OREANDA-NEWS. 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 markets, today releases unaudited interim condensed consolidated IFRS financial statements and provides the following unaudited segment financial information and key operating highlights for the six months ended 30 June 2013.

H1 2013 Performance Highlights

- H1 2013 Group aggregate segment revenue grew 28.4% Y-o-Y to RUR 12,442 million. Q2 2013 Group aggregate segment revenue demonstrated 27.3% Y-o-Y growth

- H1 2013 Group aggregate segment EBITDA grew 26.1% Y-o-Y to RUR 6,706 million

- H1 2013 Group aggregate net profit grew 27.6% Y-o-Y to RUR 5,063 million

- Net cash position as of 30 June 2013 was RUR 6,818 million

- Monthly audience (TNS Russia) of Mail.Ru portal in June 2013 reached 33.2 million Russian users

Key Recent Developments

- Email & portal
Email for business – free email service for your domain powered by Mail.Ru
Email iOS app and mobile web version allow users to manage multiple Mail.Ru accounts
Update of Android app with interface improvements
Launch of Cloud.Mail.Ru (closed beta) with 100GB of free cloud storage and file syncing clients for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android
Calendar.Mail.Ru released mobile app for Android
Complete redesign of Sport.Mail.Ru project

- Social networks
OK launched video 2.0 with new back-end, new design, and new services
Launched achievements system rewarding users for different activities in OK
Improved news feed, search and security algorithms for OK
Introduced notification center, people tagging in statuses, polls, video upload, multichat and achievements across all mobile platforms in OK
Updated OK applications for iOS and Android featuring native photos, discussions and sidebar navigation
My World launched Groups service, ability to simultaneously publish photos, text and music
Launched My World application for Android and updated application for iOS featuring improved navigation, multiple photo upload and photo filters

- Instant messaging
Free and paid stickers in Mail.Ru Agent for iOS and Android
Video-calls in Mail.Ru Agent for iOS (in addition to Android)
Released Mail.Ru Agent application for Windows 8 featuring voice and video calls, group chat, photo/video/file sharing

- Online games
Launched mobile game Jungle Heat on Android. The game’s been featured on Google Play Games in Japan, Korea, USA, Australia and several other countries
Launched mobile game Poker Arena on iOS and Android
Warface continues to gain traction in terms of both users and revenue
Pirate Code is catching up to our Top-5 revenue generating games – a successful story of porting social game to web platform

- Search & E-Commerce
Mail.Ru Group’s proprietary search engine provides all search results since July 1, 2013
Search market share was 8.8% in July 2013 (LiveInternet)
Search index volume has grown from 5 to 10 billion documents
Signed search monetization agreement with Yandex

- Corporate
Mail.Ru Group Moscow team moved to new Headquarters building in June 2013
Mail.Ru Group disposed of its remaining 14.2 mln Facebook shares in the period of July-August 2013 yielding proceeds  in excess of USD 525m
Launched non-profit platform Dobro.Mail.Ru for charity crowd-funding

Commenting on the results of the Group, Dmitry Grishin, Chairman and CEO of Mail.Ru Group, said:

"I am pleased to report that our company has had another successful period with Mail.Ru Group meeting or exceeded all key performance indicators, and hence delivering strong growth across all segments – email & portal and instant messaging, social networking, online games and search & e-commerce. Compared to H1 2012, Group aggregate segment revenue increased by 28%, reaching RUR 12,442 million and Group aggregate segment EBITDA rose 26% to RUR 6,706 million.

As previously indicated display advertising growth rates saw an improvement in Q2 as the one time effects seen in H2 2012 dropped off through Q1. Contextual advertising continues to be strong supported by both our solid market share in search and an increased focus on the Target product.  Community IVAS continues to show solid growth with the main driver of this being the increase of paying user engagement – especially in virtual gifts and services, as well as in our API platform and self-developed social games.

Evidenced by continued Y-o-Y growth in H1 we continue to execute on our MMO games strategy. Warface has been an important component of this and has seen an increasing traction in terms of both user and revenue, and has remained our top revenue generating game in Q2.

Despite the incremental costs of our new offices we continue to focus on profitability and maintain tight cost control.  As a result, even taking into account the increased office costs we have delivered an EBITDA margin of 53.9% compared to 54.9% in H1 2012.

The structural drivers of our business remain unchanged and hence we look into H2 2013 with confidence.  Given the strong first half of our year and our continued delivery we are increasing our FY 2013 guidance and now expect to see FY 2013 RUR Group aggregate segment revenue growth of 27-29% with contextual advertising and games showing the fastest growth.  Despite the effect of the new offices we continue to keep tight control over costs and hence expect that a FY 2013 Group aggregate segment EBITDA margin of between 53-54%."