Vodafone Ukraine sees net profit fall by 24.4%
KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Vodafone Ukraine in July-September 2018 received a net profit of UAH 393 million, which is 24.4% less than the figure for July-September 2017.
According to a press release from the Ukrainian operator, the reduction in net profit is due to the increase in depreciation costs due to the active deployment of 4G and 3G networks.
The company’s revenue for the third quarter increased by 6.5%, to UAH 3.3 billion.
Vodafone Ukraine said OIBDA in the third quarter of this year increased by 49.4% compared to the same period last year, to UAH 1.8 billion, and the OIBDA margin rose by 13.9 percentage points, to 54.9%.
The subscriber base of Vodafone Ukraine in the reporting period decreased by 4.3%, to 19.9 million subscribers.
The company added that at the end of September 2018, the number of 4G users increased by 75.3%, without specifying the absolute figure, while the 4G network covers almost 40% of the country’s population.
According to the press release, investment in the network infrastructure amounted to more than UAH 1 billion for the reporting period and UAH 20 billion since the start of construction of high-speed mobile Internet networks.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) stops financing projects in the field of solar energy in Ukraine until a more rational method of supporting the development of renewable energy sources is introduced, senior banker of the EBRD’s energy department Olga Yeriomina has said at the Ukrainian Energy Week in Kyiv.
“Now this is the issue of several days when the bank may decide that in future it will not support new projects on renewable energy. We have already decided that we are not taking new projects on electricity, while we have not yet decided on wind energy,” she said.
The banker stressed that the bank is concerned about a lack of significant steps on the part of the parliament to move from the “feed-in” tariff to other, more rational systems of support for the development of renewable energy sources in the country, in particular, to “green” auctions.
“I am afraid that we will not be the last “swallow” to stop supporting projects on renewable energy, unless an immediate planned transition to a more sustainable support system for renewable energy projects begins,” she added.
According to her, the feed-in tariff has already played its role in stimulating the development of renewable energy in the country and is now a burden for the budget, from which the difference between the feed-in tariff and the tariff for energy production by traditional sources is reimbursed.
Reikartz Hotel Management LLC (Kyiv), the managing company of the Reikartz Hotel Group, has launched the Chinese friendly program intended for tourists and business travelers from China, the press service of the chain has reported.
“We analyzed the market and found that 25,200 tourists arrived in Ukraine from China in 2017, which means that during the year tourist flow increased by 40%,” Director of Corporate Culture at Reikartz Hotel Group Oleksiy Larionov said.
He said that the Chinese friendly program has already existed in different countries of the world, but it is unique in Ukraine at the moment.
Six Reikartz hotels have already become participants of the program, including Raziotel Kyiv Yamska, VitaPark Borysfen, Reikartz Zaporizhia, Raziotel Marenero Odesa, Reikartz Dworzec Lviv and Reikartz River Mykolaiv: voice translation, navigation in hotels and information in the rooms translated into Chinese, and for breakfast you can choose Chinese dishes and use traditional chopsticks.
The company said that the program will be distributed to all hotels of the chain by the end of 2019.
Retail trade turnover in Ukraine in January-October 2018 in comparable prices increased by 5.4% compared with January-October 2017, the State Statistics Service has reported. Retail trade turnover in October 2018 rose by 2% compared with September of the current year, and by 5% from October 2017.
The largest growth in retail trade turnover for the ten months of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017 was observed in Luhansk (by 27%), Donetsk (by 12.9%), Zakarpattia (by 11.5%), and Poltava regions (11.4%).
The Irish low cost air carrier Ryanair could start operating flights from Italy to Ukraine as early as 2019, chief commercial officer of the company David O’Brien has said at a conference at the Ministry of Infrastructure. “In Italy, we fly from Milan and Pisa. But the Italian government provided certain advantages to the airline, which has only two flights. We filed a lawsuit and won the case, so maybe we will also fly from Italy to Ukraine,” he said.
Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan, in turn, noted that Ukraine plans to provide all the necessary support for the launch of flights by the Irish low cost airline on the direction Ukraine-Italy. “I believe that Ryanair will be able to fly from Italy next year,” the minister said.
He also said that the Ministry of Infrastructure had sent a corresponding letter to the Italian government, moreover, negotiations with the Italian Transport Minister were scheduled for the near future, during which Omelyan plans to raise the issue of planning flights in the Ukrainian direction.
Omelyan also noted that he expects the final settlement of Open Skies Agreement issues with the European Union in the first half of 2019.