Last year, Ukrainian media service MEGOGO maintained its investments in Ukrainian-language dubbing at UAH 38 million, having created 3,825 hours of content at its own studio and in cooperation with partners, the press service of the media service reports.
“The company continued to invest heavily in Ukrainian-language dubbing, allocating UAH 38 million for this purpose, as in 2023. At its own MEGOGO VOICE studio and in cooperation with partners, 3825 hours of Ukrainian dubbing were created for film, TV series, children’s and other content,” the MEGOGO press service said in a statement on Thursday.
The year 2024 was a year of significant achievements for MEGOGO, the statement said.
The service became the official broadcaster of UEFA EURO 2024, broadcast the Olympic Games in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery with commentary in Ukrainian, and showed two fights between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury. In addition, MEGOGO launched the MEGOGO SPORT TV channel in T2 (the abbreviated name for the DVB-T2 (Digital Video Broadcasting – Second Generation Terrestrial) standard), entered into a partnership with the Netflix streaming platform and the international sports channel Setanta, the statement said.
During the year, the MEGOGO library was replenished with 6 thousand units of new content in VOD and LIVE.
Users spent an average of one hour a day with MEGOGO, i.e. 365 hours a year. Smart TV became the most popular viewing device, and the most used emoji on interactive TV was the flag of Ukraine, the MEGOGO press service reported.
Last year, the service updated its functionality by launching its own recommendation system, updating games on Smart TV and the MEGOGO VR app, and expanding interactive features on TV channels.
As part of the service’s ecosystem development, MEGOGO BOOKS, an online bookstore with paper books, was opened.
MEGOGO’s anti-piracy department excluded 527 thousand pages of pirated websites from Google search results, removed more than 140 thousand pirated copies of content and transferred more than 195 thousand links to pirated copies of content to its partners for blocking.
In addition, the media service’s specialists removed 14 outlets from the marketplaces, closed 75 groups and channels in messengers and 303 communities in social networks. More than 19 thousand unique links to pirated football broadcasts were removed. They also removed over 1.3 thousand links to pirated martial arts broadcasts. MEGOGO specialists performed the largest amount of work during two championship fights between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury, the statement said.
Earlier it was reported that MEGOGO entered the Romanian market.
Megogo media service was founded in Kyiv in 2011. The service’s media library includes TV channels, movies, TV series, cartoons and games, educational and blogging content, audiobooks, podcasts and radio. In Ukraine, Megogo offers 390 channels with shows, series, and programs, 15 thousand movies, and 900 audiobooks. The content is available on popular iOS, Android, Smart and Android TV platforms, players and set-top boxes with Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, XBOX One, and Sony PlayStation. Before entering Romania, the media service was available in 14 countries. In February 2023, the company entered the Polish market.
Steelmaker ArcelorMittal reduced its net loss and increased its revenue in the fourth quarter, while its EBITDA exceeded analysts’ forecasts.
According to the company’s press release, in October-December 2024, its net loss amounted to $390 million, or $0.51 per share, compared to a loss of $2.97 billion, or $3.57 per share, in the comparable period of the previous year. Excluding one-time items, earnings were $0.52 per share versus $1.18 a year earlier.
The earnings adjustment includes a one-time tax expense related to the change in the tax rate in Luxembourg ($0.4 billion) and a provision for tax litigation ($0.2 billion).
The company’s EBITDA in the fourth quarter increased by 13% to $1.65 billion from $1.45 billion a year earlier, while the consensus analysts’ forecast, presented earlier by the company itself, envisaged an increase to $1.53 billion.
ArcelorMittal’s revenue in the reporting quarter increased to $14.7 billion from $14.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Steel production in the fourth quarter increased to 14 million tonnes from 13.7 million tonnes a year earlier, while steel supplies rose to 13.5 million tonnes against 13.3 million tonnes.
The company expects global steel consumption (excluding China) to grow by 2.5%-3.5% in 2025 compared to 2024.
Shares of ArcelorMittal are up 3.5% in trading on Thursday.
In January 2025, the volume of foreign currency purchases by the Ukrainian population exceeded the volume of its sales by $1 billion 479.8 million, which is 34.1% higher than in January 2024 and 13.6% higher than in December 2024 and is the highest figure since December 2012.
According to the NBU’s website, compared to December, cash currency sales decreased by $157.1 million, while purchases decreased by only $63.4 million to $2 billion 430.9 million, resulting in an increase in the negative balance to $1 billion 290.3 million.
In addition, in January of this year, the sale of non-cash foreign currency decreased by $69.1 million, while its purchase increased by $14 million to $460 million, which led to an increase in the negative balance to $189 million.
At the same time, it is worth noting that in the first half of January, when the hryvnia was weakening, the volume of purchases was higher, and by the end of the month, after the national currency strengthened, the daily negative balance was reduced, and only on the last day of the month and in early February was a significant increase in demand recorded again.
In the legal entities market, after a jump in purchases of foreign currency by bank clients in December to $8.41 billion from $6.22 billion in November, in January, purchases decreased to $5.56 billion, which is only 10% higher than in January last year.
At the same time, the sale of foreign currency by bank clients also fell significantly in January this year, to $3.78 billion from $4.96 billion in December, which is 10% less than in January last year.
As for the volume of transactions between banks, it also decreased compared to December – from a record high of $7.96 billion since the beginning of the war to $6.12 billion. However, this figure is 40.8% better than in January 2024.
As reported, the official hryvnia exchange rate in the first half of January fell from 42.0295 UAH/$1 to a new all-time low of 42.2841 UAH/$1, but in the second half of the month it strengthened to 41.8242 UAH/$1.
The National Bank’s net sale of foreign currency on the interbank market in January decreased to $3.75 billion from a record high of $5.28 billion in December, although this is significantly higher than the January-2024 figure of $2.53 billion.
In total, the volume of foreign currency purchases by the Ukrainian population in 2024 exceeded the volume of its sales by $12.22 billion, which is 2.5 times or $7.43 billion more than in 2023, but thanks to large-scale foreign aid, international reserves increased to $43.8 billion last year.
In 2024, the official hryvnia exchange rate against the US dollar weakened by 10.6%, or UAH 4.02, including 0.9%, or 37 kopecks, in December.
Cabinet furniture manufacturer Accord Import (Khmelnytsky) will expand its production capacity by almost three times by building a new plant in Khmelnytsky, where it plans to create 140 jobs, according to Dmytro Kysylevsky, deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Economic Development.
“Construction of a new cabinet furniture plant has started in Khmelnytsky. The project’s investor is Accord Import. After the launch of the new plant, its production capacity will increase from 420 thousand square meters to 1.2 million square meters of cabinet furniture per month. This will allow the company to enter the top 5 manufacturers of cabinet furniture in Europe,” he wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
According to the MP, the amount of investment in the new project is $14 million. The launch of the first production lines is scheduled for July 2025, and the new plant should reach full capacity in September.
Kysylevsky noted that a 1.1 MW solar power plant has been built and an additional 2.8 MW is under construction to meet the electricity needs, and a gas piston plant has been purchased.
“At present, the existing Accord Import facility is 100% utilized. About 70% of the company’s cabinet furniture orders come from the international retail chain JYSK, which in 2025 increased the volume of cabinet furniture orders from Ukraine by a third,” Kysylevsky wrote.
According to the company’s Facebook page, Raiffeisen Bank has extended the term of the credit line under this contract, which was granted at the end of 2023, and the term of the ECA insurance contract for Accord Import.
“Thus, Raif and ECA have supported furniture exports for 2025 to Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Sweden, Germany and Spain,” the company wrote.
According to Kysylevsky, in general, Accord Import exports 96% of its products to the EU countries, and the launch of the new plant will expand the geography of exports to the Middle East, South Asia, and South America.
The MP also clarified that the owners of Accord Import, the Grabar family, started out as furniture importers, while now it is Ukraine’s largest exporter of cabinetry.
He also added that to replace the imports of cellular cardboard used by the company for furniture packaging, another company is currently under construction in Khmelnytskyi region to produce this product
. “And the supplier of wooden boards for Accord Import is Kronospan, which recently launched a production line in Rivne region,” Kysylevskyi added.
According to the Clarirty Project, Accord Import LLC was registered in Khmelnytskyi in August 2015. The company’s authorized capital is UAH 42.105 million, and the owners are Mykola, Ruslan, and Vadym Hrabar in equal shares.
In January-September 2024, the company increased its net profit by 23% compared to the same period in 2023 to UAH 120.6 million, with net revenue growing by 27% to UAH 1 billion 271 million.
The purchasing power of Europeans in 2024 increased by 3.9% and reached 18.768 thousand euros per capita, according to the research company GfK.
In total, the population of Europe had about 12.9 trillion euros available last year, which could be spent on food, housing and utilities, insurance and pension savings, recreation, mobile communications, and other purchases.
At the same time, disposable income indicators vary significantly among the 42 countries whose data were analyzed by GfK. The highest results were recorded in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, while the lowest were in Ukraine, Kosovo, and Belarus. As a result, the difference between the incomes of residents of Liechtenstein and Ukraine exceeds 24 times.
16 out of 42 countries exceeded the regional average, while 26 countries had below-average purchasing power.
“The nominal growth of purchasing power in Europe is 3.9%, which is much more moderate than in the previous two years. However, at the same time, the inflation rate has also slowed down,” NIQ-GfK expert Markus Frank said in a statement.
The top three countries in terms of purchasing power have not changed compared to the previous year: Liechtenstein – 70.18 thousand euros per capita (3.7 times higher than the average value for all countries in the region), Switzerland – 52.566 thousand euros (2.8 times higher), Luxembourg – 41.785 thousand euros (2.2 times higher).
The top ten also includes Iceland, Denmark, Austria, the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands. At the same time, the UK added three positions at once and took seventh place. The Netherlands rose to 10th place last year from 12th in 2023, pushing Ireland out of the top ten, which moved to 12th place from 6th.
In Ukraine, which rounds out the ranking and has continued to confront Russia’s full-scale military aggression since February 24, 2022, disposable income per capita is 2,878 thousand euros (15% of the European average).
Source: http://relocation.com.ua/purchasing-power-of-europeans/
IC “Express Insurance” (Kiev) in January 2025 collected insurance premiums in the amount of UAH 102.6 million, which is 71.9% more than in January 2024. According to the insurer’s website, in January payments amounting to more than UAH 34,4 mln were made, which is by 17% more than in the same period of 2024.
Including payments on hull insurance amounted to UAH 27 million (+5.3%), on MTPL – UAH 6.8 million (more in 2.4 times), payments on other insurance contracts – UAH 660 thousand.
“The growth of payouts on MTPL is a direct result of clients’ confidence in the company and increase in the number of concluded contracts”, – is noted in the message.
ALC “Express Insurance” was founded in 2008 and is part of the group of companies “UkrAVTO”. The company specializes in automobile insurance. Stably high speed of events settlement in IC is provided by optimal interaction with partner service stations.
Since April, 2012 IC “Express Insurance” is an associated member of the Motor Transport Insurance Bureau of Ukraine.
