In its unaudited IFRS results made public last month, Mail.Ru Group, a leading LSE-listed Russian Internet group, has estimated “the negative effect of the blocking of its services in Ukraine in Q2 is around 1.5% of total revenues in 2017.”
In mid-May, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree applying sanctions to 468 legal entities and 1,228 individuals from Russia.
Among the targeted organizations was Mail.Ru Group as well as Yandex, another Russian Internet giant, the services of which are currently officially inaccessible from Ukraine.
In particular, Ukrainian users are no longer able to use popular social networks Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte, which are properties of Mail.Ru Group. However, users may still access the websites using VPNs and other anonymizers.
Despite the Ukraine-related losses, Mail.Ru Group claims that “the rest of the business continues to perform very well,” and expects a year-on-year revenue growth of between 23-26% to around 53 billion rubles (around $925 million at the current exchange rate).
