Dubai – Mail.Ru Group Limited (LSE: MAIL, hereinafter referred as “the Company” or “the Group”), one of the largest Internet companies in the high-growth Russian-speaking Internet market, today provides the following preliminary unaudited segment financial information for the second half and full year ended 31 December 2011.
FY 2011 Highlights
- H2 and FY 2011 Group aggregate segment revenue grew Y-o-Y 52.9% to $286.8m and Y-o-Y 58.6% to $514.9m respectively (or 59.5% and 59.4% excluding the effect of ICQ acquisition completed in July 2010).
- 4Q 2011 Group aggregate segment revenue grew Y-o-Y 48.4% to $161.9mH2 and FY 2011 Group aggregate segment EBITDA grew Y-o-Y 153.1% to $166.3m and Y-o-Y 136.8% to $282.8m respectively
- H2 and FY 2011 Group aggregate segment net profit grew Y-o-Y 197.7% to $122.9m and Y-o-Y 156.9% to $207.6m respectivelyNet Cash position as of December 31, 2011 was $154.3m
- Monthly audience (TNS Russia) of Mail.Ru portal in December 2011 reached 30.0m Russian usersContinued growth in social networking and instant messaging with Odnoklassniki reaching 20.8m monthly users (TNS Russia) and Mail.ru Agent – 22.9m monthly users
Key Product Developments in 2011
Active cross-product navigation launched
New web-interface of email service: total redesign of interface and multiple performance improvements
Ability to customize interface themes for email service
Significant improvements in Antispam System and security enhancements
New user support and help system; new support office in Nizhny NovgorodInstant Messaging
Updates and releases of desktop and mobile clients (iOS, Android, WP7, Java, Symbian, Blackberry) of Mail.Ru Agent and ICQXMPP protocol support in major clients (PC, Android, Symbian, Java)
Support for easy authorization in Odnoklassniki (OK) and VKontakte (VK)
Server-based interoperability between Agent and ICQ
- Social Networks
My World and OK profiles linking for users (opt-in)
Simultaneous posting in OK for MyWorld users
New OK design – better user experience
OK launched video service and video chat, supporting Web and iPhone
Releases / updates of iPhone, Android, WP7 applications
- Online Games
Relaunched games.mail.ru portal to become the largest MMO gaming portal in Runet
Launched games downloader [email protected] – unified channel of games distribution
16 new games launched, including MMO, social and mobile gamesSearch and E-commerce
Release of search app for iPhone and new mobile version of search
Introduction of “quick facts” box appearing in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) upon certain search queries such as weather forecast, currency exchange, etc.
[email protected] (jobs vertical) integrated with Headhunter
Comments by Dmitry Grishin, co-founder and CEO of Mail.Ru Group
In 2011 we continued to focus on integrating and improving of our products. We launched active cross-product navigation to enable our users to see active activity alerts off the current page. Our e-mail service has been fully redesigned, including AJAX interface, customized themes, antispam improvements and security enhancements. We introduced interoperability between Agent and ICQ, and support for authorization between instant messengers and social networks to connect with friends. Odnoklassniki continued to gain share of users in the Russian-speaking market, reaching 20.8m monthly users in December 2011 (TNS Russia) and 26.7m global daily users (Liventernet). We significantly advanced OK product in 2011, including full site redesign, launch of video and music service, events and video chat. In an effort to further integrate social graphs, we also offered users linking their profiles in My World and OK and ability to cross-post status updates, photos and other events between the two social networks. Improvements drove significant increase in engagement – OK y-o-y daily user growth in December 2011 was at 32% (TNS Russia). Our online gaming business remained a clear leader in the Russian market despite increasing competition. We launched 16 new games across all segments – MMO (client & browser), social and mobile. Our core games including Allods and Perfect World demonstrated continued growth while some of the more recent releases have yet to gain scale. In 2012, we intend to focus on quality, rather than quantity of the games, including launch of major gaming titles we licensed for Russian speaking territories as well as further international releases of Allods Online.
Mobile has become one of the major drivers of our user growth. Approximately 43% of Mail.Ru Agent monthly users are accessing the service from their mobile devices, as well as 34% of our OK monthly users. The mobile user growth is exceeding that of PC in our key products and we keep focusing on upgrading mobile versions of our key products (E-mail, Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ, OK and My World, Search) across platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Java, Symbian).
We continue to invest in our people and their development. We started working with several major Russian universities (Bauman State Technical University and St. Petersburg ITMO) on student development centers. In Q4 2011, we entered into a new lease agreement for Class A building in Moscow in order to accommodate further expansion and attract the best engineers.
The structural drivers of our business remain unchanged and as a result we enter 2012 with confidence. Thus we expect full-year 35% y-o-y constant currency revenue growth and aggregate segment EBITDA margin around 50%.
Investor Relations Contacts
Matthew Hammond, Managing Director Mail.Ru Group
- Phone: +971 505 56 1315 / +44 7711 624 679
- E-mail: [email protected]
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