RCS&RDS went from 163 million lei (EUR37 million) revenue in 2004 to RON2.1 billion revenue in 2014. The growth was first made possible by the merger with Internet service provider RDS and then by aggressive acquisitions of smaller businesses, as well as billions of lei in investments.
Romania is different from the rest of the EU when it comes to the telecom industry. The presence of RCS&RDS with a significant market share and significant infrastructure investments, along with some of the largest telecom multinationals led to the price decline in the sector and the rise in the Internet speeds. Therefore, Romania ranks 5th by fixed Internet speed in the world today.
The move at the top of the RCS&RDS puts the company into the spotlight again. RCS&RDS has successfully coped in the competition with multinationals, going from a small cable TV and Internet service provider to the leader of the cable TV and fixed Internet markets. It is also a major competitor on the DTH and landline telephony segments and looking to gain ground on the mobile telephony segment.
RCS&RDS has more than 3.2 million TV service customers now, 2.4 million of whom using cable TV services and about 1.8 million Internet service users. These the business segments generating the highest revenue for the company. The operator has increased its share of the cable TV, fixed and mobile Internet service and telephony markets over the last few years but lost ground on the DTH segment. RCS&RDS rivals are UPC, Telekom, Orange and Vodafone.
RCS&RDS released the surprising news at the end of last week that its CEO, Alexandru Oprea, would leave on April 14, 2015 after 18 years without providing further details about the reasons for his departure but recognizing his significant contribution to getting the company where it is today.
The announcement comes a little while before a meeting of shareholders, which should elect new board members and discuss the 2015 spending and revenue budget on April 30, according to an ad the company published in the Official Gazette.
The departure of Alexandru Oprea came as a surprise in the industry, given how close he was to the owner of the business, Zoltan Teszari, and the length of time he had spent with the operator, which made it look like he would only leave it when he was due to retire.
His abrupt departure after 18 years with RCS&RDS might signal the operator is entering a new development phase, at a time when the EUR3 billion local telecom industry is getting ready for a number of deals and consolidation.
The company did not say who would be Alexandru Oprea’s successor, nor what its expectations from the new CEO were.
In the absence of inside information – the discretion of those working for RCS&RDS is legendary, one might speculate Oprea’s departure may have to do with the company wanting another CEO, who can supervise a listing and potentially the acquisition of a rival, on a market where almost any merger, acquisition or any kind of deal seems possible, given that the multinationals operating in Romania seem to be less and less happy with their profit margins.
Alexandru Oprea has rarely spoken with the media (he only gave ZF one interview in nine years) so there is no way of knowing what his vision for the development of the company for the next few years was. Therefore, the next moves of the operator will not provide clues into what may have caused him to leave, whether it was because of Zoltan Teszari or other shareholders or the banks that financed the operator.
Alexandru Oprea, 56, holds a degree in Electronics from the Polytechnic University of Timisoara, which he got in 1984. He came to RCS&RDS from Analog SA, a cable TV company operating in Timisoara in the nineties and founded by Nicolae Schelean, one of the minority shareholders of RCS&RDS.
Analog SA started expanding to Bucharest in 1997 and teamed up with Brasov-based TVS Holding held by Zoltan Teszari, today’s majority shareholder of RCS&RDS, Ioan Bendei (one of the most important executives in RCS&RDS) and others. The companies merged and expansion started, leading to today’s RCS&RDS.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)