Russia’s VimpelCom owner Q3 IFRS revenue rises 4% to $2.5 bln

MOSCOW, Nov 9 (PRIME) -- Revenue of Amsterdam-headquartered telecom giant VEON, the sole owner of Russian mobile operator VimpelCom, increased 4% on the year to U.S. $2.456 billion in July–September, as calculated under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), VEON said in a statement on Thursday.

Revenue from mobile and fixed service revenue rose 3.6% to $2.358 billion, of which mobile data revenue spiked 27% to $482 million.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 16.4% to $1.042 billion.

Capital expenditures excluding licenses grew 4.1% to $398 million.

Net debt widened 26.9% to $8.672 billion.

In January–September, revenue increased 9.5% on the year to $7.154 billion. Mobile and fixed service revenue rose 9.2% to $6.891 billion, of which mobile data revenue jumped 36.4% to $1.383 billion.

EBITDA rose 15.7% to $2.834 billion. Capital expenditures excluding licenses grew 14.4% to $994 million.

“VEON reported another solid performance in the third quarter with further growth in revenue and EBITDA, driven in particular by strong results in Russia, Pakistan and Ukraine, and also delivered on a number of our strategic imperatives,” VEON CEO Jean-Yves Charlier said.

“The solid operating performance and ongoing strategic execution have helped to grow further the underlying equity free cash flow, which reached $965 million for the first nine months of the year. This underscores the success of the performance transformation program which we launched in August 2015, where we committed to generate at least $750 million of annualized cash flow improvements by the end of 2018 and further underpins the sustainable and progressive dividend policy that we announced in February of this year. In addition, we can confirm our full year 2017 guidance, which we recently updated in conjunction with the Uzbek som liberalization.”

VEON confirmed its targets for 2017 with a single digit organic revenue growth, flat to low single digit organic growth of underlying EBITDA margin and underlying equity free cash flow excluding licenses of $850–950 million.

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