July 18 (SeeNews) - Telekom Romania said on Thursday it will lay off 692 of all 5,831 people it employs, as part of a reorganisation programme which began over two years ago.
The group will dismiss 438 employees of Telekom Romania Communications and 254 people at Telekom Romania Mobile Communications, Telekom Romania said in a press release.
The positions to be restructured will be decided based on the company's business objectives and in line with the strategy of simplification and digitisation, it added.
"The continuation of the transformation process ensures the long-term growth of the group of companies, in the context of the rapid development of technology, a highly competitive market, as well as of the global changes in business models, which especially affect technology companies," Telekom Romania said.
Earlier this month, local media reported that Deutsche Telekom could sell its Romanian subsidiary’s business lines separately to speed up the divestment process.
Negotiations are being held with local telecommunications group RCS&RDS to buy Telekom Romania’s cable TV business, with Orange for the mobile telecommunications business, and with a Russian investment fund represented by Bulgarian investor Spas Roussev for the fixed and Internet networks, local news portal Economica.net reported at the time.
According to the media report, the negotiations for the sale are in an advanced stage and the company wishes to exit the Romanian market in the following months.
Telekom Romania's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell 20.8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019 to 26.2 million euro ($29.6 million), its parent company, Greece's OTE, has said.
In January, OTE Group, Deutsche Telekom's subsidiary in Greece, said it has not entered talks for the sale of its shareholding interest in Telekom Romania.
OTE is present in Romania since 2014 through Telekom. OTE's units in Romania - fixed-line operator RomTelecom and mobile operator Cosmote - were rebranded as Telekom Communications Romania and Telekom Mobile Romania, respectively, in September 2014.
Telekom Communications Romania is owned by OTE with 54% and by the Romanian communications ministry with 45.99%, while Telekom Mobile Romania is owned by OTE Group member Cosmote Mobile Communications with 69.9%, Telekom Romania Communications with 30% and minority shareholders.
In May, OTE Group completed the sale of its entire stake of 99.757% in Telekom Albania to Bulgaria-registered Albania Telecom Invest company for a total gross equity consideration of 50 million euro ($57.2 million).
Albania Telecom Invest is owned by Bulgarian businessman Spas Roussev and by Albanian-Bulgarian investor Elvin Guri. Roussev is also chairman of the supervisory board of Sofia-based telecommunications group BTC trading as Vivacom.
($ = 0.8904 euro)