Kyivstar, the largest mobile operator in Ukraine, restored its performance to the highest possible level in April-June, the company’s president, Oleksandr Komarov, said in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
“Actually, I am satisfied with the results. You always want more, but given the turbulence that the company went through in the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year, I think we have recovered to the maximum possible levels,” he said.
According to Komarov, the results of the first quarter were affected by the gratitude/loyalty program, which was implemented in connection with the cyber attack. The total budget for the elimination of the consequences of the cyber attack, for strengthening the system and the program of loyalty or thanks to subscribers amounted to UAH 3.6 billion.
“If in the first quarter we decreased by 14% year-on-year, then in the second we are already growing in general in the company by approximately 9.5% (we are talking about the increase in turnover in the second quarter compared to the second quarter of 2023, – IF-U). Growth, as I said, is not uniform. New business is growing the most. The pace is almost 70% year-on-year,” said the company’s president.
He emphasized that “Kyivstar” has become one of Microsoft’s top partners regarding the modern workplace and Microsoft Azure. This direction generates a large cash flow. The film and television platform Kyivstar TV is growing significantly, revenues from BigData are returning to pre-war levels, and perhaps even surpassing them. Demonstrated the growth of Helsi applications.
“At gross, we already make approximately half a billion UAH in revenue from new businesses at the level of a quarter,” said Komarov.
In addition, he noted a 16% increase in fixed line communications in the second quarter compared to year over year. Mobile communication grew by approximately 8.5%. “Kyivstar” has returned to the usual levels of margin and profitability, Komarov emphasized.
As for the subscriber base, according to him, it is affected by many factors, in particular, the outflow associated with the loss of territory and the migration of people outside of Ukraine. The number of subscribers using SIM cards of two or three operators has increased due to long-term outages and an unprecedented cyber attack. According to his observations, the subscriber base is decreasing in Ukraine in general.
At the same time, record new connections are being observed. New connections have been growing roughly in the 30-40% range year over year since the large-scale blackouts began. Many people buy a sim as a backup, but then they may not use it. “In July, when the outages were serious, we observed an incredible increase in the number of new connections in mobile communications,” the president of “Kyivstar” noted.
“Trends that make me very happy – the number of customers who used our digital services reached 8.8 million in the second quarter. The level of LTE penetration is now more than 60% in our base. In the second quarter, the use of mobile Internet per customer increased to 11 GB per customer compared to 9.9 GB in the second quarter of 2023,” Komarov noted.
Earlier it was reported that the revenue of the largest Ukrainian mobile operator “Kyivstar” in April-June this year increased by 9.5% compared to April-June 2023 – up to 9.425 billion UAH, and in dollars – by 0.4%. to $236 million. Kyivstar’s capital investments in April-June this year amounted to UAH 2.28 billion, which was 63.1% higher than in the second quarter of last year and 2.1 times higher than in the first quarter of this year.
