Mail.Ru Grp’s IFRS net profit rises 25.4% to 3.5 bln rbl in Jan–Mar

MOSCOW, Apr 28 (PRIME) -- The aggregate net profit of Russian Internet giant Mail.Ru Group increased 25.4% on the year to 3.478 billion rubles in January–March, as calculated under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the company said Friday in a statement.

The aggregate segment revenue grew 24.4% to 12.636 billion rubles. The aggregate segment earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 10.7% to 4.884 billion rubles.

The net cash position was at 8.428 billion rubles as of March 31.

“We are pleased to report our final IFRS audited results for 2016 which, as in all previous years, are fully in line with the preliminary announcement in February. We are also pleased to announce we have a strong start to 2017 with January–March revenue growth, including Pixonic and Delivery Club on a pro forma basis…While we continue to invest in new projects, which at this stage are not contributing to EBITDA, we still retained a good control over costs and hence EBITDA margins were 38.6%,” Dmitry Grishin, chairman of the board, and Boris Dobrodeyev, CEO (Russia), said.

“Advertising revenue growth remained strong in January–March with the trends that we saw in 2016 continuing. Despite us using a part of our inventory to boost our new mobile products advertising revenues grew 24.3% to 4.871 billion rubles. The fastest growing advertising revenues were in-feed advertising across the social networks and in mobile.

“Through 2017 we will continue to focus on the growth of mobile and video advertising and on the continued roll out of new ad technology. Engagement continues to rise across all platforms and our unique position allows us to continue to take advantage as advertising budgets continue to shift to digital, and especially mobile.”

Mail.Ru Group raised its 2017 revenue guidance to 17–21%, or 50 billion–51.7 billion rubles, from 16–19% previously.

“We will continue to invest in our new initiatives and do not expect them to contribute to EBITDA this year. We also do not anticipate any meaningful revenue contributions from BeepCar or Youla in 2017. Taking this into account we expect our 2017 EBITDA margin to be around 40%,” Grishin and Dobrodeyev said.

(56.9707 rubles – U.S. $1)

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