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Weekly Lists
March 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 29
bne:TMT Telegram plans
$1.7bn ICO
Telegram messenger founded by expat Russian digital entrepre- neur Pavel Durov plans an initial coin offering (ICO) worth $1.7bn to launch own cryptocurrency Gram and blockchain platform TON, Vedomosti daily said on February 27 citing unnamed sources close to the offering.
The Russian ICO frenzy continued in 2017 with more than 130 ICOs and pre-ICOs conducted by companies with Russian roots, some 10% of the global numbers, according to data collected
by ICObench and East-West Digital News (EWDN).
Telegram is already going down in history as the largest ICO to date having previously raised $850mn from 81 investors (including Silicon Valley funds Benchmark and Sequoia Capital).
TON is planned to be launched by October 31 2019, with investors in both rounds of the Telegram ICO guaranteed their money back otherwise, according to Vedomosti.
Russian internet services major Mail.ru reported 33% year-on- year growth in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2017 to RUB17.6bn ($310mn), beating consensus expectations by 6%. The company's Ebitda was RUB6.5bn, making a 36.7% margin and net profit of RUB4.5bn.
In the previous quarters of 2017 Mail.ru posted strong revenue growth, but had margins under pressure due to active investment in multiple new business segments.
For 2017 overall company's revenues grew by 34.4% y/y to RUB57.5bn, beating the company's own top line growth guidance
of 30-31%. Ebitda came in line with guidance at RUB20.6bn, making a 35.8% margin.
In the core business advertising and MMO games revenue growth remained strong at 29.4% (vs 19.4% at domestic competitor Yandex) and 34.6% y/y, respectively.
Mail.ru makes net profit of RUB4.5bn in Q4