COMMENTARY: High exposure of Tele2 due to Tisak and Agrokor

Although Tele2's business results are very good and above expectations in terms of revenue, one information from the report published by the Swedish owner Tele2 AB shows a very high exposure to banks, which is the result of Agrokor's major financial problems and of the companies within the concern, mainly Tisak. This exposure rose to very high 123 million Swedish crowns, or HRK 96 million.

As Tele2 claims, the value of receivables from Tisak at the end of the first quarter of this year was 51 million Swedish crowns, or 39 million kuna.

Namely, as Tele2 claims, as the banks were unable to collect from Tisak, they expect payment from Tele2, whereby this telecommunications company states that they hope it will not come to that and that thanks to the new Act, popularly known as Lex Agrokor, Tisak, will be able to fulfill its obligations towards banks.

Let's go back to the business results that show a slowdown in capital investment after a big 4G investment at the end of 2015 and early 2016. The customer base has declined slightly in the first quarter of this year, while on an annual level, at the end of March this year, Tele2 realized growth.

Profit before interest, taxes, amortization and depreciation has increased, while profit before interest and taxes has been negatively reduced to positive zero.

All in all, this is a very good result of the third largest domestic telecommunications company. In a market that is quite saturated and where the fights are with tariffs, Tele2 fights with the strongest telecom operator Hrvatski Telekom and the second largest Vipnet, and these results show once again that the telecommunications market in Croatia has recovered and has started to grow again.