life:) announces 2009 full year: revenue growth in local currency continued

Mobile services operator life:) announces its financial and operational results for the fourth quarter of 2009 and year ended December 31, 2009. Despite the fact that Ukraine was one of the countries that highly hit by the global economic crises, the operator managed to sustain the consistent growth of all its main financial indicators in local currency.
In the fourth quarter of 2009 economic turmoil in Ukraine continued and the volatile political and macro-economic environment continued to have an adverse impact on the local currency. Year-on-year depreciation of hryvnia against the US dollar was approximately 47.7% and thus impacted the telecommunication market and life:) financial performance in US$ terms in particular. Despite the unfavorable environment, life:) increased its revenues in local currency.
In the fourth quarter of 2009, life:) revenue in UAH increased by 10.3% compared to the same period of 2008 year. At the same time in dollar equivalent this financial indicator declined by 16.2% to $92.8 million mainly due to the depreciation of the UAH against the US$.
In 2009, life:) increased its revenue in UAH by 19.5% compared to 2008 year but decreased it in US$ by 20.0% to $351.1 million – again under the impact of UAH devaluation. In 2009, life:) recorded EBITDA of $20.2 million and $6.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. The EBITDA margin
decreased by 1.7 percentage points to 5.7% in 2009 from 7.4% in 2008 mainly due to increased share of interconnection costs as a percentage of revenue. In the fourth quarter of 2009 the EBITDA margin also decreased by 6.4 percentage points down to 7.4% from 13.8% in the fourth quarter of 2008.
In 2009, life:)’s subscriber base kept increasing and reached 12.2 million from 11.2 million in 2008. Three month active subscriber base grew by 9.9% year-on-year. In 2009, MoU increased by 6.5% to 158.7 minutes compared to 2008.
The CEO of life:) Tansu Yegen has commented: “Despite of the number of economic challenges and though competition on the Ukrainian telecom market, 2009 year became for us a good ground for further expansion in terms of number of subscribers, revenue and investments. In 2010 we will be fully focused on our main priorities: to enhance quality of our network and services, to offer highly targeted products, to introduce competitive and innovative loyalty programs and further invest into technologies and infrastructure and improve our market position whilst maintaining our focus on profitability. The competition will be getting tougher but we are ready to meet the new challenges of the market and to keep growing trends in our financial and operational results”.
The national mobile services operator life:) is the leading operator on the market in terms of new customers acquisition, serving 12.2 million subscribers (as of Q4 2009). life:) network covers the territory where 94,8% of population lives. life:) provides roaming opportunities in 172 countries via 455 roaming partners. The operator was the first to introduce EDGE technology to the market and provides its customers with wide EDGE coverage via 100% EDGE enabled cells. life:) offers high quality mobile services for all segments of the Ukrainian society.
Currently the rational expenses for mobile communications are of great significance to any subscriber. life:) offers its customers beneficial and transparent tariffs which grant freedom of communication and make the communication expenses predictable. 488 life:) customer care centers and exclusive sales points operate in 185 cities of the country. In addition to that, life:) subscribers can order life:) services through 34 600 non-exclusive shops.