Mail.ru says Jan–Mar IFRS net profit falls by 22% to 2.2 bln rbl

MOSCOW, Apr 23 (PRIME) -- The group aggregate net profit of Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group decreased 22.2% on the year to 2.203 billion rubles in January–March, as calculated under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the company said on Thursday in a statement.

The group aggregate segment revenue increased 14.3% to 22.332 billion rubles.

The group aggregate segment earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) grew 4.1% to 5.729 billion rubles.

The net debt stood at 11.422 billion rubles as of March 31.

“While the current unprecedented situation means that 2020 has started with some significant challenges, we feel relatively well-positioned given our profitability and well-diversified revenue streams. Advertising, which accounts for less than 40% of the group’s revenues has a clear correlation with local business performance and outlook, which started to be impacted by the combination of COVID-19 and the oil shock in March,” said Chairman of the board Dmitry Grishin and CEO (Russia) Boris Dobrodeev.

“However Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) Game, which accounts for over 30% of revenues, has seen net positive effects since the back end of March, especially across traditional home PC and console platforms As a result, we are able to offset some of the effects of ongoing local advertising weakness with MMO games revenue streams, most of which are importantly international.”

Mail.ru Group also said that it maintains its intention to list on the Moscow Exchange as part of the continued commitment to public markets and liquidity improvement.

“Amidst the ongoing turbulence and remaining uncertainty, we see the current crisis as a trigger for further digitalization of broader segments of the Russian economy and its population. The 2020 shocks will, we expect, accelerate the shift towards covering a broader set of people’s needs through online platforms: from food to medicine delivery, from entertainment to education or work, from socialization to privacy,” Grishin and Dobrodeev also said.

(77.0416 rubles – U.S. $1)

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