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KYIV

Kyivstar GroupN/A
Nasdaq / Telecommunication Services
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2026-06-02
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2026-05-22
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Earnings documents stored for KYIV.

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Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-22

Kyivstar Group Ltd (KYIV) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Highlights: Robust Revenue Growth Amidst Market ...

GuruFocus.com

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Release Date: May 13, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) reported a significant revenue increase of nearly 27% year-over-year, reaching $323 million. EBITDA grew more than 23% to $173 million, indicating strong operational performance. The company achieved a 32% growth in equity-free cash flow, amounting to $87 million for the quarter. Digital revenue more than tripled year-on-year, now comprising almost 21% of total revenue, showcasing successful digital transformation. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) maintained a strong cash position with $353 million, supporting future growth and investments. The company experienced a loss of 400,000 mobile subscriptions in Q1, attributed to market trends and demographic challenges. Despite strong revenue growth, the company faces challenges with high CapEx intensity, reaching 20.9% of revenue. The geopolitical situation in Ukraine, including the ongoing war, poses significant risks and uncertainties for the business. The company is dealing with increased energy costs and regulatory impacts, which could affect future profitability. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) faces challenges in maintaining subscriber growth due to a decline in double SIM usage and demographic shifts. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 1 Warning Sign with KARO. Is KYIV fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Q: In mobile, there were 400,000 subscription losses in Q1, which was higher than Q1 last year. Can you explain the factors contributing to these net losses, and how do you see net adds developing throughout the year? Additionally, what is driving the impressive mobile ARPU growth? A: The decline in Kyivstar's customer base reflects overall market trends, primarily driven by a decrease in double SIM users, a decline in new growth adds due to price increases, and demographic changes in Ukraine. Despite these challenges, Kyivstar maintained its market share. Mobile ARPU growth is driven by increased data consumption and disciplined pricing strategies addressing inflation and GDP growth. (Oleksandr Kamarov, CEO) Q: Can you elaborate on the strong growth in the digital segment, particularly for Kyivstar TV and Uklon? Are there any seasonal factors affecting these segments? A: Uklon's gro...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-15

Kyivstar Group Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

MarketBeat

Interested in Kyivstar Group? Here are five stocks we like better. Kyivstar delivered strong Q1 growth, with revenue up nearly 27% year over year to $323 million and EBITDA rising more than 23% to $173 million. Equity free cash flow also increased almost 32% to $87 million, showing continued cash generation despite wartime operations in Ukraine. Digital platforms are becoming a bigger driver of the business, as digital revenue more than tripled to $67 million and now makes up about 21% of total revenue. Multiplay customers, Uklon, Kyivstar TV, Helsi and Tabletki.ua all posted strong expansion, helping diversify the company beyond core telecom. Management raised full-year 2026 guidance, now expecting revenue growth of 11% to 14% and EBITDA growth of 7% to 10% in U.S. dollar terms. The company also plans to keep investing in network resilience, broadband, and new initiatives like Starlink-based services and further acquisitions. Kyivstar Group (NASDAQ:KYIV) reported double-digit first-quarter growth and raised its full-year 2026 outlook, citing resilient telecom demand, expanding digital platforms and continued cash generation despite operating in Ukraine during wartime. Chief Executive Officer Oleksandr Komarov said Kyivstar “started 2026 with strong execution,” with revenue reaching $323 million, up nearly 27% year-over-year. EBITDA rose more than 23% to $173 million, while equity free cash flow increased almost 32% to $87 million. → Rocket Lab Just Hit a New All-Time High—Time to Buy or Let It Breathe? Komarov said the company’s telecom core remained resilient while its digital ecosystem continued to scale. Digital revenue more than tripled year-over-year to $67 million, representing almost 21% of total revenue in the quarter. The company said that was up more than 5 percentage points from the prior quarter and more than 13 percentage points from a year earlier. Kyivstar’s telecom revenue grew 8% year-over-year to $256 million. The company served 22 million mobile customers during the quarter, with annualized churn of 16%. Mobile ARPU rose 14.1% year-over-year to $3.80, supported by higher data usage and pricing actions, according to management. → MP Materials Is Quietly Building a Rare Earth Powerhouse Komarov said customers continued moving to 4G and consuming more data. Monthly data consumption grew 31% to almost 15 gigabytes per user, and nearly 70% of...

TranscriptFY2026 Q12026-05-14

FY2026 Q1 earnings call transcript

Earnings source - 138 paragraphs
Operator

Hello. Welcome to Kyivstar's 1Q 2026 results presentation. For those of you who have joined the Zoom webinar, if you would like to ask a question, you can use the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen at any time to join the queue to ask a question, and you will be called upon during the Q&A session. For those of you watching on the webcast, if you would like to submit a written question, please use the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. These questions can also be sent in at any time during the presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Cole Akeson, you may begin.

Cole Akeson

Thank you. Good afternoon and good morning. Thank you all for joining us to discuss Kyivstar Group's or Kyivstar's first quarter results. I am Cole Akeson, Group Director for Kyivstar Investor Relations. Joining me today are Kaan Terzioğlu, Chairman of the Board, Oleksandr Komarov, the CEO, Boris Dolgushin, our CFO, and Anand Ramachandran, Chief Corporate Development Officer for VEON. Oleksandr will begin with strategic and operational highlights, followed by Boris with a review of our financial performance. We will open the line for questions. Before we begin, please note that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. Further details are available in our SEC filings, including our Form 20-F, filed March 16, 2026. Our earnings release and presentation are available on our investor relations website. With that, I'll hand over to Oleksandr.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you, Cole. Hello, everyone. We started 2026 with strong execution. Our telecom core is resilient. Our digital ecosystem is scaling. The two businesses fit each other. Let me start with the numbers. Revenue reached $323 million. This is an increase of nearly 27% year-over-year. EBITDA grew more than 23% to $173 million. We focus on cash generation. Equity free cash flow grew almost 32% to $87 million for the quarter. Second, our digital transformation. Digital revenue more than tripled year-on-year, reaching almost 21% of our total revenue in first quarter 2026. This is an increase of more than 5 percentage points quarter-on-quarter and more than 13 percentage points from a year ago. Our platforms have scale.

Oleksandr Komarov

We now serve more than 28 million non-unique digital customers, a number now larger than our mobile subscriber base. We also streamlined our report in this quarter, integrating identity services into our digital enterprise vertical to provide a clearer and more consistent view of performance. Identity services are undergoing a transition away from traditional A2P messaging to more varied API-based platforms, becoming more digital than traditional analog mobile. We also moved to reporting customers across service line on three months active basis to provide better comparability between lines and over time. Accordingly, we provide reclassified numbers for past periods to ensure comparability and maximum visibility. Third, our Multiplay strategy. Multiplay customers use voice, data, and at least one of our apps. They generate more revenue individually and are less likely to churn. Multiplay customers grew 31.6% to 8.1 million.

Oleksandr Komarov

They now make up nearly 40% of our active mobile base. This engagement drives the top line. Mobile ARPU rose 14.1% year-on-year to UAH 3.80. Our strategic investments. In February, we consolidated Tabletki.ua. Tabletki.ua is Ukraine's leading online healthcare marketplace. It processed $258 million in gross merchandise value over the two months of consolidation for the quarter. We expanded our cooperation with SpaceX to resell Starlink internet to enterprise customers. Over 5 million customers already use our direct-to-cell messaging services, and we will launch light data later this year. Our first quarter financials, telecom revenue grew 8% to $256 million. Customers are moving to 4G and using more data. Digital revenue grew 257% to $67 million.

Oleksandr Komarov

The consolidations of Uklon and Tabletki.ua drove this surge. Our other digital products also grew organically. Starting from this quarter, we are splitting our EBITDA disclosure to show digital separately from telco and infrastructure. This better clarifies the development of the respective verticals. Total EBITDA rose more than 23% to $173 million. Our telecom and infrastructure core generated $144 million in EBITDA, resulting in a 56% margin. Our digital platforms generated $29 million in EBITDA, producing a nearly 43% margin. Net profit reached $85 million. Earnings per share was $0.37. We invested $67 million in capital expenditure. Our CapEx intensity was 20.9% for the quarter. We generated $161 million in operating cash flow. Equity free cash flow grew 32% to $87 million. Cash generation funds our growth. Our cash position remains strong at $353 million.

Oleksandr Komarov

Now, let's look at the mobile business where we served 22 million customers. Our annualized churn rate was 16% for the quarter. We remain the country's clear market leader. Mobile ARPU grew 14% to $3.80. Customers are moving to 4G and using more data. Data consumption grew 31% to almost 15 GB per user monthly. Nearly 70% of our mobile base is now on 4G. Our fixed broadband base grew almost 12% to move to the 1.2 million customers. This includes 52,000 new users from our recent Shtorm acquisition. Broadband and digital entertainment work closely together. Today, nearly 46% of our broadband users also subscribe to Kyivstar TV. Cross sales and synergies bring us back to the core of our digital growth strategy, Multiplay. Multiplay customers grew almost 32% year-over-year to 8.1 million. They now make up nearly 40% of our active mobile customer base.

Oleksandr Komarov

They also generate higher revenue. The average Multiplay customer generates $5.30 in a monthly ARPU. That is nearly 40% more than the average mobile customer. They spend more now with digital suite, but they also spend more on connectivity. Let's look closer to our digital revenue. Digital revenue grew by 2.6x to $67 million. It now makes up almost 21% of total revenue. Three points about this performance. First, strategic acquisitions enhance our scale. The consolidations of Uklon and Tabletki.ua Drove the bulk of this quarter's surge. That said, the growth is also broad-based. We see momentum across all verticals. Uklon, Helsi, Tabletki.ua, Kyivstar TV, and the digital enterprise business. Third, we have a structural cost advantage. Our telecom customer base provides low acquisition costs. Our Multiplay bundles act as an optimized distribution model. This synergy allows us to scale platforms, profitability, and maintain strong unit economics.

Oleksandr Komarov

Moving to Uklon, our mobility platform. In the first quarter, Uklon generated nearly $33 million in revenue and more than $12 million in EBITDA. This reflects both a scaled business in Ukraine and a growing business in Uzbekistan. The platform processed nearly 44 million rides and 1.5 million deliveries, the latter reflecting an almost 10% rise quarter-on-quarter. Active customers rose to more than 5 million for the quarter. We are expanding the product range. Customers can now book inter-city bus tickets directly in the new Uklon Travel. We continue to explore new ways to develop Uklon further at a comprehensive one-stop mobility platform. Our digital enterprise business is gaining scale with more than $16 million in revenue and 9% increase year-over-year. We manage 2,200 active B2B contracts, up 31% year-on-year. Big data and AI drove the majority of this quarter's growth.

Oleksandr Komarov

The segment's revenue grew 75% to $4.4 million. Cloud revenue grew 42% to $2.3 million. ADWISOR, our self-service advertising platform primarily focused on small and medium-sized businesses, expanded to over 4,000 registered clients. The division also contains Kyivstar.Tech, which binds our ecosystem together and is responsible for one of our most cutting-edge work. An example is our work in cooperation with the Ukrainian government and leading international partners to produce our sovereign LLM, which is trained exclusively on Ukrainian language data to meet the unique needs of Ukrainian clients. Moving to entertainment, Kyivstar TV remains the largest media streaming service in Ukraine. Revenue grew 390% year-over-year to $10.5 million. Last year's shift to gross revenue recognition is complemented by strong organic momentum spurred by two factors. First, customer expansion and engagement. Our customer base reached a new record at the more than 3 million As I mentioned earlier, more than 46% of our fixed broadband base now subscribes to our TV platform. Second, our original content continues to inspire engagement. New crime drama, Tykha Nava, is the most-watched title in the platform's history. Exclusive Ukrainian content attracts new customers and strengthen our ecosystem. We are looking forward to soon being exclusive Ukrainian broadcaster of an upcoming boxing match featuring world heavyweight champion and proud Ukrainian, Oleksandr Usyk. On the healthcare, Helsi is Ukraine's leading health tech platform. We served 4.9 million active digital customers in Q1. Patients booked 2.4 million appointments through the platform. We are scaling the platform paid services. Customer paying the premium offerings increased by more than half quarter-on-quarter to reach more than 87,000. Revenue grew nearly 32% year-over-year to more than $2 million.

Oleksandr Komarov

Helsi powers appointment scheduling, prescriptions, and health records, including integration with Ukraine state health system. The platform makes care easier and faster to access, a win-win for patients and doctors alike. Customers are upgrading for a range of advanced health insights. Our Helsi Superpower telecom bundle helps drive these conversions. Helsi highlights our commitment to corporate social responsibility and ESG. We are expanding access to digital healthcare for Ukrainians during the wartime. We have Tabletki.ua, the leading online healthcare marketplace. We consolidated this business in February. In just two months, the platform contributed more than $5 million in revenue and more than $4 million in EBITDA. Customer volume is strong. The platform facilitated 15.3 million average monthly bookings in the first two months of the year. For the same period, gross merchandise value reached $258 million.

Oleksandr Komarov

We continue work on integrating Tabletki.ua with Helsi, and ultimately with Uklon's delivery network. We expect these synergies to drive deeper engagement across our digital customer base. All these parts come together in our growth strategy. We intend our core connectivity business to maintain market leadership. We focus on retaining a high quality customer base and driving technological innovation. For example, over 5 million customers use our direct-to-cell satellite messaging, and we expect to launch light data later this year. In fixed broadband, we aim to expand market share. We plan to drive this expansion through both organic growth and targeted acquisitions. This market brings entire household into our ecosystem, mutually reinforcing the mobile and digital businesses. Third, our digital ecosystem. We anticipate scaling our digital platforms through organic momentum and strategic acquisitions. Our core strategy is to increase multiplay adoption and deepen daily engagement across our customer base.

Oleksandr Komarov

We continue to progress our strategy through both organic and inorganic growth. Most recently, we announced the expansion of our cooperation with SpaceX to include selling high-speed internet services to Ukrainian businesses and public institutions, allowing us to provide B2C and B2G customers a full-featured connectivity stack within Kyivstar packages. Now, Boris will tell us more about the financials.

Boris Dolgushin

Thank you, Oleksandr. Total revenue reached $323 million in the first quarter, an increase of nearly 27% year-over-year. This reflects UAH 14 billion in revenue, a 31% increase. EBITDA grew more than 23% to $173 million, based on a 29% gain to UAH 7.5 billion. As discussed, our telecom margin expanded to more than 56%, while our digital platforms operated nearly 43% margin. This split reflects our strategy. We generate strong cash flow from our core network that partially goes to fund the rapid scaling of our digital ecosystem. Capital allocation remained disciplined. CapEx total $67 million, reaching nearly 21% of revenue. A significant portion of this capital goes toward network resilience during the war. Despite these critical investments, our cash conversion remains strong.

Boris Dolgushin

Equity free cash flow after leases and licenses grew 32% to $87 million. Turning now to the balance sheet. We ended the first quarter with $353 million in cash and deposits. The sequential decrease reflects our capital allocation to fund the Tabletki.ua and Shtorm acquisitions. Gross debt, excluding leases, is $94 million. We carry immaterial external debt, mostly owed to parent company VEON. Lease liabilities totaled $393 million. These arise from our tower agreements with Ukrainian tower company and are fully recognized under IFRS 16. Excluding these lease liabilities, our net cash position is $259 million. Let me now hand the call back to Oleksandr.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you, Boris. Looking further ahead, we raise our full year outlook for 2026 on a mix of the ongoing strong execution and external influences that have been less turbulent than assumed in our base case. In UAH, we expect revenue to grow 18%-21% and EBITDA to grow 14%-17%. On our average exchange rate assumption of 45.5 UAH to the U.S. dollar, we expect revenue to grow 11%-14% in U.S. dollars and EBITDA 7%-10%. While this is an upgrade to our previous guidance, it represents moderation from our first quarter growth rates due largely to base effects. This anticipates a comparison base that will no longer include the immediate aftermath of the 2023 cyberattack. A weaker spot exchange rate and the lapping of the Uklon consolidation.

Oleksandr Komarov

We plan to allocate capital efficiently with CapEx intensity at the range of 21%-24% of revenue for the year. We intend to continue targeted investments in network quality and energy resilience while normalizing from our elevated 2025 investment cycle. The wrap up, we are delivering double-digit growth across segments driven by our digital momentum and strong execution. Despite external volatility, our business remains resilient, and our strong cash generation continues to fund our expansion. We think these trends would look impressive for any company, let alone one operating in a war zone, and hope you agree with us. Thank you for your support. We can now open for the line for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn to ask a question, you will receive a prompt to be promoted as a panelist. Please accept, wait a moment, and once you have been introduced, you may unmute yourself, turn your video on, and ask your question. Written questions can be submitted on the webcast by using the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. As a reminder, we are allowing analysts one question and one related follow-up today. If you wish to ask more questions, please raise your hand again to rejoin the queue. We will pause a moment to allow the questioners to enter the queue.

Operator

Our first question comes from Max Findlay with Rothschild & Co. You may now unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Max Findlay

Hello all. Congratulations on an impressive set of results and the upgrades. In mobile, there were 400,000 subscription losses in Q1, which was higher than Q1 last year. It's sometimes hard to discern what contributes to net losses, and it'd be useful to understand how much of this is secondary SIMs dropping off versus primary SIM loss, and what sight do you have of how net adds will develop throughout the year. Secondly, sticking to mobile ARPU growth was very impressive in Q1. I guess there are few things going on here. With the loss of roaming revenues and the drop-off, low ARPU secondary SIM subs. If you're able to quantify what is driving mobile ARPU growth, that'd be very useful. Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

Let me start with the first question. This Kyivstar customer base decline is actually the reflection of the overall market trend. This trend is very much driven by a few factors. The first factor is decline in the number of double SIM-ers across the market. The second factor is the decline in the new gross adds because of a certain cell price increase. The third factor is overall demographic situation in Ukraine. It's a bit difficult to quantify, but the biggest factor is actually double SIM-ers that is very much situational and driven by very heavy blackouts we faced during the December, January this year. Let me also draw your attention to one simple fact, that according to the national regulation statistic, Kyivstar is maintaining subscriber market share year-on-year.

Oleksandr Komarov

We grew 0.1% in 2025 versus 2024. Okay. We are relatively stable for the last years with around 47%+ subscriber market share. Okay. Your second question is, could you please remind me.

Max Findlay

The drivers for mobile ARPU.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. The drivers for mobile ARPU, there are two main drivers for mobile ARPU. The first one is growing data consumption. Despite the war, despite the overall decline in an active number of the SIM cards, our customers are consuming more and more data. We observed a 30% increase year-on-year. The second one is actually disciplined pricing that is actually focused to address inflation in Ukraine, and potential GDP growth. We already declared that our kind of objective to maintain the mobile telco business growth and a low double digit that is very much driven by inflation and growing consumption of data services.

Max Findlay

Brilliant. Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ganesh Nagesha with Barclays. You may now unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Ganesh Nagesha

Hi. Congratulations on the results. A question from me on the digital segment. You had a very strong growth in the quarter. Just trying to understand on the Kyivstar TV and Uklon. The numbers were quite strong, similar to the 4Q. What are the factors that are driving this? Just trying to understand, are there any seasonality in them, or like how should we think of the growth for these two segments in the coming quarters? Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

Let me take it one by one. Okay. The Uklon growth is actually driven by three major factors. Okay. The first one is a growing number of riders. The second one is a growing number of rides per one rider. The third one is actually pricing, which was very much driven by energy crisis, global energy crisis, and the growing prices for the fuel and gas. These are three major factor that are affecting Uklon's performance, okay? We also observe a certain market share increase in the ride-hailing business, but it was also supported by the growing, you know, much faster growing delivery business. In Kyivstar TV, we observe a certain, let's say, non-organic growth very much driven by the 3P penetration, okay?

Oleksandr Komarov

Our 3P offer is growing quite significantly, which is driving our Kyivstar TV business growth, which was extremely successfully supported by originals at the beginning of the year. You're right, it is a certain seasonality incorporated into Q1 result, okay? Normally this wintertime and New Year's Eve time is actually a high season for the entertainment business, okay? The main growth was very much driven by the overall growing number of active customers and originals, okay? Tykha Nava is our own, let's say, originals, demonstrated the record high numbers of unique watchers, okay, since the launch of the platform. We do hope and expect that the boxing match, Usyk fight, will be another stimulus for the further growth.

Ganesh Nagesha

Yeah, very clear. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jesse Sobelson with BTIG. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Jesse Sobelson

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question here. Can you help us think about the Starlink and direct-to-cell service? Is it a defensive coverage and resilience feature that protects users in ARPU or a standalone revenue line that could enable further monetization? I see, you know, the 5 million users here, but I'm very curious on exactly how to think about that part of your business. Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

Let me start with a kind of segmentation. Right now we provide only one service. Is it based on direct-to-cell technology service is SMS. We decided for ourself that taking into account the war situation and the overall humanitarian risk and loss of connectivity risk, we will provide this for every Ukrainian with a Kyivstar SIM card for free. This, what you see as a reflection in our statistics. More than 5 million Kyivstar customers use this service since the launch in November 2025 and they send and receive more than 8 million messages through the satellite technology. Actually, second half of the year, we are going to introduce a light data services based on the direct-to-cell technology.

Oleksandr Komarov

This light data will let us to use certain applications that will be adapted to the satellite technology across the whole territory of Ukraine, okay? Our main focus to provide this feature to the messengers, to the financial applications, and to the state-owned applications like Diia. Okay, since this we are planning a direct monetization of the direct-to-cell services. We just recently signed a resell agreement for the Starlink services. Kyivstar will be the first reseller of the Starlink services in Ukraine, taking in mind that Ukraine is one of the biggest market, okay, for the Starlink services across the globe.

Jesse Sobelson

Great. Thank you for the detail there. Also I'd love to just follow up real quick on the M&A front and the environment there.

Oleksandr Komarov

Of course.

Jesse Sobelson

With the cash that you have. Can you just elaborate on maybe where valuations are in the space, and if there's any particular verticals within Ukraine that you're currently focused on researching for further expansion? Thank you for taking my questions.

Oleksandr Komarov

We are quite open with our non-organic development strategy. We have three main priorities, okay, to invest non-organically in our core business, and this is mainly infrastructure and fixed broadband providers. You already saw a couple of example of acquisition of Shtorm, 50,000 customers. Our second priority is to facilitate and accelerate our transformation from the telco service provider to the digital service provider with a telco license through organic development like Kyivstar TV and non-organic acquisitions like Uklon. The third priority is alternative energy. It is very much driven by the current energy situation in Ukraine and the growing electricity pricing.

Oleksandr Komarov

We see this as a well-thought investment that will let us not only diversify the supply of the energy to our infrastructure, but also to ensure a certain hedge of the growing energy prices, okay, so in our core business. These are three main priorities for our non-organic M&A strategy.

Jesse Sobelson

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark StoneX. Please unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Matthew Harrigan

Oh, thank you. You can hear me, of course, right?

Oleksandr Komarov

Yes.

Matthew Harrigan

Great. I have one down in the weeds question and then one broad conceptual question. On the cybersecurity side, you know, clearly, you know, Russian military intelligence, Fancy Bear, Cozy Bear, haven't gotten any less active. You know, the attack last year was massively disruptive. I mean, do you feel like you've made incredible progress on the vulnerabilities or are the Russians laying off? Are you doing very much with AI and cybersecurity in your enterprise offerings as well? 'Cause clearly you have some necessary competencies in-house.

Oleksandr Komarov

Let me start with a very brief description. What we faced at the end of 2023 was not a kind of hackers attack. It was one of the biggest act of the cybersecurity war and terrorism in the world. Yes, you are right, we are one of the probably primary targets. From the Russian perspective. At the same time, I feel ourselves really confident in our ability to protect Kyivstar infrastructure and Kyivstar customers from the cybersecurity threats. We invested a lot since the incident. We have hired the biggest global consultants, and right now I think that we are much better protected than we used to be in 2023. With the support of the global companies like Microsoft, Cisco, and others.

Oleksandr Komarov

We are using probably one of the most advanced SIEM system in the world, very heavily supported by AI monitoring and threat recognition system. These are two major factors of our investments. Instead of one perimeter, create a multiple perimeters inside our infrastructure and automate this perimeter with the SIEM and AI platforms as much as possible in order to ensure early recognition of any potential threats.

Matthew Harrigan

I guess the second question, you know, I think it's instructive to look at your mobile and digital pricing, you know, relative to some of the Eastern European markets and even Africa. Certainly you've got more growth potential than just about any market, maybe outside of Africa. You're at some pretty substantial discounts. You know, I can remember years ago, people, you know, the holy grail for Mexico was getting Mexican advertising CPMs at the level of Brazil, and it finally happened, but it took about 50 years. I think consumers just kind of get acclimated to a certain pricing level, and it's hard to, you know, get things level on a, on a global market scale.

Matthew Harrigan

What are your strategies for, you know, pushing the pricing, you know, forward when you get a more normal environment, maybe getting close to some comparable markets in Europe and other areas?

Oleksandr Komarov

I think we are doing very good job in disciplined pricing right now. I joined Kyivstar in 2018, and it was a market with the average ARPU below $1. Despite the war, despite quite difficult economic situation, we, from my perspective, we're able to demonstrate our ability to grow ARPU year-over-year, not only in a local currency, but also in the reported currency. This is our vision. Right now, Ukraine has one of the lowest, actually lowest Eastern European ARPU, which is not in line with the size of the Ukrainian economy. My own perspective that in the reasonable future, Ukraine should reach at least the lowest Eastern European ARPU. That is, for the time being, for example, in Romania, is a bit above $7 per month.

Matthew Harrigan

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ali Zaidi with Inam. Please unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Ali Zaidi

Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for taking our questions. I just had one question. We saw this quarter that Tabletki.ua had an exceptionally high EBITDA margin of approximately 85%. Do you think this margin is sustainable in the longer run?

Boris Dolgushin

Yeah. Ali, thank you for the question. Let me take this. We have, as an operator, demonstrated, I think, one of the best marginalities worldwide based on the GSMA analytics. Definitely, as you know, we are moving more and more towards digital business. This quarter, the first time I think we disclosed the margin of the digital business, which we see quite decent. We try to protect our marginality of the core business despite all the externalities that impact our performance. At the same time, you need to assume that the more we penetrate into the digital business, so while the percentage marginality may be lower, so it adds to the absolute margin and the absolute net income. This business is incomparable in terms of CapEx intensity.

Boris Dolgushin

Basically the CapEx there is just capitalization of the labor of the development staff. In terms of cash conversion, it may result in even better cash conversion. I would propose you look both at the marginality, but also at our cash conversion dynamics.

Oleksandr Komarov

Let me add a bit. I'm considering our digital margin not as a decent, but as an impressive. I think that we are running a big digital business, fast-growing, with the marginality higher than 40%, and I think this is to some extent unprecedented. Thank you for your question.

Ali Zaidi

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Vincent Fernando with Zero One. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Vincent Fernando

Thank you. I want to touch on the cloud and big data side of your digital enterprise business. Obviously with the conflict, I imagine it structurally changes what a data center means in Ukraine. You probably want to be distributed. We have resilient architecture. That's probably more valuable than being like a centralized large hyperscaler. How is Kyivstar thinking about the data center opportunity? You know, given you have that nationwide network footprint, you have some energy independence assets like SUNVIN 11 and the sovereign cloud positioning. You know, what comes with being a, you know, Ukraine domicile provider? What does addressable market look like, and how might it be different than other markets because like, again, that there's kind of risk of being too centralized? Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

We see the cloud business as quite promising. So far our main business is resale of Microsoft primarily and a bit of Amazon. Our own consideration that we, in order to be competitive cloud service provider, we need to be a multi-service provider, multi-cloud service provider. We just recently launched our own cloud business in Ukraine, our own data center. We start to commercialize it at the end of 2025. We are looking for a way how to accelerate it in organic and non-organic way. To some extent, I am absolutely sure that especially after the war and with a certain recovery, and with a certain return to a sovereignty, it will be a very, very fast-growing business stream, and we want to be prepared.

Oleksandr Komarov

We want to be prepared from the list of service perspective, from the market share perspective and available competencies in place. This is quite essential part of our business development.

Vincent Fernando

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Adrian Cundy with Emerging & Frontier Capital LLP. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Adrian Cundy

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for making the time available. My first question revolves around digital top line. If I back out to Tabletki.ua and Uklon, and I look at the sort of organic growth basis year-over-year, it looks to be very, very high, the growth rate. I'm just wondering if you might sort of compare and contrast the organic growth opportunity in your digital portfolio versus the new acquisitions. Do you think that it'd be great if there's some sort of pro forma view on how Uklon is growing and Tabletki.ua is growing year-over-year. That's my first question. My follow-on question comes back to the capital expenditure of UAH 66.

Adrian Cundy

I would assume that's overwhelmingly in the telecom business and relative telecom revenues, that's obviously sustainably remains quite high, well above sort of 21%. How much of that is really network resilience? How much of that is things like the 5G test bed? Given that really sort of 4G subs are now about 70% of your total sub base penetration.

Adrian Cundy

What is sort of the, you know, given that, you know, older people tend not to be on data as much, what is sort of the roadmap for boosting data through, and how much do you think you're eventually in one year or two out will your network be in 5G given that the government has a test policy there?

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. I will ask Boris to answer first question, and then I will take a second one. Boris, please, could you please address this organic growth versus non-organic.

Boris Dolgushin

Yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

Of the digital revenue stream? Yeah.

Boris Dolgushin

Adrian, thank you for the question. As we discussed in the previous calls, even if you exclude Uklon and Tabletki.ua impacts, we are growing about 60% year-over-year.

Boris Dolgushin

This growth is supported kind of primarily by the existing streams, kind of our digital enterprise solution and the TV, which as Oleksandr explained, is growing due to the unique content quite aggressively. It's in line with our promise kind of to grow the digital business at the high double digits to triple digit levels. We are executing this trend.

Adrian Cundy

How long do you think that's sustainable for, that sort of super normal growth rate?

Oleksandr Komarov

It will be a kind of forward-looking statement, to be honest.

Oleksandr Komarov

You know, declare the forward growth rate, you know, we are a bit careful and limited by the current rules imposed on us, so. You can make this trend by yourself. We were declaring our, let's say, organic growth rate, you know, 2025 organic growth rate in our presentation. You know, Boris just said where we are at the beginning of 2026, I think that you can make your simulation quite easily.

Adrian Cundy

Uh-

Cole Akeson

Adrian, if I may make our legal team slightly more comfortable, the raw numbers are of course on slide 7.

Adrian Cundy

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

Coming back to CapEx. Of course, we do not consider CapEx higher than 20% as a normal one, so it is definitely elevated by necessity to invest in resilience, okay. Around 15% of our CapEx is actually streamlined into the different resilience projects, okay. Still, let me emphasize that quite big share of our CapEx is focused on the modernization and strengthening our healthy network. We have accelerated 3G sunset. This year is the last year of 3G technology for Kyivstar in Ukraine. Okay.

Oleksandr Komarov

We want to strengthen our technological leadership versus the competition. Okay? We are very close to finalize our license, 4G-driven license obligation with a population coverage almost 97%.

Adrian Cundy

Hmm.

Oleksandr Komarov

With all the major roads covered by the LTE technologies. Okay? My own perspective that this will be the main technological vehicle of mobile telecom for the next probably five, seven years. We do not expect 5G to be really introduced in Ukraine until end of the war. The most probable scenario is something like 12 months after the war, that's why we are considering our investments in LTE technology as a strategic one. By the way, this is very much confirmed by the Ookla, you know, this external monitoring company, that actually awarded Kyivstar with all three available awards. The biggest network by coverage, the fastest network by speed, the best one from the customer experience perspective.

Adrian Cundy

Just one final question on I wasn't aware of the sunset on 3G, but is that going? You have 30% of your base that's not on 4G right now. I mean, is there a device limitation there? Are, you know, are these old folks with a, without a smartphone, and You know, when you migrate them off, is that gonna have an impact?

Oleksandr Komarov

It's a good question. To be fair, 4G smartphones penetration is not an issue in Ukraine.

Adrian Cundy

Okay.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. As I mentioned at the beginning, Ukraine market still has a relatively high penetration of double SIM-ers. Okay. People using different SIM cards for the different purposes. Okay. And somehow, you know, I think that the 70% LTE penetration according to the global benchmarks is a very healthy level, despite the fact that 4G was introduced in Ukraine with a certain delay.

Adrian Cundy

Okay. Thank you. Congratulations again on what was a pretty exceptional quarter on execution and results.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you.

Adrian Cundy

You're welcome.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tim Savageaux with Northland Capital Markets. Please unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Oleksandr Komarov

Tim, we don't hear you. Maybe you're on mute.

Tim Savageaux

I seem Okay. Maybe there I am. Okay. Can you hear me?

Oleksandr Komarov

It's okay.

Tim Savageaux

Great.

Oleksandr Komarov

It's okay right now.

Tim Savageaux

Great. Thanks. Sorry about that. Yeah, congrats on the Tabletki.ua deal as well. Looks like based on those financials, we should be looking for more of those. My question is on organic growth as well, except sort of with an EBITDA focus. I don't know to what extent Tabletki.ua was contemplated in your previous guidance increase last quarter for 2026 or this one. It seems like there's some offsets on the cost side where we might expect, like, a greater increase. I mean, you talked about energy costs before. It does look like the organic EBITDA growth rate for the company is, you know, kind of low single digit implied in 2026.

Tim Savageaux

Am I getting that right, and is there some offset on the cost factor or on the cost front, that's kind of a headwind to your strategic growth, your inorganic growth?

Oleksandr Komarov

Tim, I will ask Boris to answer this question. Okay? Boris, please.

Boris Dolgushin

Yeah. Tim, thank you for the question. I think when we look at the Q1, it should be organic growth without, as you said, kind of Tabletki.ua and Uklon acquisition because we didn't have Uklon consolidated in 2025. If you look at this, we are at 16%. I'm talking organic terms. I'm not putting dollars here because you also have definitely a translation impact on our numbers. We are about 16% in terms of both revenue and EBITDA growth year-on-year. We are continuing this trend for the rest of 2026. We gave the guidance of 18%-21% in revenue, 14%-17% in EBITDA, which is in line with this guidance.

Boris Dolgushin

Despite the fact that we do have some factors pressing negatively our performance such as definitely utilities prices you mentioned or the EU regulation introduction, which is quite a significant impact for 2026. We are trying to offset them both in terms of the telco growth and in terms of the digital growth that we just discussed.

Tim Savageaux

Okay. Great. Then to follow up, you know, I think we've seen a pretty notable uptick in Multiplay subscribers really the last two quarters in particular. I mean, would you attribute that to bringing in some of the new digital services in terms of acquisition and in terms of maybe those subscribers already having that service? I know, and this might be a tough one, but whether you expect that Multiplay trend to continue or, you know, what exactly you would attribute this uptick we've seen really in the last couple of quarters in Multiplay?

Oleksandr Komarov

I will not answer on trend, but this is one of our ultimate objective, to grow number of Multiplay and Multiplay penetration into our customer base. What you see as a result of three major factors. The first one is organic growth of the Multiplay penetration. Every new gross add with a certain probability being converted into the Multiplay. On the shelf right now, we do not propose mobile standalone. Our basic value proposition consists of mobile, fixed, and Kyivstar TV, plus extra services provided in a form of Superpowers. You know, how customers can customize their own value proposition, you know, with the certain services provided by the ecosystem. As one of the example, Helsi subscription. Okay. The second major factor is non-organic, okay. Driven by the acquisitions of the business like Tabletki.ua. The third one is actually seasonality.

Oleksandr Komarov

It's a certain seasonality in Multiplay mainly driven by the entertainment business. The certain periods of activity. For example, Uklon has certain seasonality. Kyivstar TV has certain seasonality. These are three major factors that are actually affecting our quarterly results with the overall trend to grow number of Multiplay customers.

Tim Savageaux

Okay, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Nicholas Paton with Edison Group. Please unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Nicholas Paton

Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for all of the additional information on the digital business. I think it's actually very, very useful to see the granularity. We had a very interesting and instructive conversation on the full year VEON conference call regarding capital returns for the various businesses. I'm interested in the difference between your various digital businesses because clearly some of them are pure digital, whereas Uklon, which is 50% of your revenues in digital, is actually a relatively physical business with a sophisticated digital front end. When you look at the capital returns going forwards, how do you place Uklon versus the other digital businesses and versus the traditional telecoms business?

Oleksandr Komarov

I'm not sure that, you know, so that you have a right approach to our Uklon business. What we are running in Ukraine is a ride-hailing platform. Platform that let riders to find driver, okay, for the transportation. For the time being, Uklon is a pure, you know, light asset business, and it's a pure digital service. From this perspective, I think that all the businesses are actually demonstrating a quite healthy marginality, okay, with the top one demonstrated by Tabletki.ua.

Nicholas Paton

Yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

With a excellent marginality demonstrated by Uklon, which is actually at the lower end, but close to, we can't expose? Okay.

Nicholas Paton

Um-

Oleksandr Komarov

Which is close to 40%. Sorry. Ihor, I'm sorry.

Boris Dolgushin

Nicholas, if you're asking about, like, return on capital employed, definitely with the digital businesses such as Uklon without adding any kind of heavy assets. Yeah, this will be way higher versus what you see in our traditional telecom business.

Kaan Terzioğlu

Maybe, Nicholas, for the future, if you think about the ride-hailing business, if you think about driverless cars or Kyivstar businesses, you know, which are not having a driver, I think the future of this business will become more, I think, asset heavy as we see. It's not the issue of today, of course. Three years out, I think driverless car will be actually a CapEx heavy business, more CapEx heavy business.

Nicholas Paton

Interesting. Okay, thanks for that.

Kaan Terzioğlu

If you take a look at what Uklon is directly announcing, some of the tech fairs they're doing, some very interesting work on the expertise they're building.

Nicholas Paton

Okay, thank you for that.

Operator

Our next question comes from Vincent Fernando with Zero One. Please unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Vincent Fernando

I just wanna touch back on the Starlink reseller agreement. That's for Ukrainian businesses and public institutions, is that correct? Is it exclusive to Kyivstar in Ukraine? How should we think about the revenue model? Pure margin on resales or bundled into B2B connectivity? Just curious, yeah, what's the structure of that?

Oleksandr Komarov

You're absolutely right. We will be focused on the B2B and B2G market with the resale. Okay? The income model is structured around certain markups on equipment and traffic, with the potential to convert this model into the data pool model that will open new opportunities, okay, based on the wholesale relationship with Starlink.

Vincent Fernando

Got it. Is there any exclusivity in the agreement?

Oleksandr Komarov

No, there is no exclusivity, okay? So far, we are the only one reseller, official reseller of Starlink services in Ukraine.

Vincent Fernando

Got it. I know it's maybe only been about a week. Are you already seeing, you know, are you seeing what kind of customer, you know, ramp you're seeing already maybe in the early phase? I know.

Oleksandr Komarov

It doesn't get the question.

Vincent Fernando

Is it already started being marketing or marketed?

Oleksandr Komarov

It's definitely at very early stage.

Boris Dolgushin

B2B.

Oleksandr Komarov

B2B market is relatively developed. Being a B2B organization right now, you should order, you know, the Starlink device through your employee and to compensate, okay, through the salary. Okay, you are not able, like a B2B organization, okay, to order this service directly from the Starlink. We will be the first only one official representative of Starlink in Ukraine.

Vincent Fernando

Great. Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

Yes.

Boris Dolgushin

Yeah. Trust.

Operator

Our last-

Oleksandr Komarov

Please go ahead.

Operator

Our last question comes from Ahmed Mustafa with Inam. Please unmute your line, turn your video on, and ask your question.

Ahmed Mustafa

Hello, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. One question from me. You have made several acquisitions within roughly 18 months. What synergies are you seeing, and how do you think about integration complexity across the portfolio? Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

We have two types of synergies. The first one is operational synergies that are to some extent already extracted and reflected in the high marginality of our digital business stream. The second layer of synergies is a kind of customer synergies. They are very much reflected into the growing penetration of Multiplay services, combination of telecom services with the different digital services in a unique competitive value proposition in a form of bundles. On the top of this, we are right now focused on developing our vision of the holistic ecosystem. Over all KGL Group assets in Ukraine. These are three major synergies that we are trying to extract and to convert into the customers' and shareholders' value. You know, what we are doing right now, we are focused on some kind of, let's say, no regrets moves.

Oleksandr Komarov

One of them is a single ID across the whole KGL ecosystem, okay? In order to have proper identification mechanism, in order to streamline customer journey, and to have better visibility of the customer base.

Ahmed Mustafa

Mm-hmm. Great. Thank you.

Operator

We have no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Cole Akeson for closing remarks.

Cole Akeson

Well, we'll keep this very brief. Thank you as always for your interest in Kyivstar. We are proud to have presented another strong quarter, and we look forward to speaking to you in the following quarter. Thank you again.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-13

Kyivstar Group Ltd (KYIV) Q1 2026: Everything You Need to Know Ahead of Earnings

GuruFocus.com

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) is set to release its Q1 2026 earnings on May 14, 2026. The consensus estimate for Q1 2026 revenue is $313.48 million, and the earnings are expected to come in at $0.35 per share. The full-year 2026 revenue is expected to be $1.27 billion and the earnings are expected to be $1.41 per share. More detailed estimate data can be found on the Forecast page. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Signs with HTFL. Is KYIV fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Over the past 90 days, revenue estimates for Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) have increased from $1.21 billion to $1.27 billion for the full year 2026 and from $1.30 billion to $1.38 billion for 2027. Earnings estimates have also risen, from $1.36 per share to $1.41 per share for 2026, and from $1.53 per share to $1.56 per share for 2027. In the previous quarter ending December 31, 2025, Kyivstar Group Ltd's (NASDAQ:KYIV) actual revenue was $321 million, which beat analysts' revenue expectations of $302.94 million by 5.96%. Kyivstar Group Ltd's (NASDAQ:KYIV) actual earnings were $0.37 per share, which exceeded analysts' earnings expectations of $0.30 per share by 23.33%. After releasing the results, Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) was up by 8.53% in one day. Based on the one-year price targets offered by 7 analysts, the average target price for Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) is $17.28, with a high estimate of $20.00 and a low estimate of $12.50. The average target implies an upside of 23.68% from the current price of $13.97. Based on GuruFocus estimates, the estimated GF Value for Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) in one year is $0, suggesting a downside of -100% from the current price of $13.97. Based on the consensus recommendation from 7 brokerage firms, Kyivstar Group Ltd's (NASDAQ:KYIV) average brokerage recommendation is currently 1.7, indicating an "Outperform" status. The rating scale ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 signifies Strong Buy, and 5 denotes Sell.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-13

Kyivstar Q1 Earnings, Revenue Rise; Lifts Full-Year Sales Growth Outlook

MT Newswires

Kyivstar Group (KYIV) reported Q1 earnings early Wednesday of $0.37 per diluted share, up from $0.21

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-12

Kyivstar Group Ltd (KYIV) Q1 2026 Earnings Report Preview: What to Look For

GuruFocus.com

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) is set to release its Q1 2026 earnings on May 13, 2026. The consensus estimate for Q1 2026 revenue is $313.48 million, and the earnings are expected to come in at $0.35 per share. The full year 2026's revenue is expected to be $1.27 billion, and the earnings are expected to be $1.40 per share. More detailed estimate data can be found on the Forecast page. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 4 Warning Signs with STUB. Is KYIV fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Revenue estimates for Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) have increased from $1.21 billion to $1.27 billion for the full year 2026 and increased from $1.30 billion to $1.38 billion for 2027 over the past 90 days. Earnings estimates for Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) have increased from $1.36 per share to $1.40 per share for the full year 2026 and increased from $1.53 per share to $1.55 per share for 2027 over the past 90 days. In the previous quarter of 2025-12-31, Kyivstar Group Ltd's (NASDAQ:KYIV) actual revenue was $321 million, which beat analysts' revenue expectations of $302.94 million by 5.96%. Kyivstar Group Ltd's (NASDAQ:KYIV) actual earnings were $0.37 per share, which beat analysts' earnings expectations of $0.30 per share by 23.33%. After releasing the results, Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) was up by 8.53% in one day. Based on the one-year price targets offered by 7 analysts, the average target price for Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) is $17.28 with a high estimate of $20.00 and a low estimate of $12.50. The average target implies an upside of 24.13% from the current price of $13.92. Based on GuruFocus estimates, the estimated GF Value for Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) in one year is $0, suggesting a downside of -100% from the current price of $13.92. Based on the consensus recommendation from 7 brokerage firms, Kyivstar Group Ltd's (NASDAQ:KYIV) average brokerage recommendation is currently 1.7, indicating an "Outperform" status. The rating scale ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 signifies strong buy, and 5 denotes sell.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-03

Is Kyivstar Group (KYIV) Price Strength Justified By Cash Flow Versus Earnings Multiples

Simply Wall St.

Make better investment decisions with Simply Wall St's easy, visual tools that give you a competitive edge. Wondering if Kyivstar Group at US$12.29 is a bargain or a value trap? This article breaks down what the current price might be implying about the business. The stock has returned 4.9% over the last 7 days and 20.7% over the last 30 days, while the year to date return stands at a 7.4% decline and the 1 year return is 0.7%. Recent attention around Kyivstar Group has focused on its market performance and how investors are reassessing risk and opportunity after a period of mixed returns. That backdrop helps frame whether the latest price strength is supported by fundamentals or more by changing sentiment. Right now, Kyivstar Group has a valuation score of 4/6. The sections ahead will compare different valuation approaches before ending with a way of assessing value that can add an extra layer of context to the numbers. Kyivstar Group delivered 0.7% returns over the last year. See how this stacks up to the rest of the Wireless Telecom industry. A Discounted Cash Flow, or DCF, model estimates what a business might be worth today by projecting its future cash flows and discounting them back to a present value. For Kyivstar Group, the model used is a 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity approach based on cash flow projections in $. The latest twelve month free cash flow is about $277.9 million. Analyst and extrapolated estimates suggest free cash flow of $314.9 million in 2026 and $539.2 million by 2030, with intermediate years stepping up through the $300 million to $700 million range according to the ten year projection table. When all these projected cash flows are discounted back and combined, the DCF model points to an estimated intrinsic value of about $56.50 per share. Compared with the recent share price of US$12.29, the model implies the stock trades at roughly a 78.2% discount to that intrinsic value, indicating that the market price is well below the value suggested by this approach. Result: UNDERVALUED Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests Kyivstar Group is undervalued by 78.2%. Track this in your watchlist or portfolio, or discover 50 more high quality undervalued stocks. Head to the Valuation section of our Company Report for more details on how we arrive at this Fair Value for Kyivstar Group. P/E is usually the go to yardstick for profita...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-04-17

Kyivstar to Release 1Q26 Earnings Update on May 13, 2026

GlobeNewswire

KYIV, Dubai and NEW YORK, April 17, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kyivstar Group Ltd. (Nasdaq: KYIV; KYIVW) (“Kyivstar” or “the Group”), Ukraine's leading digital operator and the first Ukrainian company to trade on the Nasdaq, today confirms that the Group will release its financial and operating results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026, at 8:00 GST (0:00 EST) on May 13, 2026. Kyivstar will also host a results conference call with senior management at 16:00 GST (8:00 EST) the following day, on May 14, 2026. 1Q26 results conference call To register and access the event, please click here or copy and paste this link to the address bar of your browser: https://kyivstar-1q-2026-results-presentation.open-exchange.net/ Once registered, a registration confirmation will be sent to the email address provided during registration with a link to access the webcast and dial-in details to listen to the conference call over the phone. We strongly encourage you to watch the event through the webcast link, but if you prefer to dial in, please use the dial-in details. Join the Conversation Live In addition to the webcast, the conference call will also be livestreamed on YouTube. This option allows you to follow the discussion in real time from any device without the need for registration or dial-in details. Simply click here or copy and paste this link to the address bar of your browser: https://www.youtube.com/live/nMqlFQxzqNo Q&A If you wish to participate in the Q&A session, we ask that you select the ‘Yes' option on the ‘Will you be asking questions live on the call?’ dropdown. That will bring you to a page where you can join the Q&A room by clicking 'Connect to meeting’. You will be brought into a zoom webinar where you can listen to the presentation and once Q&A begins, if you have a question, please use the ‘raise hand button’ on the bottom of your zoom screen. When it is your turn to speak, the moderator will announce your name as well as sending a message to your screen asking you to confirm you want to talk. Once accepted, please unmute your mic and ask your question. To facilitate engagement with our shareholders, Kyivstar Group also invites you to submit your questions directly to our Investor Relations team at [email protected]. We look forward to your participation. About Kyivstar Group Ltd. Kyivstar Group Ltd. (“Kyivstar”) is a Nasdaq-listed holding co...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-03-16

Kyivstar Group Ltd (KYIV) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Highlights: Robust Revenue Growth Amidst ...

GuruFocus.com

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Release Date: March 13, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) reported a robust 26% year-over-year revenue growth in US dollars for 2025, with a 28% increase in the fourth quarter alone. Digital services revenue increased 4.7 times in dollar terms for the full year, contributing 16% to total revenue, showcasing strong growth in this segment. The company achieved a healthy cash flow, delivering $558 million in net cash flow from operating activities for the year. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) successfully expanded its multiplay customer base, reaching 7.3 million, which represents 35% of its mobile customers, enhancing customer retention and ARPU. The acquisition of Ukraine's leading online healthcare marketplace, Tabletki UA, is expected to be earnings accretive immediately, with significant cross-selling synergies anticipated. The EU's 'Roam Like at Home' framework is expected to negatively impact Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV)'s top-line by approximately 1 billion gryvna, translating almost entirely into EBITDA. The company's EBITDA guidance for 2026 appears conservative, with underlying business growth expected to be modest due to various factors including EU roaming impacts and digital business pressure on margins. Kyivstar Group Ltd (NASDAQ:KYIV) faces operational challenges due to energy costs and global energy price uncertainties, despite efforts to hedge these through investments like the Sunbeam acquisition. The company anticipates a relative slowdown in revenue and EBITDA growth for 2026, reflecting a high comparison base and external uncertainties due to the ongoing war. There is a potential risk of management bandwidth being stretched due to the integration of multiple acquisitions and the need to extract synergies from these new businesses. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Signs with STU:RYH0. Is KYIV fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Q: Ukraine recently joined the EU's "Roam Like at Home" framework. How will this impact your business? A: Oleksander Kmarov, CEO: Joining the EU roaming zone is a significant step for Ukraine. Financially, it will have a substantial impact, with an expected negative effect of around 1 billion gryvna on our top-line, which will almost...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-03-14

Update: Kyivstar Group Shares Rise After Q4 Adjusted Earnings, Revenue Beat Estimates

MT Newswires

(Updates with the stock price movement in the headline and the first paragraph.) Kyivstar Group (

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-03-13

Kyivstar Group Q4 Adjusted Earnings Fall, Revenue Rises

MT Newswires

Kyivstar Group (KYIV) reported Q4 adjusted earnings Friday of $0.37 per diluted share, down from $0.

TranscriptFY2025 Q42026-03-13

FY2025 Q4 earnings call transcript

Earnings source - 151 paragraphs
Operator

Hello and welcome to Kyivstar's FY 2025 and 4Q 2025 results presentation. For those of you who have joined the Zoom webinar, if you would like to ask a question, you can use the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen at any time to join the queue to ask a question, and you will be called upon during the Q&A session. For those of you watching on the webcast, if you would like to submit a written question, please use the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. These questions can also be sent in at any time during the presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Cole Aitken, you may begin.

Cole Aitken

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us to discuss Kyivstar Group's or Kyivstar's results for the quarter and year ending December 31, 2025. I am Cole Aitken, Group Director for the Kyivstar Investor Relations team. Please allow me to introduce our senior management in the room today. Mr. Kaan Terzioglu, Chairman of the Board, Mr. Oleksandr Komarov, our CEO and President, Mr. Boris Dolgushin, our CFO, and Mr. Anand Ramachandran, Chief Corporate Development Officer for VEON. Today's presentation will begin with Oleksandr detailing the key highlights and business updates, as well as remarks on the financial results from Boris. We will then open the line for your questions. Before we begin. Next slide, please. Thank you. Please note that today's presentation may include forward-looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties.

Cole Aitken

These statements relate to the company's expected performance, 2026 guidance and outlook, market developments, operational and network investments, and the company's ability to realize its targets and initiatives, among other things. Actual results may differ materially due to risks detailed in the Risk Factors section of our final prospectus filed with the SEC on January 30, 2026, as such prospectus may be amended or supplemented from time to time. The earnings release and presentation, including reconciliations of non-IFRS measures, are available on our investor relations website. With that, let me hand over to Oleksandr.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you, Cole. Good afternoon and good morning. Today, we are excited to host our first annual earnings call as a U.S.-listed company. We are proud that the fourth quarter and full year of 2025 not only produced robust financial results, but also clear strategic progress. Our connectivity and digital services continue to support one another's growth, producing high multi-play and 4G penetration, rising data consumption, and revenue growth across every vertical and brand. Let me start with the headline numbers. For the full year, total revenue grew 26% year-over-year in U.S. dollars or 30% in hryvnia. Growth accelerated as we closed the year with fourth quarter revenue up 28% in dollars. Full year, EBITDA grew 26% in dollars and 30% in hryvnia.

Oleksandr Komarov

Both revenue and EBITDA outperformed our full year outlook from last November by roughly 4 percentage points in dollar terms. We continue to generate healthy cash flow, delivering $558 million in net cash flow from operating activities for the year. Secondly, let's discuss our digital services. For the full year, digital revenue increased 4.7x in dollar terms. Momentum continued to accelerate as we closed the year, with fourth quarter digital revenue rising 6x year-over-year. As a result, digital services now contribute nearly 16% of our total revenue, up 4 percentage points from the previous quarter. Expanding our digital ecosystem remains central to our strategy. This is reflected in the roughly 42% year-over-year rise in our total digital monthly active users, which have now surpassed 15 million.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thirdly, our growing suite of services continues to expand Kyivstar's role in our customers' daily lives. Multi-play customers, those who use voice, data, and at least one of our apps monthly reached 7.3 million in the fourth quarter, or 35% of our mobile customers. These cross sales lift engagement, strengthen customer retention, and drive our RPU higher. By the end of the fourth quarter, mobile RPU increased to $3.80 or UAH 161, demonstrating the clear financial return on our ecosystem strategy. Finally, we continue to make solid progress on delivering on our strategic priorities. Last month, we announced the acquisition of Tabletki.ua, Ukraine's leading online healthcare marketplace. Tabletki facilitated about UAH 1.2 billion in gross merchandise value over the last twelve months.

Oleksandr Komarov

The acquisition will be accretive for our earnings, which with immediate effect, and we are excited about forthcoming synergies, including with Helsi. Continued expansion of Direct to Cell reflects our dedication to play a leading role in Ukraine's and our industry space innovation. We have expanded the initial pack services to all our 4G customers, of whom almost 5 million have already tried it out. We plan to expand the light data and OTT voice over 2026. Let's go to the next slide. This slide summarizes our performance for full 2025. Telecom revenue grew 15% to just over $1 billion, driven in large part by customers upgrading plans, moving to 4G, and increasing data consumption. The 4.7x growth in digital revenue was driven in large part by Uklon's consolidation in the third quarter and the shift in Kyivstar TV's revenue model.

Oleksandr Komarov

All our digital services and brands contributed material growth. EBITDA rose 26% to $648 million. The EBITDA margin coming in at 56%. Net profit for the year was $124 million, with earnings per share at $0.57. As a reminder, these figures include the $162 million one-time non-cash charge we recognized in the third quarter related to our Nasdaq listing. Excluding this impact, 2025 adjusted net profit was $286 million. Adjusted EPS was $1.32. Moving on, our 30% CapEx intensity matched to our outlook and reflects ongoing initiatives on energy resilience, network modernization, and securing coverage in Ukraine wartime conditions.

Oleksandr Komarov

Despite escalated investments, we generated net operating cash flow of $558 million and equity free cash flow after leases and licenses of $194 million. Next slide, please. Robust results for the fourth quarter supported the strong 2025 numbers. Revenue grew 28% year-on-year in dollarized terms to $321 million. Telecom revenue rising more than 11% and digital growing more than sixfold. EBITDA grew 22% to $172 million, while net profit came in at $90 million, resulting in fourth quarter EPS of $0.37. CapEx intensity was steady and in line with our stated outlook at 30%. Finally, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of $455 million, sustaining our fortress balance sheet. Next slide, please.

Oleksandr Komarov

Going segment by segment, let's start with mobile. Mobile subscribers were stable at 2.4 million. This soft year-on-year trend reflects multi-SIM users dropping their secondary cards, as well as Ukraine's present demographic pressures. Our churn rate was 13.5% in first quarter, down some 4 percentage points year-on-year, but rebounding from the third quarter secular low. We continue to lead with the highest market share in Ukraine Mobile. Mobile RPU maintained double-digit growth, rising 17% year-on-year to $3.80 or UAH 161. Core drivers included in migration of more than 2% of customers quarter-on-quarter to 4G plans. Okay. Around 31% year-on-year growth in data consumption and customers moving to multi-play, which supports both mobile and digital revenue.

Oleksandr Komarov

Relatedly, note the accelerating growth in fixed broadband, where the customer base grew 4% year-over-year. Note the accelerating share of broadband customers who subscribe to Kyivstar TV, which expanded more than 3 percentage points quarter-over-quarter to 48%. We attribute this growth to effective marketing and the rising appeal of our content library, including programs not available elsewhere in Ukraine. Let's go to the next slide. Yes. Cross-sales and synergies bring us back to the core of our digital growth strategy, multi-play. Multi-play counts customers that use at least one digital app in addition to voice and data services. The multi-play segment drives growth through stronger customer engagement, higher data consumption, and improved retention. Multi-play customers grew 18% year-over-year in the first quarter to reach 7.3 million.

Oleksandr Komarov

This equates to 35% of our one-month active customer base or nearly six percentage points higher than a year earlier. They also generate higher RPU. The average multi-play customer spends $5.20 a month on our services, 37% more than the average for a mobile customer alone. Next slide. Let me now delve deeper into the digital revenue performance. I highlighted earlier how digital increased by more than 6x year-on-year to reach $50 million or more than UAH 2.1 billion, now accounting for nearly 16% of revenue. I would like to make three points. First, while the consolidation of Uklon from April magnified our digital revenues, even without Uklon, digital revenue grew 140%.

Oleksandr Komarov

Secondly, growth spans all verticals, Helsi, Kyivstar TV, Digital Enterprise, and Uklon. Thirdly, our sustainable cost advantages stem directly from our business synergies, including our low customer acquisition costs and an optimized distribution model. This enable us to scale profitability and maintain strong economics. Moving to Uklon, our ride-hailing business. In Q4 alone, Uklon contributed more than UAH 1.4 billion in revenue and UAH 386 million in EBITDA. The platform grew rides booked by 9% year-over-year to 43.6 million, and deliveries completed by 22% to 1.3 million. For December alone, monthly users reached record-high 3.8 million. Uklon's EBITDA reflects a growing and profitable business in Ukraine. Our digital enterprise business continued to gain traction this quarter. Demand is rising across Ukraine's corporate and government sectors for cloud, cybersecurity, big data, and advanced connectivity solutions.

Oleksandr Komarov

The business generated UAH 250 million in revenue, up 64% year-over-year. Growth is steady across our services in the number of businesses turning to Kyivstar to enhance their digital operations. For example, Edwiser, our self-service edtech platform, has seen registered clients expand by more than half quarter-on-quarter to reach more than 3,800 customers. Kyivstar.Tech remains central to connecting all the parts of our ecosystem to providing IT and AI-related services to external enterprises and to our leadership in the wider Ukrainian tech space. This includes leading our partnership to build an LLM with Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation to serve both public and private sector needs. In December, we announced that Google's next-generation open AI model, Gemma, would be the foundational architecture for the model.

Oleksandr Komarov

On the entertainment, Kyivstar TV continues to strengthen its position as Ukraine's leading digital entertainment platform. The business' revenues quadrupled in the fourth quarter year-over-year to UAH 351 million. Several key factors contributed. First, shifting our TV partnership to a platform rent model as discussed in detail in the third quarter. Second, subscriber expansion. For instance, active customers rose 25% year-over-year in December to 2.5 million. As mentioned, 48% of our broadband customers are now also Kyivstar TV subscribers. Our growing and unique content library, including the production with partners of original, unique content in Ukrainian. Now we have Helsi, Ukraine's leading health tech platform. Helsi had more than 28 million registered patients with access to more than 1,700 healthcare institutions and over 42,000 medical professionals at end of 2025.

Oleksandr Komarov

Helsi is deeply embedded in Ukraine's e-health ecosystem, which manages appointments, scheduling, prescriptions, and health records. This motivates patients and providers to continue working with the platform. As we ramp up monetization with premium offerings that complement our established free services, revenue grew 40% year-over-year to UAH 95 million in the fourth quarter. Our paid models ended the year with more than 57,000 subscribers, nearly quadrupling year-over-year. Among our expanding paid services are advanced health insight products, such as professional interpretation of medical tests, results, and biomarker tracking. The service also demonstrates our commitments to corporate social responsibility and ESG as Helsi improves access to healthcare during the wartime. Let me now pass the call to Borys to talk through the financials in more detail.

Boris Dolgushin

Thank you, Oleksandr. We delivered full year revenue of nearly $1.2 billion, or 48 billion UAH, up 25.8% year-over-year in dollar terms. This momentum was capped off by a stellar fourth quarter, where total revenue reached $321 million or 28% year-over-year. For the full year, telecom revenue grew 15%, or $1 billion. As highlighted earlier, this growth was driven by robust RPU expansion, customer upgrade to data-rich 3G, 4G plans and mobile data consumption that surged. Digital revenue soared nearly six-fold for the full year to $124 million, representing 10.7% of total revenue. The momentum is accelerating rapidly. In the fourth quarter alone, digital revenue reached $50 million and made up 15.7% of total revenue.

Boris Dolgushin

This growth comes not only from Uklon, but almost from higher multiple penetration and rapid expansion across our digital verticals, including Digital Enterprise solution, Kyivstar TV, and Helsi. On profitability, full year EBITDA grew 25.8% year-over-year to $648 million. Hence, we sustained resilient full year EBITDA margin of 56%, reflecting strong operating leverage and disciplined cost management. Uklon was a material new contributor to this, delivering $27.6 million dollars for the full year EBITDA, including $9.2 million in the fourth quarter alone. I highlight here while digital margins are structurally lower than telecom margins, then their CapEx intensity is lower, resulting in comparable cash conversions. As our revenue mix shift towards digital, we remain focused on sustaining EBITDA growth at scale while enhancing group-wide capital efficiency and long-term free cash flow generation.

Boris Dolgushin

For the full year, CapEx excluding license and leases totaled $351 million, resulting in CapEx intensity of 30.3%. This reflects our sustained investment to improve quality and reliability, network modernization, and extensive energy installations. By December, we had operated approximately 3,740 generators and 252,000 batteries for backup capacity. Despite these escalating investments, Kyivstar continues to generate substantial free cash flow. For full year equity, free cash flow after leases and licenses reached a robust $194 million. Turning now to the balance sheet. We ended the year with an exceptionally strong cash and deposits position of $456 million or UAH 19.3 billion.

Boris Dolgushin

This solid footing ensures we continue to be well-placed to fund our ecosystem expansion and capital investments while maintaining a prudent and flexible capital structure. Gross debt, including leases, stood at UAH 104 million or UAH 4.4 billion. As a reminder, we carry insignificant external debt. The figure primarily reflects the debt to our parent company, VEON. Lease liabilities stood at $374 million or UAH 15.9 billion, which arise mainly from our infrastructure tower lease agreement with Ukrtower and are fully recognized under IFRS 16 standards. Our net cash position when excluding those lease liabilities remains robust at $352 million. Let me now hand the call back to Oleksandr. Oleksandr, you're on mute.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you, Borys. Let me briefly update you on the strategic priorities. In the mobile telecom business, we are focused on sustainable market leadership through maintaining and developing a high-quality paying customer base, technological leadership, an ecosystem of existing and new digital products, and innovations like direct-to-cell. In the fixed broadband market, we want to strengthen group leadership via organic expansion and acquisitions. In digital, we are concentrated on growing digital offerings organically and through acquisitions and increasing multiple penetration and customer engagement. Next slide, please. As of our recent strategic milestone and execution, we remain proud to be the first company in Europe and among the first companies globally to provide customers Starlink direct-to-cell. Almost 5 million customers have already taken advantage of the initial text capabilities. We look forward to rolling out live data and OTT voice later this year.

Oleksandr Komarov

In December, we acquired SUNVIN 11 for $8.2 million. SUNVIN 11 operates a nearly 13 MW solar plant producing energy equivalent to 4% of our annual electricity consumption. The investment offered us a natural hedge on energy, one of our largest recurring costs. It also dovetails with our strategy to support Ukraine's recovery and energy independence, as well as being complementary to the demands of our digital services. In late February 2026, we announced the acquisition of fixed broadband internet service provider Storm for UAH 420 million. The acquisition brings over 50,000 new broadband customers across 130 municipalities into the Kyivstar ecosystem, supporting our strategy to expand our broadband network. Finally, we also announced in February the acquisition of Tabletki.ua, Ukraine's leading online marketplace for healthcare and wellness products.

Oleksandr Komarov

On the next slide, a few words about Tabletki. Tabletki connects our customers with over 14,000 pharmacies. The platform already facilitated an average of 14 million monthly bookings in 2025 and generated some $1.2 billion in gross merchandise value over the 12 months to September 30. The transaction is immediately earnings accretive for future quarters. Based on the company's trailing 12 months management accounts, the purchase comes at an EV/EBITDA of 6.7x and P/E of 8x, which we consider attractive multiples. Strategically, the acquisition expands our digital healthcare footprint. By integrating Tabletki, alongside Helsi and the Uklon delivery network, we expect to realize meaningful cross-selling synergies and drive further engagement across our 15 million digital monthly active customers.

Oleksandr Komarov

In other words, this is another way Kyivstar aims to make our customers' lives a bit easier and more efficient while also creating value for shareholders. Looking further ahead on the financials, despite the challenges and uncertainties, Kyivstar continues to execute strongly. For the full year of 2026, we expect revenue to grow by 8%-11% and EBITDA to grow by 5%-8% in dollar terms. Please note that this assumes an average exchange rate of 44.5 hryvnia to the dollar. In local currency terms, this translates to expectations of 15%-18% for revenue growth and 12%-15% EBITDA growth.

Oleksandr Komarov

The relative slowdown in our outlook's year-over-year growth reflects the comparison base no longer including the immediate aftermath months of the 2023 cyber attack, a weaker spot exchange rate, and normalization after the inclusion of Uklon. Regarding capital allocation, we expect CapEx intensity to moderate to a range of 23%-26% of revenue for the year. This reflects our plan to continue targeted investments that sustain our network quality and energy resilience while normalizing from the elevated, accelerated investments we made throughout 2025. As always, this outlook reflects the best visibility we have today. It remains subject to the significant external uncertainties we face given the war. Let me now summarize. We are uniquely positioned as the only direct dedicated equity exposure to Ukraine listed on a U.S. stock exchange.

Oleksandr Komarov

Despite the geopolitical issues, we are leveraging our digital momentum, sustainable strong cash flow, and fortress balance sheet to drive expansion, reinforce our network resilience, and play a leading role in Ukraine's tech sector. Our operational and financial performance, including double-digit growth across segments, reflects not only the attractiveness of our offerings and markets, but also the execution strengths of our world-class team. Regardless of the externalities, we remain confident in Ukraine's trajectory and the opportunities before us. We are committed to shaping Ukraine's digital future from AI and cloud capabilities to offering our customers more ways to connect with each other and the world. Thank you for your support for Kyivstar. We can now open our line for the Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn to ask a question, you will receive a prompt to be promoted as a panelist. Please accept. Wait a moment, and once you have been introduced, you may unmute yourself, turn your video on, and ask your question. Written questions can be submitted on the webcast by using the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. As a reminder, we are allowing analysts one question and one related follow-up today. If you wish to ask more questions, please raise your hand again to rejoin the queue. We will pause for a moment to allow questioners to enter the queue.

Operator

Our first question comes from Jesse Sobelson with BTIG. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Jesse Sobelson

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. It's nice to see the stability mobile and the digital strength. On the mobile side, I believe Ukraine recently joined the EU's Roam Like at Home framework in January 2026. Could you comment on how you anticipate this to impact your business and if it's material or not?

Oleksandr Komarov

Let me take it. First of all, I really welcome Ukraine to join EU roaming zone. This is probably the first practical step, you know, on the Ukrainian way to join European Union. From the financial perspective, it will have, let's say, a substantial impact on our P&L, taking into account that EU roaming zone is not only regulating mobile termination rate, but also country termination rate. Because of this, and taking into account that Ukraine is normally a receiver of traffic from Europe, we will face something like UAH 1 billion effect, negative effect on our top line, which is almost 100% translated into the EBITDA.

Jesse Sobelson

That's great detail, and that explains, you know, part of the guidance here, that we're seeing. Thanks for that. I guess just a quick follow-up. You know, guidance is still strong. You know, you still call for a high single-digit growth this year. Could you break down what's expected from the digital segment in Uklon versus the mobile segment and your subscriber base in that forecast?

Oleksandr Komarov

We do expect relative stability of our subscriber base and much faster growth of our digital value proposition and penetration of the multi-play. Okay? As you see, we are developing organically, and we still have a certain run rate that was initiated in 2025, okay, that will have significant effect on our 2026 results. Okay. At the same time, we are actually executing our strategy. According to our strategy, we are interested in development of different digital domains, okay? Probably Tabletki is a very good evidence that we are disciplined in our strategy execution.

Jesse Sobelson

Great. Thanks for the detail there, guys. I'll pass it on.

Operator

Our next question comes from Max Findlay with Rothschild & Co Redburn. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Max Findlay

Hi. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions. I was hoping to firstly dig into your revenue and EBITDA outlook for 2026. There's been a little bit of confusion about what is in the guidance. Can I first check whether the outlook includes inorganic contributions, so Uklon in Q1 and Tabletki? I might just let you answer that before I follow up.

Oleksandr Komarov

I will ask Boris to take this question.

Boris Dolgushin

Yes. Thank you, Max, for the question. The impacts of Uklon full year consolidation and Tabletki from the acquisition dates are included.

Max Findlay

Okay. If I could follow up, please. That suggests that your EBITDA guide is quite conservative. If I look at the guidance you've given us today, which is 5%-8% for EBITDA, at the midpoint, that implies EBITDA growing in absolute terms in dollars by $40 million. Now, you might expect $35 million of that to come from a mixture of Uklon and Tabletki, which implies the rest of the business is growing at $7 million or about 1%. I was just wondering, you know, do you feel this EBITDA guidance is quite conservative, or is that how you see the underlying business performing in the year?

Oleksandr Komarov

Let me start, and then I will probably ask Boris to add some colors. There are a number of factors that are incorporated in our current outlook. First is a comparison base, which was slightly affected by the cyberattack, you know, and our unprecedented, let's say program, a retention program that we provided to our customers at the beginning of 2024. The second one is the change in, let's say, proportion of the telco business and digital business with a certain pressure imposed by the digital business on the EBITDA marginality. The third factor is EU roaming down, that will have a direct impact on our EBITDA. The fourth factor is actually probably a drop of prudence incorporated into our outlook. Boris, may you add something?

Boris Dolgushin

Yeah. Just, Max, I think you're looking at the dollar numbers, so you need to consider. We provided the dollar rates in force for 2024, 2025, and also the outlook we used for 2026. You see that in 2025 it was almost flat. Now we see the accelerated devaluation of hryvnia. That's why we provided these forecasts with the exchange rate to 44.5. Yeah. Another factor is definitely we have a very uncertain time, and we want to be prudent with our outlook. We want to monitor the developments over the next several months before we can revisit it.

Max Findlay

Thank you very much. If I could squeeze one follow-up, that'd be much appreciated. Your guidance implies margins will contract, which you did discuss on the call. I was just wondering if you could help us understand what is behind the OpEx pressures that your guidance implies, and particularly about global energy prices, which face a lot of uncertainty at the moment. I wonder how your guidance has accounted for this and what your exposure is, given a lot of the investment you've done is in backup energy solutions. Thank you.

Boris Dolgushin

Uh-

Oleksandr Komarov

Borys, if you.

Boris Dolgushin

Alexander, yes, if I may take this one. We discussed with you on the previous calls that one of the biggest factor in our cost is actually the energy cost and the cost of the utilities. This is especially relevant when we are talking about the period of the massive blackout at the time when we need to run significant part our network on the diesel generators. Also the spike of electricity prices given both the attacks on the energy infrastructure in Ukraine, but also the global energy crisis, which is now happening because of the crisis in the Middle East. At the same time, kind of, we incorporated this in our forecast. We do, as you see, try to hedge these energy prices with the focused investment into energy sector, like a Sunvin acquisition.

Boris Dolgushin

We are definitely considering other options, kind of, to back up, yeah, and let's say to hedge our dependency on the electricity prices we are actually actively working on now. The increase, I think, of the presence in the energy sector for us is the natural hedge against these utilities growth for the coming periods.

Oleksandr Komarov

Maybe one more comment from my side. Because of the current situation, Ukraine is being supported by European Union from the energy resilience and certain import-export or import of the electricity in Ukraine. Quite often right now, we have Eastern European prices for the business in Ukraine. I do not expect so significant inflation in energy pricing as we used to to experience during the last three years.

Max Findlay

Thank you very much. Very helpful.

Operator

Our next question comes from Vincent Fernando with Zero One. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Vincent Fernando

Hi. Thank you. I have questions on the digital platform. First on Tabletki. For this $160 million deal, you already own Helsi, and that has millions of users. You also have your Kyivstar subscribers. Can you give some color or your expectation for when we could see a timeline for maybe a Helsi to Tabletki integration, whereby, for example, people could book their prescriptions through Helsi, and then that would go into your Tabletki platform? My second question is just on Uklon. Just wondering if you could provide what the current market share is for Uklon, because I know you have a Uber and Bolt operating?

Vincent Fernando

Also, do you view that market as having a TAM expansion opportunity once, you know, if conflict eases, you know, eases down in Ukraine? Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. Let me start with the synergies between Helsi and Tabletki. Of course, you are absolutely right. This is a kind of our vision that we would like to execute, and this vision is starting with the appointment down through the Helsi application between patient and doctor. Okay. We want them to have an opportunity to choose and to book, let's say, medicine or pharmacy products, let's say, within the same customer journey, and in case of necessity to be delivered by Uklon to the patient. Okay, this is our vision. Our specific plan is to start pilots or some kind of MVPs between Helsi and Tabletki during this year, okay, with a clear strategy that we will present to the KGL supervisory board somewhere in Q4 2026. Right now, we are very much focused on the business stabilization and integration. Okay.

Oleksandr Komarov

We want to be sure that business is developing according to the business case, okay, that is actually behind our acquisition. By the way, we do not include any synergies into the business case, so it's quite, I will say, attractive business case without synergies. Okay? We want to stabilize, we want to integrate from different perspectives, because to integrate local business into the, let's say, public domain, you know, public company is a challenge, you know. Then we will be focused on the development strategies and synergies between Helsi and Tabletki, between Uklon and Tabletki, between Kyivstar and Tabletki.

Vincent Fernando

Great. Thank you. Just the items on Uklon, if you may.

Oleksandr Komarov

Yes. Uklon market share is not clear because it's not so transparent market like mobile telecom market or fixed broadband market. We are definitely market leader. We have just indirect market assessments through their banking payments. Okay? I don't think that it is right to present, let's say, market share based on this, but it is clear that Uklon is a market leader, Bolt is number two, and Uber is number three on the ride-hailing market. Okay? We are still growing, and we are growing through the growing penetration of the ride-hailing services and growing market share.

Vincent Fernando

Okay. Do you envision a TAM expansion for the whole ride-sharing space, you know, if things ease in Ukraine?

Oleksandr Komarov

We have our own strategy, okay? This strategy, let's name it a modern mobility strategy around Uklon. We want Uklon to expand into the mobility segment. We are already doing some experiments with the bus tickets, with the special dedicated buses for the most popular routes. For example, in Bukovel, this is our, let's say, skiing resort, the most popular skiing resort in Ukraine. We are doing some experiments, okay, how to develop the ecosystem of the modern mobility services around Uklon. By the way, one of these experiments is already a successful standalone business is a delivery business, which is growing 22% year-over-year.

Vincent Fernando

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Chris Hall at NSR. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Chris Hall

Yeah, thank you, and thanks for the time. My question almost follows on from the previous one. Just sort of thinking about the expansion of the digital ecosystem, you've obviously been quite active from an M&A perspective and now you want to extract maximum synergies from putting all these businesses together. I just wonder, you know, whether you feel like you're sort of approaching the limit of what management bandwidth you have to be able to fully deliver on all of that or should we expect a kind of similar cadence of M&A going forward over the next kind of twelve or eighteen months?

Oleksandr Komarov

It's a bit difficult to make, you know, very clear forecast about M&A activity.

Chris Hall

Mm-hmm

Oleksandr Komarov

Because it's not only depends on us.

Chris Hall

Yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. I think that we have strategic intent to develop our ecosystem organically and non-organically.

Chris Hall

Yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. We have appetite for this. Okay. You are right. We should take into account our organizational form and talent, how we are going to lead this business in the future.

Chris Hall

Yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

Somehow we are doing a certain, let's say, evolutionary steps, okay, around KGL Group.

Chris Hall

Yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. We are considering how to structure KGL in the future around certain verticals. We are just at the beginning of this process, but this will let us to control a relatively diversified group, okay, so to manage it properly and to ensure synergies between the different verticals.

Chris Hall

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Thank you.

Kaan Terzioglu

Chris, Sasha, if you allow me to mention.

Oleksandr Komarov

Yes, please.

Kaan Terzioglu

One more concern because our acquisition strategy comes with actually also a talent acquisition strategy.

Chris Hall

Mm-hmm.

Kaan Terzioglu

When we acquire companies like Uklon, Helsi or Tabletki, they come with fantastic management teams.

Chris Hall

Yeah.

Kaan Terzioglu

We find this as a very effective way of actually growing our leadership pool.

Chris Hall

Mm-hmm.

Kaan Terzioglu

If you look to Sasha's and Boris' portfolio in Ukraine, you will see one obvious missing element, which is digital banking.

Chris Hall

Yeah. Yeah.

Kaan Terzioglu

I think, you know, that's the piece that.

Oleksandr Komarov

Keeps all of us excited for next couple of years.

Chris Hall

Just to follow up on that, my understanding is there needs to be regulatory change to enable you to enter that market. Is that still the case, or am I behind the curve there?

Oleksandr Komarov

Well, it is still the case, and we are working on this.

Chris Hall

Yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

We're in a dialogue with the National Bank of Ukraine. We want to address this. Of course, you know, so we want to combine this with a very clear strategy, okay? What type of role, okay, we want to play because there are different types of licenses, you know, different approaches, you know. Somehow for us, it's not only a matter of regulation, it's also a matter of the right entry strategy into the segment.

Chris Hall

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Operator

Our next question comes from Matthew Harrigan with StoneX. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Matthew Harrigan

Oh, thank you. I think you alluded to the demographic effects, you know, diaspora on the telecom, you know, churn. I think there's something like 7 million people, mostly women and children, not military age men. Presumably, you know, if we did get a settlement, I mean, you probably wouldn't have a step function return of all those people to Ukraine, clearly, but you'd probably get some positive, you know, drift, you know, tailwind, you know, for a number of years for people returning. You know, I know that there's probably some app opportunities, especially on the entertainment side, as with VEON's Pakistan business. You know, obviously you'd love to have those people come back to Ukraine, you know, for a lot of reasons. I mean, do you think that's tenable, or do you think I would think the EU, Poland in particular, would probably be pretty anxious to see people return to Ukraine, and that would presumably help your business.

Oleksandr Komarov

Well, I think this is very right consideration, that significant share of the migrants out will be back in Ukraine. It will take some time, of course. One of the mandatory requirements is a stable ceasefire. We do expect that this will be one of the major factor that will affect Ukraine, Ukrainian economy, and our business, in case of peaceful resolution of the current war. Right now, we're still in touch with these customers. We are on a monthly basis servicing 2 million migrants, so we are servicing a bit more than average European operator of customers abroad. Just because they still have a live connection with Ukraine, with their relatives, with their banking system, sometimes with their employers, you know. That's why we are essential part of this kind of humanitarian communication link between Ukraine and Ukrainians abroad.

Matthew Harrigan

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ahmed Mostafa with Einam. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Ahmed Mostafa

Hello, everyone. Thanks for the presentation and congrats on the numbers. I have one question. You have successfully reached 5 million users on the Starlink direct-to-cell services for messaging. As you transition to voice and live data services later in 2026, what is the planned monetization model? Specifically, do you see this as a driver for higher tier ARPU bundles or primarily as a defensive tool to maintain your low churn rates? Thank you.

Oleksandr Komarov

Yes, we do consider certain approaches to commercialization of the live data and voice-over OTT services. Right now, current messaging service we are considering like a humanitarian service, and we want this to be available to everyone in Ukraine. Our message is very simple. In a very difficult energy situation and a very difficult security situation with LTE smartphone, Kyivstar SIM card and OpenSky, you can be online, okay, regardless of the circumstances. Yes, we have certain plans how we will commercialize live data and voice-over OTT, okay? Right now, our main focus on this humanitarian service, churn reduction and loyalty increase.

Ahmed Mostafa

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Natalia Shpygotska from Dragon Capital. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Natalia Shpygotska

Congratulations on the great results. One question from my side, please. As we understand that lockup period for the sale of the company's shares by the parent and SPAC sponsors have now expired, and so we may see fast new share offerings. I would like to ask if any new share offerings similar to the SPO in late January would be linked to a similar registration of your offered shares and would be accompanied by respective regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thank you very much.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you for your question. I will ask Cole to answer. Cole, please.

Natalia Shpygotska

I would be happy to, but just let me double-check that Kaan doesn't want to address that.

Oleksandr Komarov

Natalia, thanks a lot. I think what we see is we are running a campaign called Invest in Ukraine NOW!, right? There are not many investable vehicles in the world for

Kaan Terzioglu

People from the Western community, U.S., Europe, to participate in a phenomenal opportunity of reconstructing Ukraine. We will keep our minds open in terms of making further offerings of Kyivstar to the market, and we are very well informed about the SEC regulations, so we'll of course be compliant to all those when those opportunities arise. I was extremely happy to see that in our secondary offering in January, we had 5x demand. That shows actually the appetite of Western investors to participate in the Ukrainian growth opportunity.

Natalia Shpygotska

Very much appreciated. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tim Horan with Oppenheimer & Co. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Timothy Horan

Thank you. Can we get a little bit more details about the satellite links, the direct-to-device? Can you just talk about the quality? What percentage of text messages do you think are going through? You know, what's the latency look like? You know, maybe just any color, how long is your exclusivity and how do you monetize this longer term?

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay. Let me take it. First of all, we do not have any exclusivity. We are developing a robust strategy of, let's say, cooperation between terrestrial and non-terrestrial service providers. We are considering that this is the future of the telecom value proposition. So far, it's just the first step. We have launched in November 2025 mobile messaging through the Starlink direct-to-cell network. So far almost 5 million customers use this service. The proportion is around 20% sent SMS versus 80% received SMS. We see that the SLA is really good, so I don't see any difference with the terrestrial network from the delivery perspective and quality perspective, so everything is okay with the service.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay, what I also see that, of course, because of the war situation, is a kind of tendency that service is especially popular on the eastern part of Ukraine, closer to the front line. Okay, we do expect commercialization based on the free of charge messaging services. Right now we are considering different approaches. It can be a standalone value add service. It can be an extra service to the high value bundles. Okay, all options are possible. Okay, we will introduce this somewhere in Q3 2026. We are planning to introduce it in Q3 2026.

Timothy Horan

Can you update us on your fiber strategy? Are you more focused on build-outs or on?

Oleksandr Komarov

You mean fixed broadband strategy or fiber as an infrastructure?

Timothy Horan

Yes.

Oleksandr Komarov

Fixed broadband.

Timothy Horan

Sorry, fixed broadband, yeah.

Oleksandr Komarov

Yes, we are developing organically and non-organically. Organically, we are increasing penetration into our current infrastructure. Our current penetration is around 25%. Of course, it's different region by region, and it is a bit different from the lifetime perspective across the region. That's why one of our focuses is to increase penetration into the current infrastructure through a fixed mobile convergent value proposition. As you see, we are quite successfully developing not only 2P value proposition, but actually 3P value proposition. For your understanding, right now from 100% fixed broadband customer base, 80% are 2P customers and 48% are 3P customers who are using not only fixed broadband, but also mobile and Kyivstar OTT TV services. First focus is to increase penetration.

Oleksandr Komarov

Second focus is a new construction, so we are building more than 1,000 effective houses every year. Okay, we want to develop. We are building mainly xPON technology, okay? We are trying to either modernize our current FTTB network to 1 Gb speed or to substitute it with the xPON/GPON technology. Okay, we are also focused on non-organic development. Non-organic development is acquisitions, and Storm is one of the examples. It's actually second acquisition that we did during the last 18 months is on the market, okay? Through the partnership. We have huge infrastructure, and we are dominant player in the urban areas.

Oleksandr Komarov

Somehow we are considering an Open Fiber approach, and we made certain proposals for the biggest fixed broadband and convergent operators in Ukraine in order to exchange, you know, our current infrastructure and to ensure entrance into the new regions.

Timothy Horan

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is a written question from Sergei Lysenko from Oschadbank. It says: "Does Kyivstar have plans to follow MHP and to issue international and/or local bonds in 2026 or later?

Oleksandr Komarov

It's probably a bit more focused question to our chairman, Andriy. We want to answer it.

Kaan Terzioglu

Let me answer it this way. As you can imagine, you know, we are one of the biggest enterprises in Ukraine. I see one of our responsibilities to contribute to the development of the capital markets in the country. If we see an opportunity for taking a lead here, creating transparency, a best practice in the country, I would actually encourage my team to consider about issuing a local bond. I think this would make a pioneering action on the country, and I would be supportive of that. Not that we necessarily need cash to run our business or make investments, but I think it is a responsibility for the capital markets development.

Oleksandr Komarov

Yeah. Let me add, we already declared that kind of people's IPO is one of our dream, okay? We are considering what are the possibilities, but it is probably too early, let's say, to address this question with certain detail.

Operator

Thank you.

Kaan Terzioglu

Thank you. Thank you for the question.

Operator

Our next question comes from Adrian Kundy with Emerging and Frontier Capital. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Adrian Kundy

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for your time. Just looking at the slides, could you provide some further color on what seems to be a pretty substantial revenue acceleration at Uklon and your Kyivstar TV in Q4? With respect to Uklon, is any of that because of the Kazakhstan entry or market expansion, or is it really just sort of deliveries and increased usage?

Oleksandr Komarov

There are three drivers of the Uklon growth. The core ride-hailing business growth, I can say it's a bit more organic growth rather than exponential growth.

Adrian Kundy

Mm-hmm.

Oleksandr Komarov

The second driver is delivery business. This is where we observe, especially, you know, at the Q4, a very significant growth rate, okay. The third one is advertising business. We are developing advertising from scratch and, you know, it is still relatively low in absolute term, but it is providing, you know, so 100% year-on-year growth for absolutely new business, you know, within the Uklon portfolio. Okay. Kyivstar TV is driven by three factors. The first one is the new contractual terms from revenue share to platform rent, okay. With our partner, 1+1. The second one is our growing number of customers. We reached 2.5 million with a relatively low share of freemium customers, and I think this is a quite big achievement. The third one is Kyivstar TV Originals.

Oleksandr Komarov

We're already producing, okay, around 10+ titles per year, okay? That are available only on the Kyivstar TV platform with a certain exclusive agreements with the major, with the global majors. The whole content is in Ukrainian language, which is also from my perspective, is one of the competitive advantages.

Adrian Kundy

Okay. A quick follow-up on Uklon. You alluded to earlier as to developing a mobility strategy. Could you give some color? Are you gonna be sort of getting in the vehicle acquisition or the vehicle leasing business to drivers? Could you also give us an update, just quickly on what's happening with the Kazakh launches? I've noticed there's a website and a few other things.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay.

Adrian Kundy

I think you've mentioned also taking it to other markets like Bangladesh and Pakistan. Just sort of, yeah, an overall strategic top-down would be great.

Oleksandr Komarov

Okay, let me start with the ecosystem development. We tend to stay with an asset-light model if it is possible.

Adrian Kundy

Mm-hmm.

Oleksandr Komarov

From this perspective, we are ride-hailing, online ride-hailing, platform rather than taxi fleet or taxi service in Ukraine, okay? This is our key priority. We are trying to develop a new services, okay, so around very strong Uklon brand. Delivery is one of the example, okay? But it is not only peer-to-peer delivery, it is also delivery through the agents like global model, okay? We are also considering to enter into the new segments of the modern mobility, okay? This is just the plans. As I already declared, okay, so one of the potential priorities for us is, you know, so delivery synergies within the group, okay? We did not take any decisions for the international expansion yet, so we are developing our business in Uzbekistan.

Oleksandr Komarov

We are satisfied with the current results, but we want to be sure that our model of international expansion is validated enough based on the synergies between telco and ride-hailing business.

Adrian Kundy

Okay. Thank you very much. If I could just one more quick question?

Kaan Terzioglu

Adrian? Adrian, I'm really sorry. We're actually out of time.

Adrian Kundy

Oh, okay.

Kaan Terzioglu

Could you and I follow up on that later? We have one more question from someone who hasn't gotten a chance to speak yet.

Adrian Kundy

Go ahead. No problem. Thank you.

Operator

Our final question comes from Tim Savageaux with Northland. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Speaker 15

Hi, good morning, and thanks for squeezing me in. You mentioned digital services at 16% of revenue exiting the year. I wonder, as you consider both the organic and inorganic contributions, whether you might have a target for where you expect digital services to be exiting calendar 2026, whether that might be above 20%. You mentioned the triple digit organic growth rate in digital services, ex acquisitions. Do you expect that to continue?

Oleksandr Komarov

It will be a kind of forward-looking statement, Tim. To be fair, you know all our current digital assets and their trends. You know all our new digital assets and their trends, and somehow I think you can build quite easily the trajectory of our digital business development. Are we satisfied with the, you know, so forecasted result? No. We want to grow faster in our digital ecosystem, but of course, through the prism of value creation, okay, to our customers and to the shareholders.

Speaker 15

Okay. Just a brief follow-up. You did see a pretty significant uptick in multi-play subscribers in Q4. I wonder if there's anything seasonal or promotional about that or to what extent you expect that trend to continue as well. Thanks.

Oleksandr Komarov

Certain seasonality is definitely in place, okay, because Q4 is normally very, very attractive season for the ride-hailing for the OTT TV business and partially for the My Kyivstar business. Okay? Certain seasonality is in place. I do expect a certain normalization in Q1. Not decline, but a certain normalization of the growth rate. Okay, this is actually what we have seen during the years. Normally, Q4 is a record high, Q1 is a normalization, and Q2 is a return shift to the next year's growth.

Speaker 15

Thanks, Radov.

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Cole Akerson for closing remarks.

Cole Aitken

Thank you all for participating today, for joining us to discuss our first time as a listed company releasing annual results. As you know, we appreciate the work you do and look forward to continuing these conversations in future. If any questions remain unanswered, please contact us directly and we will do our best to help you out. I think that's more than enough from us for now, and thank you again. We will look forward to speaking with you soon.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you.

Speaker 15

Thank you, everyone.

Oleksandr Komarov

Thank you.

As of 2026-05-30 • Updated weeklySource: Earnings sourceIngestion runbook