By Supantha Mukherjee and Mathieu Rosemain
BARCELONA (Reuters) – Veon’s mobile network in Ukraine, where it is the biggest operator, is currently running, its chief executive officer Kaan Terzioglu said on Monday as a war was raging on in the country of 44 million people.
“We have 4,000 people in Ukraine trying bravely, very hard to keep our network up and running,” Terzioglu told Reuters in an interview.”
“And so far, they’re successful.”
Veon, which is also Russia’s second-biggest mobile operator, is among those companies that are the most exposed to the current conflict on the Ukrainian soil.
“The situation in Ukraine is very dire,” Terzioglu said. “We literally have our offices turned to shelters and our people are working day and night trying to support the network.”
Veon’s shares plummeted in early trading on Monday after the company, in which the biggest shareholder is Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s investment vehicle LetterOne, declined to provide targets for the full-year.
Even so, Terzioglu said Veon could so far weather the storm financially, given its current financial position, with $2.3 billion in cash at hand at the end of the year, on top of $1.5 billion of undrawn credit lines.
“If sanctions force us to pay back any loan, we are well equipped (for that),” he said.
The broadband and mobile operator serves 204 million mobile clients in total in countries as diverse as Pakistan, Algeria and Kazakhstan.
(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain and Supantha Mukherjee, Editing by Louise Heavens)
