Telecom firm Veon Group has reported third quarter revenue of just over $1.1 billion - a jump of 7.4 % year on year. The Dubai-based company has also raised its outlook for 2025, projecting annual revenue growth of between 7 and 8%. Kaan Terzioglu, VEON Group, CEO spoke to Bloomberg's Jennifer Zabasajja on Horizons Middle East and Africa on the numbers.

Dubai

Veon's CEO reported that digital services have become a primary growth driver for the company, with digital service users surpassing traditional telecom SIM users for the first time, reaching 145 million. The company operates in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, serving a combined population of 500 million, and has seen digital services contribute nearly 18% to its top line, growing 63% in the last quarter.

The CEO emphasized that digital offerings in areas such as financial services, entertainment, healthcare, and education are increasing customer engagement and retention, complementing rather than cannibalizing the core telecom business. While Veon is prioritizing growth in its current markets, it remains open to expansion in large, underserved countries, including Africa, provided opportunities are reasonably priced. The company maintains disciplined risk management practices, especially in volatile frontier and emerging markets.

Veon CEO: Prioritizing growth in existing markets

You talk about being a traditional telecom company, but it really seems like the other parts of your business are increasingly leading to growth. Can you talk about how much some of the other parts of the business have factored in to these results? Good morning, Jennifer. Thanks for having me. September was a remarkable month for us because it is the first month number of our digital service users surpassed our telecom sim users at 145 million. In the markets that we operate today, which is actually from Pakistan to Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, we serve a population of half a billion. And one out of every three people is our telecom customers and now one out of every three people is also our digital service customers. And that digital services is what's driving our business up and up. It was almost 18% of our top line and last quarter it grew 63%. And actually the margins are also improved by 320 basis points because the extra growth that we see in digital services is coming with margins higher than we were expecting. So I'm very, very happy to see that the concept of a digital operator is becoming very tangible. And I think in frontier markets and possibly also you will see the same things happening in Africa. It is actually the telecom operator needs to take responsibility to bring meaningful digital services and augmented intelligence to the hands and fingerprints of the consumers. Is your expectation then we'll continue to see some of these digital services potentially cannibalizing the core business? How do you balance that moving forward? No, actually not at all. What we see is our digital services in the areas like financial services, entertainment, healthcare, education, retailing and enterprise services. The moment the customer of our telecom business starts consuming these services, their engagement increases, their ARPU goes up and their retention actually improves. So right on the contrary, rather than cannibalizing, it's a great complimentary value that we see in the marketplace. The more we are relevant to the customers, the more number of minutes we serve them, the bigger the potential, the bigger the volunteer and the bigger the growth opportunity. Do you expect then to expand to more markets at this point? Is that something you're eyeing? Well, currently we are operating in five countries which we are very proud to serve. I am prioritizing our growth in these countries as my number one priority, but as we look further, we are very excited to look into large population countries where the demographic dividend is still live. People are getting richer and richer and basically that we can serve the underserved. And I think that's a very sweet spot that we see in our business model. And if there are opportunities like that, which is at reasonable prices, of course, we would show interest. Does that potentially mean Africa is on the horizon? I think Africa is a beautiful market with definitely growing populations and most importantly, populations being significantly underserved when it comes to financial services, entertainment, healthcare, education, and all businesses around from classifieds to ride hailing, the areas that we have been investing in our own markets. Khan, can you talk about some of the dispersions really that we're seeing in the markets that you operate in? If we take a look at some of them, there's quite a bit of volatility, especially if you consider what we've seen in 2025. How do you operate in such different markets considering some of the effects risks that might come with it? Look, I think operating in frontier and emerging markets requires a lot of discipline. And that discipline is about really looking to the markets and having a policy of adapting disciplined fair value pricing. The moment you take your eyes off the ball in terms of the GDP growth and consumer spending, and you do not actually make the actions that is necessary to have your pricing adapt to the new realities of inflation and devaluation, you will lose the game. We apply very disciplined fair value pricing in our markets as well as we leverage our local operations from local markets. And I think those two things are the best recipes for managing your risks in frontier and emerging markets. And we do have a track record of applying that discipline continuously.

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