Ukraine Facebook Protests Seen Boosting MTS to VimpelCom - Businessweek
▻http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-12-05/ukraine-facebook-revolution-seen-boosting-mts-russia-overnight
“It’s just logical that traffic rises now,” Sergey Libin, an analyst at Raiffeisenbank in Moscow, who rates MTS a buy and VimpelCom a hold, said by phone. “What is yet unknown is how many more people will join and for how long the protests will last.”
VimpelCom said voice traffic increased 15 percent in Kiev on Dec. 1 when protests intensified, compared with an average weekend level, Artem Minaev, Amsterdam-based spokesman for the company, said via e-mail today. Data traffic grew 5 percent, he said.
MTS, Russia’s largest wireless carrier, rose 2.3 percent to $20.28 in New York as of 9:39 a.m., trading at a 4.8 percent premium to the Moscow stock. MTS gained 8.7 percent this year. VimpelCom, the wireless carrier controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, rose 2.1 percent to $11.99, widening its 2013 advance to 14 percent.