Baltic, Markets and Companies

According to unofficial information MTG wants to sell its media channels in the three Baltic countries as one package and SEB has been authorized to look for a buyer. The price is nearly 100 mln euros and potential buyers are rather searched for outside of the Baltic countries.

Media analyst Toomas Leito said that he has also heard of the group's channels being sold as one package. "It has been thought through as it is reasonable to sell TV3 in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as Viasat since the price of such a package is very high," told Leito.

According to Leito he has no information regarding concrete sales numbers and has not really calculated the possible value of such a transaction, but he speculated that the sales price could be as high as 200 mln euros. "Since it is such a big transaction, a large Scandinavian company could probably buy it. It is not very likely that someone from Estonia could buy it," Leito said. "Starman has been mentioned, but I think it unlikely that Starman would be able to scrape together such a sum, even if they wanted to," he added.

Selling the Baltic business operations of MTG is an attractive offer for a potential buyer, Leito said. According to Leito TV3 Lithuania is doing very well and TV3 Estonia will see some profit this year for the first time. He added that he does not know how Viasat is doing.

Leido forecasts that it will take a couple of years to complete a sales transaction as the new owner will definitely take at least six months to examine the background, bookkeeping and so on.

The sales of MTG in the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria last year grew 11.8% to 2.53 bln Swedish kronor. The group's profit in the television segment in the region increased 44.7% to 288 mln kronor.

MTG's market share among 15-49-year-old viewers was 40.3% in 2015, which is on the same level as in the previous year.

In Estonia MTG owns Viasat Eesti, TV channels TV3, TV6 and 3+ as well as radio channels Power Hit Radio and Star FM.