Vimpelcom Q3 Net Profit Drops

Vimpelcom

reported a 59% decline in its third quarter net profit. The company's quarterly profit dropped to $104 million due to one-off items, versus a year-ago profit of $255 million. However, analysts were expecting a profit of $213 million. Its revenue shrank 9% to $5.1 billion, while earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation tumbled 11% to $2.2 billion. Its mobile customer base gained 5 million to 223.4 million. Jo Lunder, Chief Executive Officer, said, “Our year-on-year revenue and EBITDA performance was impacted by macro-economic challenges, foreign currency movements and our operational performance in some markets. We have continued to execute on our strategy to invest in high speed data networks and we are now starting to see the benefits of this investment, both in network performance and in customer satisfaction.” VimpelCom confirmed its annual outlook for 2014. Vimpelcom shares fell 0.68% to close at $5.85 yesterday.