Vimpel Leads Russian Telecoms Down

MOSCOW, Russia (TheStreet) -- Vimpel-Communications(VIP) was sliding in early morning trading.

Shares in Vimpel were sliding by 1.2%, to $19.67, after the leading Russian telecom provider said that it doubled its profit in the third quarter.

The impressive results still fell short of analysts estimates.

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Vimpel, which does business in the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and a host of other countries in Central and Western Asia, doubled its profit to 13.51 billion rubles from 6.51 billion rubles.

The results missed the average 16.36 billion ruble forecast from a Reuters poll.

Vimpel attributes the profit rise partly to a 0.7 billion ruble net foreign exchange gain resulting from the strengthening of the ruble.

However, it was still a lower-than-expected foreign exchange gain for Vimpel, causing it to miss analyst estimates.

As one of the largest broadband providers in Russia and the CIS, Vimpel's operating revenues also increased in the third quarter, rising to 71.33 billion rubles from 68.93 billion rubles.

Vimpel increased its mobile subscribers by 1.7 million between the second and third quarters, bringing the total number to 65.4 million or 13% more subscribers than last year.