User:Markenrat/Primacom

Primacom

Primacom is a private cable network operator in Germany with around 1 million connected households and approximately 0.8 million customers. primacom provides services to clients primarily in Eastern Germany (Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia) and in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. The company offers customers a wide range of communications products such as TV (analog, digital, IP), Internet, phone, and applications for elderly care at home and smart metering / telemetry. The company claims to be number 5 in Germany and market leader in its core business in central Germany. The corporate headquarters is based in Leipzig.

History

Company History

primacom was formed in 1998 from the merger of Kabelmedia and Süweda. After the merger, the Group was introduced to the stock exchange of the New Market and the NASDAQ on 22 February 1999 . Since 5 June 2003 the stock of the PrimaCom AG is listed in the Prime Standard of Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

In August of 2000 primacom acquired the Multikabel company in the Netherlands, which was sold to UPC five years later. In September 2007, the Orion Cable GmbH acquired nearly 91% of the shares of primacom group, with the aim to integrate the company with Tele Columbus Group, a company Orion Cable had already acquired. Orion Cable´s attempts to integrate were stopped by primacom in 2009, due to low success estimations. The halt of the integration led to uncertainty at the banks of primacom , so that in December 2009 refinancing negotiations begun.

As part of the refinancing negotiations, the operational business of the primacom Group was acquired by Medfort S.à rl in July 2010. Hence the company´s operational business and the former holding PrimaCom AG were separated. In January 2011 primacom completed the refinancing successfully and is now focused on the development of operating business.

The existing cable network is the main driver of the core business of the company. However, there were some changes over the years. While the core areas of the company were initially divided into two areas - Hessen / Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg on one side and areas in the east of Germany on the other, the existing networks in the western areas of Germany were sold to competitors during the following years. In 2008, the cable networks in Aachen and Wiebaden were sold to Unity Media. In 2010, the city networks in Mainz and Osnabrück were sold to Kabel Deutschland. Primacom began to relocate its headquarters to the eastern part of Germany, following the trend of cable network development. According to information provided by the company this process will be completed by 2011.

Corporate Identity / Logo

primacom revised its brand appearance in September 2010 in order to gain a distinctive appearance back again (Background: during the integration efforts in 2008 the brand appearance of primacom was closely linked to TeleColumbus). According to their own sources the company is using the new color and language design to obey the vision of the company ("We are the leading communications service provider in eastern Germany) and its guidelines (www.primacom.de/unternehmen/vision) while staying close to the brand appearance that is well-known to the customers.

Organisation

The Luxembourg company Medfort S.à rl is holding 100 per cent of shares of the primacom group. In turn Perseus to SA is holding 100 per cent of Medfort S.à rl shares .

The operational business of the Group is led by the holding PrimaCom Management GmbH. Within the holding company the operational assets as well as rights and licenses and also staff are performed in different operating units.

Two Managing Directors are appointed for all operational companies. These are: • Michael Dorn, Chief Executive Officer (CEO, COO), • Dipl.-Ing. Wolf Waschkuhn (CRO)

Key Data

primacom has about one million connected households, most of them are upgraded to the highest standard of technology according to information of the company. The core of the network is the backbone installed by primacom. That is a redundant and automatically-controlled network controlled centrally from Leipzig.

According to its own data, the turnover of the company is currently at about EUR 100 million with earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization of more than EUR 40 million.

Products

A range of services

Besides general products of cable network operators the company currently offers a number of additional innovative products.

Television (analog, digital and IP), internet and phone products are considered as conventional products among the available products from cable network operators. • In the segment of television primacom offers analog signal, digital signal in SD and HD and 3D as well as IPTV. According to Primacom officials, digital signal will be available to all households by the end of 2011. Currently, primacom is able to supply more than 90% of connected households with digital cable TV. From 1 May 2012 (ie after the nation-wide shutdown[AO1] of the analog satelite tv signal, see also www.klardigital.de or www.digitale-initiative.de) primacom will continue to offer all kinds of television signals including analog transmission. This is possible without any problems due to the modern backbone structure. Nevertheless primacom stands for the digital future in television and claims to do everything possible to ensure that customers can enter the world of digital TV as quickly as possible. In the field of digital television primacom feeds among others the Eutelsat bouquet in the SD area. Beside the public and private television channels this provides access to new special-interest channels for family, film, sports, language, entertainment. Public and private high-definition channels of the RTL media group and ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG as well as the full SKY package are also available. primacom has been the first cable network operator in Germany, transmitting digital television already in 2000. This was also made possible because of the company's television signal that can be transmitted via IP in the backbone. This also means that primacom was one of the first IPTV provider in Germany and that the company is already prepared for a change to IPTV in the near future. • Primacom offers Internet speeds of up to 120MBit / s in its upgraded cable networks. By the end of 2011, all households that are connected to the backbone will be upgraded via the DOCSIS3.0 technology by the company in order to be able to offer 120MBit / s to all of these households. • Primacom offers a landline network product which operates via IP signal. As a special feature primacom does not charge calls between primacom customers..

The innovative add-on products of the company are: • several household products, such as emergency call for elderly people or room monitoring, and • telemetry services. These services consist of electronic consumption data recording for the housing industry and transmission of data for monitoring of houses and apartments.

Current range of products

The current range of primacom products is based on the above mentioned products. It is available at www.primacom.de/angebote .

Availability

The availability of primacom products is constantly changing due to the network expansion in several areas. Already existing networks are only negatively affected by changes if the company is shutting them down. Otherwise, the performance level is constant at the current level in any case. Availability can be checked on the Internet at www.primacom.de/service.

External links

• Website of the company group: www.primacom.de

• www.primacom.de/unternehmen/geschichte for company's history

• www.primacom.de/unternehmen/presse for the latest articles and product information

• www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/it-medien/primacom-geht-wieder-auf-kundenfang an article in Handelsblatt on the financial restructuring process and 2010 results (german)