According to DCD, Liberty Global has just announced a deal to sell its UPC Slovakia business to O2 Slovakia, an affiliate of e& PPF Telecom, for about €95 million. That’s roughly $110 million for the TV, broadband, and telephony provider, which currently serves over 600,000 households. The company says the transaction values UPC Slovakia at around seven times its estimated 2025 adjusted EBITDA. The sale needs regulatory approval, and there’s no set date for completion yet. This is the latest move in a clear pattern, following CEO Mike Fries’s statement earlier this year about spinning out “one or more” subsidiaries. Just last year, Liberty Global completed the spin-off of Swiss telco Sunrise.
Liberty’s European Exit Strategy
Here’s the thing: this isn’t a one-off. It’s a trend. Liberty Global is systematically streamlining its European portfolio, and it’s been pretty transparent about it. Selling a 5% stake in Vodafone earlier this year, spinning off Sunrise last year, and now ditching Slovakia. They’re basically cashing out of non-core or competitive markets to focus on their major joint ventures and operations. Think Virgin Media O2 in the UK, VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands, and Telenet in Belgium. Those are the big, scaled assets they want to double down on. Everything else? Seems like it’s on the chopping block if the price is right.
What The Buyer Gets
For e& PPF Telecom, this is another piece in a larger Central and Eastern European puzzle. They just spent a whopping €1.5 billion earlier this year to buy United Group’s units in Serbia. Snagging UPC Slovakia for €95 million is a comparatively smaller, but strategic, bolt-on acquisition. It gives them more scale and a stronger fixed-line footprint in the region. At seven times estimated 2025 EBITDA, it’s not a steal, but it’s probably a fair price for a solid, established customer base. The real work will be integrating it with O2 Slovakia and finding those synergies. Can they make it work?
The Bigger Picture For European Telecom
So what does this tell us about the European telecom market? Consolidation. It’s relentless. Larger groups are gobbling up smaller operators to gain scale, because let’s be honest, competing as a standalone national player is brutally tough. The regulatory environment is a huge factor here—this deal still needs the green light from the authorities. But the direction is clear: fewer, bigger players. For companies like Liberty Global, it’s about being a scale player in a few key markets rather than a scattered presence across many. I think we’ll see at least one or two more of these divestments from them in the next 18 months. It’s just following the blueprint they’ve already drawn up.
