OREANDA-NEWS  On 15 October was announced, that Uralsvyazinform (RTS and MICEX: URSI/URSIP, ADR: UVYZY/UVYPY) hereby releases its unaudited consolidated interim financial statement for the first half of 2008 drafted to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

Uralsvyazinform’s operating earnings were affected by the following factors in January-June 2008:

-          datacom and Internet earnings spiked 51.4% due to a 100% increase in the base of Home Internet (broadband Internet access) subscribers to 392,200 and a 6.5-fold rise in Internet traffic to 6.6 Pb;

-          a 10.3% climb in wireless earnings due to a 16.5% increase in the subscriber base to 5,382,000;

-          a 6.1% jump in interconnect and traffic transmission earnings owing to higher volumes of traffic exchanged with outside operators;

-          a 2.2% drop in local voice earnings following changes in the structure of customer division by tariff plans (a reduction of the portion of the monthly line tariff plans, a rise in the proportion of the per-minute billing tariff plan), and also a decline in tariffs for additional services, introduction of the new principle of charging “partial” minutes;

-          A 0.4% contraction in intrazonal earnings due to a 10.5% drop in the total duration of F2F calls (278.5 mln minutes in January-June 2008). Atthesametime, thedurationofF2Mcallsjumped0.1% (894 mlnminutes).

Uralsvyazinform’s H108 operating expenses were impacted by the following factors:

-          depreciation charges surged 25.2% following the commissioning of new facilities;

-          a 18.5% rise in expenses related to the services provided by other operators stemmed from growth in the base of mobile and VAS users and, consequently, call termination payments and the purchase of backbone Internet traffic;

-          the continuing optimization of the headcount and the labor payment system prevented payroll expenses and social security contributions from rising (+3%), which is far less than growth in operating expenses as a whole.

The compensation of losses related to universal telecom services using payphones totaled Rub 786 mln in January-June 2008 (Rub 3 mln in January-June 2007).

Detailed information are available here.