Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, has announced its vision to increase the share of revenue from digital services to 50% in the future, a figure that has risen to 20% in recent years.
“Our vision is that one day our revenue from digital services will equal our revenue from telecommunications. We’ve reached 20% now. We still need 30%,” Kyivstar CEO and President Oleksandr Komarov said at Forbes Money on Thursday.
According to him, thanks to this year’s acquisition of Tabletki, the company already has more digital customers than telecom customers: the group’s digital businesses reached a three-month audience of 28 million users, compared to 22 million in the telecom business.
“In other words, we are moving forward with the implementation of our strategy. We understand that the core value today, unfortunately, is not created by the presence of a telecom connection,” Komarov added.
He clarified that the company is currently building an ecosystem of various digital services around its core offering, which is the telecom business.
“But perhaps in five years, the core offering will be, for example, the ‘Uklon’ offering. In other words, this creates a field of opportunities for the development of the Kyivstar Group,” said the president of Kyivstar.
Komarov noted that the company’s investment payback period is estimated at around 5–6 years.
“We don’t factor synergies into the deals, but we certainly keep in mind what synergies we can achieve. For example, the synergies between Kyivstar and Tabletki are quite insignificant, but the synergies between Tabletki and Helsi are quite significant,” the mobile operator’s CEO cited as an example.
He emphasized that it is also important for Kyivstar to reduce its dependence on its core telecom business, as investors are less interested in this sector.
“There is hope that at some point we will be able to position this group as a set of digital assets with a completely different perspective on its valuation,” Komarov explained.
As reported, Kyivstar increased its consolidated EBITDA by 28.5% in the first quarter of 2026—to 7.5 billion UAH—while revenue grew by 31.3%—to 13.9 billion UAH.
