Major investor United Internet is pushing for a new supervisory board at Tele Columbus. In: Handelsblatt. May 31, 2019, accessed May 31, 2019 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 42.7 ″  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 15.2 ″  E