The largest mobile operator in Ukraine Kyivstar in April-June resumed indicators to the maximum possible level, company's president Oleksandr Komarov said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"In fact, I am happy with the results. You always want more, but considering the turbulence that the company went through in the fourth quarter of last year and in the first quarter of this year, it seems to me that we have recovered to the maximum possible levels," he said.

According to Komarov, the results of the first quarter were influenced by the gratitude/loyalty program, which was implemented in connection with the cyberattack. The total budget for expenses on eliminating the consequences of the cyberattack, strengthening the system and the loyalty or gratitude program for subscribers amounted to UAH 3.6 billion.

"If in the first quarter we decreased by 14% year-on-year, then in the second we are already growing by about 9.5% in the company as a whole [we are talking about revenue growth in the second quarter compared to the second quarter of 2023]. The growth, as I said, is uneven. New business is growing the most. The pace is almost 70% year-on-year," the company's president said.

He noted that Kyivstar has become one of the top partners of Microsoft for the modern workplace and Microsoft Azure. This area generates a large cash flow. The Kyivstar TV film and television platform is growing significantly, revenues from BigData are returning to pre-war levels, and may even already exceed them. The Helsi app has shown growth.

"In gross, we are already making about half a billion hryvnia in revenue from new businesses at the quarterly level," Komarov said.

In addition, he noted a 16% increase in fixed-line communications in the second quarter compared to the year-on-year. Mobile communications grew by about 8.5%. Kyivstar has returned to its usual levels of marginality and profitability, Komarov emphasized.

As for the subscriber base, according to him, it is influenced by many factors, including the outflow associated with the loss of territory and the migration of people outside of Ukraine. Due to long outages and as a result of the unprecedented cyberattack, the number of subscribers who use SIM cards from two or three operators has increased. According to his observations, the subscriber base is declining in Ukraine as a whole.

At the same time, record new connections are observed. Since the beginning of large-scale blackouts, new connections have grown in the range of approximately 30-40% year on year. Many people buy SIM cards as a backup, but then they may not use them. "In July, when the outages were serious, we saw an incredible increase in the number of new connections in mobile communications," said the president of Kyivstar.

"The trends that make me very happy are that the number of customers who used our digital services reached 8.8 million in the second quarter. The LTE penetration rate is now more than 60% of our base. In the second quarter, mobile Internet usage per customer increased to 11 GB compared to 9.9 GB in the second quarter of 2023," Komarov noted.

Earlier it was reported that the revenue of the largest Ukrainian mobile operator Kyivstar in April-June of this year increased by 9.5% compared to April-June 2023 - to UAH 9.425 billion, and in U.S. dollars - by 0.4%, to $ 236 million. Capital investments of Kyivstar in April-June of this year amounted to UAH 2.28 billion, which is 63.1% higher than the figure for the second quarter of last year and 2.1 times higher than the first quarter of this year.