Kyiv State Administration head Vitali Klitschko has met with World Boxing Council (WBC) President Mauricio Sulaiman and assured him the WBC’s 56th Congress will be held in Kyiv at the highest level. “We expect 700 participants at the event, including stars of the world boxing, the presidents of federations from the WBC member countries, and we are preparing an interesting program with informal communication and charitable events,” Klitschko said, adding costs would be at the expense of contributions to the WBC.
According to Sulaiman, such famous boxers as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and others will come to Kyiv.
The 56th WBC Congress will be held in Kyiv from September 30 to October 6. Klitschko two years ago was inducted into the WBC’s hall of fame. Ukrainian WBC champions also include Viktor Postol and Oleksandr Usyk (current).
UBC Group (Kharkiv), a commercial and industrial holding, working in the field of refrigeration and promotional products, has built the first stage of a refrigerator factory with an area of 20,000 square meters in Vinnytsia. “Vinnytsia. The new UBC Group plant – Green Cool. The first stage of about 20,000 square meters is ready. The installation and start-up phase has started under the guidance of Italian engineers. At the same time, we recruit personnel. Theoretically, in June the plant must produce the first products,” President of UBC Group Ihor Humenny wrote on his Facebook page.
According to him, refrigerators with a glass door and an ice cream box will be produced at the Vinnytsia factory.
As reported, the capacity of the first stage of the plant for production of refrigeration equipment in Vinnytsia will amount to 60,000 pieces per year. Its budget is EUR18 million.
After the launch of the first stage, UBC Group plans to expand the facility from 20,000 square meters to 35,000 square meters. The second stage will produce refrigerator boxes, the group will reach a capacity of 150,000 pieces per year. Capital investments in the second stage are estimated at about EUR10-12 million.
UBC Group has three plants in Ukraine and offices in 26 countries.
U.Ventures investment fund, founded by Western NIS Enterprise Fund, has invested $1.15 million in Ukraine’s startups YouTeam, 3DLook and Pufetto, the fund has said. “Ukraine has prominent product companies and startups that make revolutionary products and are highly competitive on a global market, and YouTeam, 3DLook, and Pufetto are dazzling examples of this. We are very pleased to invest in these startups and are convinced that they have a great potential to become leaders in its segments not only in Ukraine but worldwide,” President and CEO of Western NIS Enterprise Fund Jaroslawa Z. Johnson said.
3DLook, founded by Vadym Rohovsky, a serial entrepreneur from Odesa (the co-founder of the Clickky startup), in 2016, is an innovative solution for apparel retail and e-commerce that uses proprietary body measuring technology to make a perfect size and fit recommendations to consumers.
YouTeam, founded in Lviv in 2014, is a marketplace for hiring tech talent from software development firms.
Pufetto is a Ukrainian furniture manufacturer and e-commerce player that enables customers to customize its furniture (sofas, armchairs, beds) through its online platform and have it delivered to door within three of four weeks. Pufetto sells furniture through the proprietary online platform, as well as via show rooms in Ukraine and Germany.
Attracted investments will help startups to improve their products, hire new people and expand to new markets.
3DLOOK, FUND, INVESTS, PUFETTO, STARTUPS, U.VENTURES, YOUTEAM
Public joint-stock company Ukrtelecom has designed a project to connect remote settlements to the broadband Internet access service, which could cover 8,000 villages where 6 million residents are living, during two years, Director for Mass Market Segment at Ukrtelecom Denys Zakharenko said at the presentation of the project in Kyiv on Monday. The total cost of the project is UAH 6 billion, including UAH 3.2 billion (53.3%) of government investment.
He said that all villages with schools (6,900) and villages located close to them with over 100 households will be included in the project.
Ukrtelecom said that mass connection would ensure the coverage of 40% of the total number of rural residents in Ukraine with the broadband Internet access service, which would cut the gap between cities and small towns and villages by 75%, as the share of rural areas in Ukraine where the service is not provided would decline from 56% to 16%, from 8.3 million to 2.3 million people.
According to the calculations of the operator, some 58,000 km of networks should be built to cover 8,000 villages.
The operator said that 14,000 villages are not covered by the project. A total of 2.3 million residents live there. This could be a ground for the second wave of connections.
Thanks to the implementation of the project, broadband Internet access saturation in Ukraine would grow by 4.4%, and GDP would grow by 0.6%, which in the prices of 2018 is around UAH 20 billion. Growth of the national budget’s revenue could be UAH 5.4 billion.
Zakharenko said that the buyback period for government investment could be two years thanks to the increase in payment of taxes.
Ukrtelecom Director Yuriy Kurmaz said that the project will be presented to the government and parliament.
The only shareholder in public joint-stock company Sberbank (Kyiv) – Sberbank (Russia) – has decided to increase the charter capital of the Ukrainian subsidiary bank by UAH 8.3 billion or 66.6%, to UAH 20.766 billion via the placement of additionally issued shares, the bank has reported in the information disclosure system of the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market. According to the report, the decision was made on May 11.
The bank will privately place the shares with a face value of UAH 1. Sberbank (Kyiv) was founded in 2001. The bank ranked 9th among 84 operating banks as of January 1, 2018,in terms of total assets worth UAH 42.363 billion, according to the National Bank of Ukraine.
The mobile communications operator Kyivstar saw a 10.1% rise in total revenue in January-March 2018 year-over-year, to UAH 4.263 billion, according to a financial report of the company’s shareholder – Veon international group (before the rebranding it was VimpelCom Ltd.) posted on its official website. According to the report, during this period, Kyivstar increased earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) by 16.4% compared to the same period in 2016, to UAH 2.412 billion. The EBITDA margin increased 3 percentage points (p.p.), to 56.6%.
Revenue from mobile operator services for the first three months of 2018 amounted to UAH 3.968 billion, an 11% increase over the same period in 2017, which is explained by the growth in both the number of mobile Internet users (by 1.6 million) and their mobile data use (average consumption of mobile data traffic per month increased by 121%, to 1.5 GB per subscriber).
At the same time, revenue from mobile Internet for the year increased by almost 59%. Its share was 33% of total revenue from mobile communications. The number of mobile subscribers of Kyivstar in January-March 2018 increased 1.9% to 26.5 million. The minutes of use (MoU) grew by 2.1%, to 586 minutes. The average revenue per user (ARPU) rose by 8.5%, to UAH 49 per month.
Revenue of the mobile operator from fixed-line communications remained unchanged in the first quarter of 2018, being UAH 295 million. The number of fixed-line Internet users slightly grew – by 2.7%, to some 800,000 users, and ARPU from fixed-line Internet grew by 4.3%, to UAH 72.
Capital investment over the period fell by 6.8% (not taking into account the cost of 4G licenses), reaching UAH 687 million.
According to the report, the operator continued to deploy its 3G network in the first quarter, expanding its coverage of the area with the 3G network from 64% in the first quarter of 2017 to 74% in the first quarter of 2018. In April 2018, the company began to provide communication services in the 4G (LTE) standard. In the first quarter of 2018, Kyivstar transferred more than UAH 2.9 billion taxes and duties to the national budget of Ukraine.
