The parties have agreed not to disclose the price or any other terms of the transaction, Ekspress Grupp informed the stock exchange.

The purpose of the acquisition is to grow the digital media business and expand into a niche that the publications of Ekspress Grupp do not yet cover on a regular basis. The shared goal of Ekspress Grupp and Geenius Meedia is to continue offering attractive content for the readers of geenius.ee.

After the transaction, Geenius Meedia will continue to operate as a separate media company and its main founders Hendrik Roonemaa and Siim Saidla will remain actively involved in the company's management and daily operations. As a group, Ekspress Grupp offers Geenius Meedia synergy in functions supporting the media business, providing notably bigger growth potential for the fast-growing company.

The transaction is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2021 and is partly financed with a loan from SEB Pank. With this transaction, Ekspress Grupp assumes the obligation to issue 371,000 share options of AS Ekspress Grupp that will be exchanged as underlying asset relating to the options issued by Geenius Meedia and that will be redeemed in May 2023.

The share option program will be approved by the general meeting of shareholders of Ekspress Grupp, which will be convened at a time notified separately to the shareholders.

The transaction is not considered as a significant transaction according to the rules and regulations of the NASDAQ Tallinn Stock Exchange. AS Ekspress Grupp confirms that the members of the group's management and supervisory boards are not personally interested in the transaction.

Founded in 2015 by tech journalist Henrik Roonemaa and publisher Siim Saidla, Geenius Meedia has evolved as a modern media company with 13 web portals, podcasts and print magazines. The content of Geenius Meedia is available at geenius.ee. The web portals of Geenius have about 300,000 monthly users and will have approximately 4,000 paid digital subscriptions.

The nine-month sales revenue of Geenius Meedia was approximately 1.4 million euros, having almost doubled compared to the same period last year.

AS Ekspress Grupp is a Baltic media group whose key activities include web media content production, publishing of newspapers, magazines and books. The group also manages electronic ticket sales platforms and ticket sales sites in Latvia and Estonia. Ekspress Grupp employs 1,400 people, owns leading web media portals in the Baltic states and publishes daily and weekly newspapers as well as magazines in Estonia.

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