Mobile TeleSystems popularly known as MTS reported a 17.5% drop in revenues for the year 2009 at $ 9.8 billion with net profit for the year at $ 1 billion.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2009, the revenues were at $ 2.8 billion. But the company posted net loss of $ 26 million in this quarter.

“The loss was on account of one-time and periodic charges, including the write off of $368 million in investments mainly attributable to the re-valuation of our investment in Svyazinvest held on the Comstar-UTS level, the charges of $86 million related to the write-off of obsolete equipment and expenses related to our acquisition of Comstar- UTS and higher non-cash tax provisions related to our anticipated upstreaming of dividends from our foreign subsidiary companies as their markets mature,” said a company statement.

The yearly OIBDA was at $ 4.4 billion while the quarterly OIBDA was at $ 1.1 billion.

Highlights for the year 2009 include acquisition of mobile retailers Telefon, Ru Eldorado and Teleforum. It also signed an agreement with a management team affiliated with Svyaznoy for sales and distribution.

Mikhail Shamolin, President and Chief Executive Officer said, “Despite the challenges we faced in 2009, MTS has delivered a strong set of results that showed relative revenue growth to the market in each of our core markets and business streams. Total cash flows from operations were nearly $3.6 billion for 2009, underlying the health of the business despite the macroeconomic uncertainty in our regions of operations.”

The company expects to report better results due to the positively changing economic growth in Russia and CIS. It expects the group OIBDA margin to be in the range of 43-45% while capex may fall within the range of 22-24% of revenues with most spending on 3G and backbone networks in Russia and Central Asia.