Mail.Ru Group IFRS revenue jumps 30% to 17 bln rbl in Apr–Jun

MOSCOW, Jul 26 (PRIME) – The aggregate segment revenue of Russian Internet company Mail.Ru Group increased 30.2% on the year to 17.077 billion rubles in April–June, as calculated under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the company said on Thursday in a statement.

Aggregate segment earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) declined 13.3% to 3.659 billion rubles.

Including one-off non-cash impairment charge of 1.698 billion rubles, the aggregate net profit declined 76.4% to 633 million rubles. Excluding this charge, the net profit declined 13.1%.

In January–June, the group aggregate segment revenue grew 29% on the year to 33.577 billion rubles. Aggregate segment EBITDA declined 17% to 7.652 billion rubles.

Including one-off non-cash impairment charge of 1.698 billion rubles, the aggregate net profit declined 51.2% to 3.039 billion rubles. Excluding this charge, the net profit declined 24%.

Net cash position was at 8.565 billion rubles as of June 30.

“We are pleased to report our results for the second quarter of 2018 where we have continued the strong growth seen in January–March. We have now finalized the consolidation of ESforce and report all numbers including ESforce on a pro-forma basis,” said Dmitry Grishin, chairman of the board, and Boris Dobrodeev, CEO (Russia) of Mail.Ru Group.

“As we stated previously our investments in 2018 are January–June weighted and in April–June we have continued to put significant resources behind a number of our new projects, especially our online-to-offline initiatives, and while none of these projects contributed to EBITDA they grew as a percentage of sales.

The executives also said that taking into account, both the start to July–September and the trends the group anticipates for July–December “we expect to see margin improvement in July–December.”

“This is driven by a combination of a continued ramp up of Youla and Delivery Club revenues, the release schedule and related marketing spend in games and the planned ad revenue related costs reduction in social networks. As a result we are confident that for 2018 costs were January–June weighted and hence see profitability increase in July–December. This allows us to re-iterate our previous 2018 EBITDA guidance of between 21 billion to 22 billion rubles even including ESforce on a pro-forma basis,” they said.

(63.0836 rubles – U.S. $1)

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