Ukraine's Life Quarterly Loss Rises on Currency Depreciation

­The Ukrainean mobile network operator, Life has reported that its Q3 2009 revenue grew by around 8.5% comparing to previous quarter and reached US$93.2 million. Life's revenue in US dollars declined by 27.1% compared to a year ago mainly due to the depreciation of the local currency against the US$.

The net loss rose to US$42.5 million from US$24.2 million a year ago.

Life recorded positive EBITDA of US $7.4 million during the third quarter. The EBITDA margin grew from 2.7% to 7.9% comparing with the previous quarter. Life's capital expenditure amounted to $32 million in the third quarter of the year. The net loss increased both on annual and quarterly basis primarily due to higher translation loss.

The CEO of Life:) Tansu Yegen has commented: 'Our optimistic expectations came true and we can see that operational results of the third quarter are giving the ground to say that the next quarter will bring even better outcome. Our revenue in hryvnia is increasing, whilst the figure in USD is not indicative due to the further depreciation of local currency. In a crisis environment, we offered interesting promotions with a lot of bonuses, which are very popular among our subscribers, such as 'Call Twice Cheaper' and 'Night Life:)' campaigns. We are highly targeted to keep the current subscriber base and to grow it through affordable mobile communication offers for our subscribers. Our next big task is to enhance the positive operational trends".

In Q3 2009 Life's subscriber base kept increasing and reached 11.8 million with growth of 10.3% on annual basis, and the operator's market share has grown to 22%. At the same time, in the third quarter the company experienced a slight decrease by 2.5% in the number of active subscribers quarter-on-quarter basis mainly due to the decrease in the number of double-sim card users on Life's network.

Posted to the site on 13th November 2009