Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to our London Office. I'd also like to say welcome to those joining on the webcast and the audio call. Before we start with the agenda, I just need to read out something from the disclaimer that's on the screen. Forward-looking statements made during today's presentation involves certain risks and uncertainties. These statements relate in part to the company's anticipated performance and guidance for 2018, future market developments and trends, operational and network development and network investment, and the company's ability to realize its targets and strategic initiatives. Certain factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those in these forward-looking statements, including the risks detailed in the company's Annual Report on Form 20-F and other public filings. The earnings release and earnings presentation, each which includes reconciliation of non-IFRS financial measures presented today can be downloaded from our website. Let me now run through the agenda and the speakers today. We'll start with Jean-Yves Charlier, our CEO, who is going through the 2017 achievements and our 2018 strategic priorities. We'll then have Trond Westlie our CFO run through the 2017 financial results and the 2018 targets. There'll be a break of 20 minutes, after which Kjell Johnsen, Head of Major Markets will give an update on the situation in Russia. And followed by Jeffrey Hedberg, CEO of Wind Tre, who'll give an update on the Italian joint venture. Jean-Yves will then come back and make a few final remarks. There will be an opportunity for people here to have refreshments and further discussions with the presenters after the presentations. And with that I'd like to hand over to Jean-Yves.

Thank you, Richard. I just need the clicker. Perfect good afternoon everyone and welcome to VEON's 2017 investor presentation. My apologies first and foremost for my voice but three days ago I had no more voice left. So, I'm going to try to make it through this presentation. In fact, earlier today I was looking up for some quotes around losing your voice but it seems that there are no quotes for the matter; people don’t have words left. So, I'll try to make it through this presentation. I think we've really got an interesting agenda for you today. I'll be covering as Richard said, not only the highlights of our financial results as well as obviously progress on our strategic initiatives. But we'll also have deep dives obviously in these financial results but deep dives in Russia and Italy which contribute to a very significant part of VEON's value today. But I'll also do a deep dive on the progress of our digital strategy. Overall, 2017 has been a good year for VEON once again. I think we've delivered on most of the matrix that we set out to grow. We saw solid topline growth at 1.9% organically; 6.6% in actual terms. In fact, in 2017, we really had some tailwinds from a currency point-of-view and total revenues reached 9.5 billion. That was really fueled by a very significant growth in our data revenues across the board. They grew organically by 25.7% in the natural terms by over 30%. We are reported EBITDA growth of a 11% to reach a $3.5 billion; that was a 7.5% organic growth rate. Our EBITDA margins, underlying EBITDA margins were slightly below what we had guided for to tune of about 0.9% points mainly due to the underperformance in Algeria and Bangladesh. Will…

Very much so. Thank you, Jean-Yves. And good afternoon to all of you as well from me. So, I'm going to take you through the some of the financial results and the targets for the year. And I will first start to give you a few reflections from my point-of-view, from non on VEON. Coming in the end of last year, I had the opportunity to have a view and to give you some reflections. I do think that VEON has come far in the restructuring of the company itself. I do think that the only real outstanding item on the restructuring part is the GTH as I mentioned in both number three here. And from there on the corporate structuring is really a settled situation. And then when we come to the capital structure, I go through that in a bit and you think that we cover far way in actually doing a lot of things on the corporate structure part and the corporate structure on the capital with the guarantee structure and refinancing elements. So, all that has come far. Coming to the governance control and compliance, and Jean-Yves mentioned that with the new Chairman having set up of independent board making sure that we have the process; procedures; control elements in place; and the compliance as a result of focusing on that for the last few years. I think we have come far in that; we've been Sarbanes Oxley compliant for many years. So, over the year controls on financial reporting has been there for quite some time. So all-in-all, I actually think VEON is on reasonable good shape there as well. Cash flow has improved significantly. We have I think VEON have managed to make the statements a bit opaque around the cash flow relative to…

Okay, welcome back from the coffee break. Since you're all younger than me, you look younger than me, we can all remember that when we were students or when we go into conferences, we have a big lunch and then we come back and we struggle to stay awake. So, that's why we kept the food service very limited, so that you would be able to focus on discussing Russia with me. Because I've been looking forward to that. To those who don’t know me, I'm Kjell Johnsen, I'm the Head of Major Markets, which means that I'm looking after Russia and Italy in this system. And I also spent the last 14 months as the CEO of Russia and not by design but it was a fantastic experience, then I'll get back to the management changes in Russia that we have now successfully executed on. But let me take you through some of the strategic priorities of Russia. This is a well-known illustration for the management team and the employees of Beeline. They have seen of quite some time. One of the key elements that we have focused on at least in my time has been the ARPU turning around the topline, starting to drive positive revenue growth. And the key element that we have been successful is with is to drive Mobile service revenue growth and change to the pricing paradigm in Russia. Moving away from our limited price plans to data centric pricing which is absolutely a fair approach because you should pay more when you consume more and it's also the right approach in terms of the spectrum efficiency and network efficiency. Then we made a big analysis one-and-a-half two years ago, looking at the distribution in Russia. And my clear opinion on that is and…

I'm actually delighted to that [indiscernible] will be our chair because that many of the issues that he's just articulated we will be confronting in the Italy whether it's fixed mobile convergence what we need to do in terms of allocating our capital in a far more disciplined fashion, what we need to do in order to revamp our distribution efficiency, leveraging digital both internally and externally [indiscernible] will bring a lot of that experience to bear. So it will be good partnership. I think what I would like to do today is really to after my seven months on the job to give you a sense of the market dynamics in 2017. I’d like to give you a sense of what we did to address those markets challenges in 2017, share with you the results of 2017, and then really spend some time giving you a sense of what strategically and tactically we will be doing over the course of 2018 to address many of the challenges that are confronting the business, and in that spirit let me start with the market. It's been tough and I think consistent probably with many of the presentations that you've heard from our competitors that Tim and Vodafone in Italy it's been a very challenging year in Italy. I think a lot of that is a little inconsistent with what we learned in our microeconomics handbooks where you would think that if the market goes from 4 to 3 that there would be more of an irrational behavior particularly with the new entrants on the horizon. We didn't see that. You also would've thought that after the years 2012 to 2013 when there was a pretty substantial price war in Italy which reflected about 15% drop in value that a lot of…

Thank you, Jeff. So I think just in summary if my voice can carry us little bit more, well I hope that you have found useful today the deep dives that we have done on Russia, and Italy and on the digital side as well as giving you a perspective of our 2018 guidance, and the priorities that we have set for 2018. Above and beyond that, those six priorities our focus and our story at Veon is really to continue propelling that equity free cash flow, growth story. We have an ambitious target at $1 billion for 2018 in order to ensure that we continue to deliver on the progressive and sustainable dividend policy that we announced last year. Now on that basis, I’d like to re-invite my colleagues up front to be able to take your questions. I'll try to answer as few questions as possible myself fielding them out to Trond, Kjell and Jeffrey. First question, you get mikes.

Thanks, very much. Nikita Khrushchev [ph], Red Band. It's a question for Jeff on how pricing is going through the base in Wind Tre. So, we can see the churn rates and then that's we'll work out the grow sets. But how many of the rest of the customer base is being repriced in the last six months let's say. So, how is retention activity working and how do you anticipate that changing if at all in 2018?

Yes. I think clearly one of the key things that we need to get right is network quality making sure that we are simplifying and making our offers far more transparent. Changing the perception within the markets because I think in the past both Wind and Tre have been largely around value or price respectively. We're seeing good progress as I've noted in terms of the number of those key customer touch points because again it's more about leading at those touch points than rather leading in customer market share. Seeing some reduction in churn certainly over the last few weeks leading to better performance in net ads; I think we see a better value or better margin. We track sort of the value of customers moving outer margins, moving out versus margins improving in our base. So, I'm seeing some good improvement not great. Good improvements; our NPS scores are coming up a bit on the network side clearly where we've modernized. So, it's not we are not repricing; we are basically fixing some of the things that we've seen are key detractors within our customer base. So, network performance; transparency of the offer; capability within the channel; capability within the call center; and we're seeing that this approach and it doesn't just happen I don't have a magic wand and I can say as of tomorrow we're going to be value rather than volume. There is also a philosophical shift that we need to drive not only in the minds of the board and the investors and myself but within the company. A lot of the market has been driven by gross ads are important. I have a number of gross ad junkies in the company that I need to also cure. But I'm starting to see very importantly because that sustainable improvement in some other things that we're doing in fixing the basics of the processes and starting to see that we're not suffering substantially from our shift from volume to value in terms of revenues. We're improving on that ads. And some of the revenue impact is the market but also some of the decisions that we've consciously taken to improve transparency and to tighten up some of the credit score.

Is there a portion of the market of your base has been repriced over the last 12 months other than the gross ads, obviously you've come in on a fresh price. So, I'm just trying to gauge what sense?

There was some repricing that had been done in the course of before my time I think in the early part of 2017 and some before then but we have no ambition now on repricing. I think we need to first get our network. You don't want to reprice and you don't want to rebrand until you get some of these things fixed because I think otherwise you're coming out with a new idea whether it's a price or whether it's a brand before you fixed a number of these basics.

Since you mentioned brand, actually is your target to have a single brand in the long term?

Our target at this point in time is to re-position the brands. I think they were a little cluttered sort of competing with one another. We've seen our play on the medium-to-higher income segments as being very important positions. There are techie's, youth, more data savvy device driven types of entities and re-positioning Wind more to the lower-to-the-medium income segments around value; around transparency; around family; and that's how we're positioning some of the offers that we're bringing into the market. What's very important is that we don't have two structures and that gets to sort of process simplification and efficiency. Two structure supporting the two brands and I think we want to before we met again make a brand decision which I think ultimately is probably what we need to do for cultural and other reasons, we want to make sure that we're fixing the things. You never want to launch a new brand until you've fixed the things that are going to be relevant and tangible for a customer.

Okay. Thanks, very much.

Yes, hi. Ivan Kim from VTB Capital. I just have two question. So, one just high level. It looks like in many markets use revenue; you respond by cutting costs; you respond by reducing CapEx; which leads to more revenue loss and since there is this loop which I do not really see yet that you're breaking out of it. So, if you can just tell us high level, what can be done to fix this; would be very helpful. And then secondly, on the HQ costs, there is a 20% reduction plan for this year. But longer term, what's the optimal amount there and how exactly we get to that point. Thank you.

We try to take the first part of the question if I can.

I can help you a little.

Sorry?

I can help you a little.

Yes good, you'll take Russia. I think, look in many markets we are maintaining if not improving our market share. Right, we're not losing market share in most of our markets. The big issues have been in Algeria and in Bangladesh. In all the other markets I think our businesses have been performing well or very well ultimately. I think when you look at the macro level in these markets to 20% CapEx level is unsustainable; the math does not work for investor returns. These markets growing at 2% to 3% per annum, 4% per annum, at a 20% CapEx level, I don't see that equation returning any cash to shareholders. So, the industry has to fundamentally change. These emerging markets are no longer in most markets where we operate high growth markets particularly if you factor in inflation. So, the industry's got to get to levels of CapEx that we've seen in Europe or in other places and that's why we've given ourselves a 15% CapEx level. Now in Algeria or in Bangladesh I don't think we've been underinvesting in those markets. Algeria the issue has been a structural issue and a macro issue and I think we've solved those problems without over investing. In Bangladesh, we've invested where we needed to which was ultimately around the spectrum. So, we don't believe that we're at all in a model where we are still in high growth models and you've got to invest to sustain that model. Those days are gone. We are in models of an industry that is at maturity and we've got to manage these businesses for returns in cash and not try to pursue non-quality growth at all costs ultimately. I think that's what we're doing across the portfolio. You want to add, fresh?

Okay. It’s okay, you took it. It sound like you're completely out of voice.

Yes. On the headquarter side, I do think that it's going to be a view of continuous improvement here. I do think that as a result of coming to the level that we are now on the 400+ level; we have set ourselves a target for 2018. It's not going to stop there. We're going to have a continuous improvement there as well but we haven't set a target of where the final game is going to be.

So, over here.

From way across the room.

He was sitting first, lost it several times.

Go ahead.

Ugor Sanchov [Ph] from FAREonline. First one, I just if we could drill down a bit on cost. So, a couple of years ago embarked on the performance transformation plan we deployed quite-a-bit of cash to get that done. We haven't seen that really comes through in the last quarter especially in Russia. Could you walk us through what exactly has been the reason why revenue has gone up but underlying EBITDA has gone down? Regarding, VEON. The second question on VEON. Could you walk us through how we should think about the improvement that will bring in terms of as a customer value, is it cash flow? You mentioned the 1% but can you just elaborate on timing for that. And the third question is could you just walk us through top management ownership of shares in VEON?

VEON, and I can start a little bit on the Russian side; I'll try to get into that bit. If you look at the whole year, as a whole the EBITDA is flat basically. And that and there are two major components. One of them is that we're growing in Mobile. We are also for the last four quarters for the first time till since 2007 growing our revenue market share in the big three. It's never happened in last 10 years. But we do have a drag from fixed. These fixed contracts some of them going back many years are actually quite lucrative and profitable. They are denominated in many of them in dollars. So, we have two effects. 1) is that they are renegotiated. 2) That those who are in dollar terms become less worth when the ruble appreciates. So, that's why I said it's critically important that we are able in 2018 to come back to stabilize that business because it makes the whole Beeline look worse than the performance in Mobile will dictate. On the cost side, I didn't want to get into very much granular detail here but there are a couple of things that come in 2016 -- sorry 2017. One of them being they launched out with it, which was a conscious choice in which we have talked about. And we also had some reclassifications that we on the HR side that had to do with accruals that should've been done earlier. They are not enormous amounts and they are not recurring. So, these things will not come back in 2018. That's why I said that by-and-large if you look at it, even the fourth quarter was pretty much flat; even given the specific weakness we saw in October. November was pretty good and December was good. So, when you go into a team without me getting too much into guidance here, you should not necessarily see the Q4 as a front break. There is no reason to do that.

Cost over.

If you take the cost overall element and the project transformation and as they have been running now for three years. I do think that it's two elements going to this. When it comes to the total cost side for the group, the data the efficiency of the total nominal number has not come down year-over-year. There is a couple of reason for that. One thing was that when we embarked on this, our view was that the government control tariff costs; meaning the fees; the taxes and so forth; the growth in that the last couple years has grown much more exponentially than we have expected. So, what we've done on selling cost on what we call the addressable cost side, has really gone to cater for the additional cost on the tax side on different types of taxes. In addition to that, the actual administration of the project itself has also come been a part of this. So, as a result as I said during the course of the way, the nominal cost has not really come down in total but the reinvestments meaning that the money that we spend on digital; the money that we spend on that cater for the increasing cost in taxes has been done to actually do that. And that's why we are pretty sort of at least over a period of time maintain mostly when you look at country-by-country. We relatively perform on the EBITDA market share and the revenue market share, reasonably stable over a period of time except for Algeria.

And I think we recognize that our efforts on cost are not good enough and we have to do more from that perspective overall. And hence, some of the program such as new systems and others are really going to kick in next two or three years to really help us continuously drive down the cost structure of the business. I think just on the share ownership, all our chief executives have long term incentive plans that are linked to share price performance. There are some 200 people, executives in the company that are linked to these long term incentive plans. So, completely aligned with shareholder value creation and I myself own close to 0.5 million shares.

Hi, there. Stella Cridge from Barclays. I had two questions if that will be okay. The first of all, on the Egypt tax dispute. Could you just actually run through factually the background to that dispute; the history; timeline; what some of the key points are on both sides; and was there any particular reason that that came back into focus towards the end of last year. That would be great. And the second question is just about the net leverage. You're standing at about 2.4 right now when you say the cash that you have for the mandatory offer sit 2.6. So, just what are you thinking in that sense in terms of where you would like to be over the next one to two years? That would be great.

Well, when it comes to the tax claims on the DTH, it's basically long lasting cases and they have been through the administrative court and are in the court system as such and we are on the process on normal course of business through the court systems. The reason why the Egyptian authorities now have raised that and basically are trying to then escalate these situations, you basically have to ask them. It is easy to come to a conclusion that what's going on and that we are giving our tender offer but then again there is no, I cannot say that this is the reason or that is the reason for doing that. So, when it comes to these cases, I think that they are disclosed in the disclosure in GTH nothing new, nothing revolutionary; so nothing has been filed from our side. Nothing has been requested on their side for new discoveries or a new documentation. So, nothing has really happened except for just an acceleration in the Egyptian system. When it comes to the ratio there the debt level, I do think that when it comes to debt level I fully agree that we have escalated higher than we have seen and also the statement that we have been saying before. Long term, we would like to come down to the two level on the giving layer ratio. When we look at 2018 as we see it now, we see that the cash estimate the cash flow estimate that we have during this year, the net debt is likely to come some down. But I do think that when it comes back to coming closer to a giving level of two, we probably have to look at the longer range in time of the 18 to 24 months to actually get down there.

And if you don’t mind I make a following-up. So, net is a billion and also cash which is obviously separated or year marked. And do you feel you had the need to do any financing at the moment or do you feel the undrawn credit facilities you have are sufficient? And just, because I note the maturities are just slightly under what the remaining cash balance as for 2018. So, just to get a sense of what you're thinking there?

No. well, the element is we have enough liquidity and the facility is to actually to cater for what we have right now. But having said that, as a result of drawing down on our RCF, on the billion that we put in escrow for the MTO, of course we would look at how to deal with that when we actually see how the MTO pans out.

At front tier. It's me.

It's Herve Drouet from HSBC. A couple of questions. The first one is how much room do you believe you have to protect your EBITDA in case of revenue decrease, ongoing revenue decrease I mean it looks like some of the countries are still being challenged; you hope for some turnaround. I was wondering how much room for maneuver you have. I mean you talk about systems you can put but potentially it's rolled out on all countries, you can gate 1% EBITDA margins. But either any other things you can put in place to protect this cash flow generation? The second question is regarding the guidance just to ensure especially on the cash flow. So, the comparable of the 1 billion is your equity free cash flow that on pro forma you put back to a 804. I was wondering what do you expect these year to come in come up cash outflow for licenses. I mean we know Ukraine is a potential there and any other investing activities that can draw cash out and if you can quantify or at least given a kind of a board figures what you expect there. And finally, on the Italian interim of protecting those 50% revenue and 20% of your customers; I was wondering have you upsell some of the contract to lock them in or are you shifting prepaid into postpaid? I'm a bit more curious about in a bit more detail technically what you are doing to protect these revenues. Thank you.

When it comes to the sort of the cushion of flexibility of the sensitivity of the guidance numbers, I mean we are disclosing all the countries; all the major countries; all the major numbers. So, I would actually suggest that you have to do your sensitive data relative to actually how to find that balance because it's very easy. We also disclosed the portfolio exchanges that we are actually looking at this time. So, I do think that when it comes to that kind of pushing, I think it would be wrong to actually give us any guidance relative to how much there's now how less pushing we actually -- the mindset our mindset relatively give you that guidance. The guidance we're giving you is our best belief relative to that we within reach the amount of certainty will deliver these kind of numbers the way we'll look at the world right now. If the world change, the world change. When it comes to the licenses and the -- I do think that the only plan that were understood, licenses we have in addition to the one in Ukraine that is already happened and the one in Bangladesh is the upcoming up in Ukraine. I really don't think that we have any other envisaged spectrum issues coming ours or auctions coming up this year.

Italy.

Yes. Thank you for the question. I think the first thing that is a requirement is simply making sure that we're not giving customers a reason to turn whether that's a bad network performance our high value customers particularly. Whether that's some things that are making them call into the call center and not enabling them to have the self-care capability to resolve the issues. I will put in the right incentives in the channel so the customers aren’t just going in and then being told to go for this new pricing model but rather are and centered in order to be able to upsell. So, I think a lot of the call them the basics we're working on and seeing some good improvement. Because I think in the past there were lot of reasons why the customers had a reason to turn, whether that was network performance, simplicity or transparency within the offer, looking at some of the incentives within the channel which were similarly driven around gross ads rather than retention and then finally not really having the capability for customers to resolve their queries when they needed to call into the call centers. So, that would be sort of the basics throughout. The second is we have a much better understanding of that customer base. Now who they are; where they are; we're tactically approaching them, particularly in advance of the new entrants and making sure that we're really leveraging the data analytic capability not just to sort of understand future requirements but understand where the money is and how we're allocating resources into those particular areas so that we could retain them. A lot more focus on tied offers now and as I noted we are moving and that's really up selling, I will give a…

Hi, Alexander Vengranovich from Otkritie Capital. Two questions from my side. So, the first one is a follow-up on frequency question I guess. So, we all know that 5G is coming to Russia and Italy. I think that should be like one of the first markets among your portfolio to implement this. How does looking at the spectrum you have right now in this countries, what do you think about the potential additions to the spectrum as a response to 5G it allowed as far as I understand you don't plan any new acquisitions this year but maybe you can expect something next year. In sort of the licenses, how your interest about. And also here, do you think some 5G sharing on these markets really works. Are you ready to share 5G network, maybe it's going to be more efficient for all the shareholders if you do that. And second question on the retail network in Russian, based on their presentation I understood that basically have your own agenda on the retail network first expansion and then potential optimization. What do you think about their steps from your competitors? How reliant you are on the steps, what you will continue to execute on your own plan and there is no connection between the actions from MTS and MegaFon on their retail network. Thank you.

Well, I'll take 5G in.

Yes, I can take this; it's fine. When you look at the 5G for Russia, clearly there will have to be more spectrum as I said in my presentation. In the recent meeting with the industry Prime Minister Medvedev indicated that to be a 2019 discussion and expressed a great deal of understanding with the fact that this spectrum need to be made available at a fairly reasonable price. I think this goes much more beyond than the discussion with the Finance Minister because at the end of the day here we saw on 4G; Europe falling behind the US and China; and in Russia the same way as Europe. And I think it will be a huge mistake for Europe, Russia to make that same to do the same thing one more time. The new business models that emanate out of the new capacities and the new opportunities in the IoT area specifically will come will first be developed in those countries where you implement a properly functioning 5G. So, you don't want to be too far behind. Now, that contradicts a little bit what I said we don't this is 2021 exercise. I don't think that is crazily late. So, the government is aware of this and I expect that that will be a discussion in 2019 and then we can revert to your question about what it will cost and these things that is too early to say. When it comes to the retail, yes we are going our way. We're going our way because it's the right way. But if you look at what Andrei Dubovskov has done in MTS for many years and I would say quite correctly so. He has built up a monobrands store system that allows him to drive good performance in…

5G in Italy.

Yes. 5G in Italy, the government has put it into the budget but there's a different government dynamics going on here but it is in the budget. We expect it to happen in 2018 but again in the terms and conditions of how that's license will be awarded or how the bands are going to be looking like, how the allocations will be done are not clear but my sense is that they will would like to proceed with it in 2018. We're obviously geared up to understand sort of what that looks like because we don't need to have too much spectrum. I think through the merger of the companies we were able to develop quite a strong spectrum position and we are in discussions about where do we need to have that spectrum consistent with what's going on with Russia. But to do that is a little academic until we understand the terms and conditions of that spectrum allocation. We're doing two trials of 5G in Prato and L'Aquila which are two smaller cities in Italy. I think that we're doing with open fiber and we're partnering with Qualcomm and ZTE to really understand to inform our case what the applications could be; what's the CapEx; what's the OpEx. So, I think that will help us to inform that decision on what we need to look for but we're also exploring other parties within the market. And to your question, I certainly will be open to looking at sharing with others. And we've already started at least on the pilots with a couple of entities sharing as a way to reduce CapEx and again drive free cash flow. So, there is an ambition, we will know who the new government is on the 3rd of March, I would imagine that I'm visual be consistent. We have a team that's sort of looking at and using some of the learnings from Prato and L'Aquila to sort of make an informed decision. We don’t need to have, we hope it's not just too big lots that are being allocated. Because we don’t need to have that and we don’t want to pay for that but we're going to need to have a little spectrum to sort of round out some of the areas that we don’t have it after the merger of the two entities.

And I'm sorry, I forgot to talk about the sharing part. You asked that question was absolutely. So, we are doing a lot of sharing now, with MTS on 4G as you know. We're doing a bit less sharing with the MegaFon. And that's a little bit down to their internal thinking around that. MTS is open for it. Now, the thing here is sharing in theory is fantastic but we also need to work with the vendors because those features that you need to share these around capacities, the prices of this feature is used to be almost zero when I did my first sharing some years ago. Now they cost lot of money. So, it's not as lucrative as it used to be. Going into 5G for Russia. I think you can see that in many places, many areas in Russia, there will only be two networks. There was in some areas will have three. I think it'll be a complete mistake to do like growth telecoms proposes to have one network for the entire country; from a security point-of-view; from a redundancy point-of-view; and from a competition point-of-view. But I think you will see that operators will be keen to sharing the expenses, the CapEx for billing out the 5G networks.

Hi, good afternoon. It's Vivek Khanna from Deutsche Bank. Thank you, for your time and for the questions. So, I have three related to Italy and then one related to VEON, if I may. So, with regards to Italy, I'm just wondering how has the not promoter score changed over the last couple of quarters and how that's changed and how each of the different brands has been impacted. So, that's the first question. The second question again in Italy is just can you remind me again, I think there's been a change of network provider, you moved away from Ericson and you got somebody else, you just remind me as to what the timing of that it and are there any issues with that transition because I think I agree with you, Jeff, I think the network improvement is going to be the most important thing and to reduce market share loss. And then the final thing is just on IFRS 6, in Italy, just wondering as to what the potential impact could be with regards to profitability going forward. What sort of impact you could have. Thank you.

Thank you for the question, Vivek. Let me, I can speak to NPS specifically on network. Where we've modernized the network and then I'll come to the other two. But I'll go quickly because it's Italy show today. We're seeing some really substantial improvements on both our NPS for data and voice in the areas that we've swapped. And one of the areas we actually saw a 35% increase in NPS on the data side and 20% on the voice. In Rome and Milano, let me be more specific where the volumes are we saw an improvement. And we are still going through the swap, we're almost complete in Milano when we set the little bit of the ways to go in Rome. We saw over 10% improvements in the net promotor score interims. And this isn’t something that we do, calling our customers this Q3 that goes and looks at that. So, I'm very encouraged by what we're seeing there. On the two brands, I think its early days in terms of some I think there is on the Wind, on the Tre side, because of some of these harmonization, let me call them that, we've seen a 13 point improvement in NPS on the Tre, albeit from a low base. They were last there. What I can also say is that NPS as long as our new Chairman of the Ramco and the new Chairman of the Boards going to agree NPS will be a very important component of our STI and our LTI moving forward. But it's probably a little early to say other than the 13% and other than the network and largely within three it's because of transparency and it will obviously be for both brands on the NPS score. On the second question, we…

I assume you were making reference through your press 16. These, so the --.

I like talking more about the bad debt potential.

The bad debt, okay. So, on the bad -- it's IFRS 9. So, yes. We implemented it, we are implementing it passing from 2017 in 2018. We adjusted our way to recognize bad debt also considering the fair, the expectation of recovery, the receivable, even if they are not still due. So, that inception in order to be much more compliant with the requirements of the IFRS. And we let's say take the occasion at the beginning of this year for let's say at the first implementation of the IFRS for adjusting and reassessing all the provision already done for our old receivable that are sitting in our financial statement. And so now we are let's say happy and satisfied with the level of reserve that we were able to include in our financial statement. Going forward, the way in which we are going to write off receivable is based on the edging of that that and the expected possibility of cashing them in.

Okay, thank you. And I guess my final question is a little bit on VEON. At the time when this merger in Italy was announced, one of the big advantages obviously over above improving your strategic position in Italy and the consolidation was the consolidation of debt and also the ability to start paying a dividend which clearly as you've announced today, you're paying $0.28 for the full year. One of the things that was talked about was as you've highlighted in your presentation, the ability to dividends out of Italy once leverage ratios get towards a certain level. Now just because we're cut out from the markets got little bit more difficult than expected and I guess getting to that leveraged level is going to probably take a little longer in order to pay a dividend. So, I guess from VEON perspective, if Italy doesn't pay a dividend, what are your views with that asset going forward?

Well, the assumption is that we are going to paying dividends. So, now it's just a question of delivering on the transformation journey that we have there in terms of doing the network. Remember we have a big bump in CapEx for doing a huge swap of the entire network in the whole country on top of consultation we had to do before we could do that. We are also changing the entire IT stack, which is big enterprise to go through and we are resetting the whole organization. So, I think that there aren't many examples of this kind of transformation in the Telco industry these days. And the fact that team in that situation chose to launch an MVNO one year before the launch of the audio quality other player. It was an unwelcome surprise for everyone, maybe even for themselves. They do have some covenants they should probably be watching but that's hey that's where we are and that's what we're going to deal with. So, the ambition of this joint venture was to move from two, number three and four, who didn't have any prospect of paying dividend. To making one player debt overtime can deleverage and start paying dividend. Simple as that.

Thank you, very much.

One more question from the audience?

Hi, Irina Idrissova, RBC. So, just on guidance, what you see as the biggest risks to guidance for 2018 and what are you assuming in terms of competitive environment in Russia? And if I may ask a second question on Bangladesh. You mentioned issues with SMP in the market, can you give us more color on what are the key issues there and what sort of outcome will you be looking for from the regulator?

No. As I said on the guidance, I don't think there is any more or less critical elements. I do think that we have taken into consideration the starting point of 2018. We know what kind of speed we are coming out of '17 with and I think we have taken into consideration both our expectations, our ambition relative to turn around both in Bangladesh and Algeria. But of course also that we are actually looking at not losing any market share in any of our markets. So, I wouldn't really be more specific than that in sort of trying to granulate the sensitivity in the guiding.

On the outlook for Russia, I would say what you can expect is that we will stabilize fixed because this is not something that we are talking about now. And actually I approved the plan already in July or August. So, it's in implementation and like I said the first suturing's are already up and running. All the technical plans are in execution and we're going to make it much easier to be a client of Beeline going forward on the fixed side. We're going to continue the FMC where we have success and I think then you can help me in answering the question yourself, what do you think MTS instead of two are going to do with their positions in the market. I think given the debt situation of Tele2, if they care about their balance sheet which I think is a good idea for B2B to do, then they will be more rational. And I think for the management team that is also more interesting way to do the job rather than just increasing their debt. When it comes to MTS, I must say that I find Dubovskov to be a very competent leader. He has shown good results for many years and reading the picture of how to run MTS going forward is not very complicated. You follow the trends, you cut your number of stores and the have cut their CapEx quite a bit, so their civil costs are going down. He should have an okay EBITDA right; it's not that complicated.

I think on Bangladesh if my voice carries sufficiently. Look, I think we're in a market three player market with a very dominant number one player in that marketplace. Capturing the bulk of the net ads last year. We believe that the government needs to address this through the regulators. As you know, there are always a series of SMT SMP type of measures that can be taken and we have encouraged the government to look into this matter so that this doesn't become a one plus two player market but is really a three player market overall.

So, with that and on behalf of Jean-Yves without a voice and the rest of the management in VEON as well as Jeffrey coming from Italy. I like to thank you all for attending very much and very much the activity on this Q&A session. So, thank you very much for attending and safe returns.