IR Blog

We are proud to share two articles in the Financial Times published this week, reporting on MTS and our content portal, Omlet.ru. We have talked about Omlet.ru in this blog before and it has recently received Meffys award.

During our trip to New York to celebrate the 10th anniversary of listing on the NYSE, Mikhail Shamolin, President and CEO of MTS, met with the Financial Times journalists. Mikhail talked about content distribution in Russia, how we can overcome the piracy grip, and why MTS has a window of opportunity to carve a strong position in the potentially lucrative content market.

Here are the articles:

Financial Times, Russian Omlet mushrooms with legal downloads

Financial Times, Russia’s MTS in talks to boost web content

Last week we have celebrated the 10th anniversary of listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). MTS’ management went to New York to ring the NYSE closing bell and meet with partners of the Company based in the city. Click here to watch the video of the closing bell.

This anniversary offered us the opportunity to reflect on the progress MTS has made during the past ten years. In the year 2000, when we listed here in New York, we were a Moscow-based operator servicing just around 3 million mobile users. Ten years later, MTS has over 100 million customers across Russia and five neighboring countries. We have offered basic voice services back in 2000, and now we have expanded our offering to mobile and fixed voice and broadband, pay TV as well as content and entertainment services. We have also been recognized among the strongest global brands in the BRANDZ survey published by the Financial Times that has listed MTS as the most valuable brand in Russia and among the top 100 globally (LINK), and we continue to be the premiere blue-chip Russian company.

To make the occasion more memorable, we decided to bring a bit of Russia to the financial center of New York. We placed a huge banner inspired by the Soviet poster art on the façade of the NYSE and gave out Russian food to around 2,000 employees of the NYSE. Following the closing bell, MTS management and the CEO of NYSE Euronext hosted a cocktail reception at the NYSE to commemorate the anniversary.

More photos from the event can be viewed here.

Two MTS executives were named among the 40 most important telecom leaders under the age of 40. Mikhail Shamolin, President and CEO of the Company, and Mikhail Gerchuk, Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, became the only executives from Russia and the CIS to make the “40 under 40” list by Global Telecoms Business magazine.

You can download the full report or read extracts here.

FOX Business Network, interviewed Mikhail Shamolin, CEO and President of MTS, in Davos last week. Shamolin attended the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos, using the opportunity to meet with his peers to learn how others are managing through the global economic downturn and discuss trends and ideas shaping the telecom and entertainment industries. In the video below, Shamolin discusses the future of telecoms and the potential for growth in our core markets of Russia and the CIS.

President and CEO of MTS, Mikhail Shamolin, recently gave an interview on TheStreet.com. In the interview, Mr. Shamolin provides his views on the Company's stock performance vis-a-vis investors' perception of Russian companies as well as answers a few questions on the latest developments in the Russian telecommunications market.

Earlier this week MTS became the only Russian telecommunications company to obtain the ISO 9001:2008 certificate of conformity for its Quality Management System that covers all of our locations in Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The certification audit was conducted by SGS, the global leader in inspection, verification, testing and certification services.

 From left to right: Alexander Gamov – Director of the Quality Assurance Department at MTS, Peter Marriott – Vice-President of SGS SA, Konstantin Timoshechkin – Manager in charge of business development at SGS S.A. (Eastern Europe).

On Thursday, November 19, 2009, Dr. Michael Hecker gave an interview on Sky News. In the clip below, Dr. Hecker shares his thoughts on the current trends in the telecommunications industry including our recent acquisition of a controlling stake of Comstar-UTS by MTS.

Please watch below the video presenting our 3i strategy. We have shot this video over the last few months across various locations of MTS, including our retail stores, call centers and technical facilities. The video also includes interviews with the management of MTS: Mikhail Shamolin, President and CEO of the Company; Michael Hecker, Vice President for Strategy and Corporate Development; and Mikhail Gerchuk, Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.



Below we have also posted a longer version of the video that includes in-depth interviews and more details about some of our recent initiatives, including the launch of Omlet.ru content portal.

On November 13, we disclosed our financial results for the third quarter 2009. As always, we posted a wealth of information about the results on our website – the press release, the presentation and the Excel spreadsheet with summary financial information for 2004-2009. 

As was stated during the conference call, we had a good quarter with revenues for the Group growing 12% q-on-q to nearly $2.3 billion on the back of healthy subscriber additions, a seasonal increase in usage, rising data consumption and a growing contribution from our retail sales. The Group’s OIBDA increased 11% q-on-q to $1.1 billion with an overall margin of 46.9%. Less the effect of our retail investments, the margin improved from Q2 2009 to 50.7%.

Though we continue to see an impact from macroeconomic uncertainty, we realized growth q-on-q in our Russian operations of 10% to 56 billion rubles. In addition to the seasonal dynamics of our business, we are succeeding in driving our active subscriber base and realizing 50% year-over-year growth in both data content and traffic revenues. We also witnessed a greater contribution from handset sales, which exceeded 3.2 billion rubles or 5.7% of revenue.

Following the 2009 Analyst and Investor Day in Moscow (see previous blog entry), we have posted audio recordings of each session on our website.

Below you can find a few photos from the event.


Mikhail Shamolin, President and CEO of MTS, opening the first session, "Corporate Strategy 2009+"