Media: Telegram's losses for 2023 stand at $173M

Telegram’s 2023 financial statements, seen by the Financial Times and not previously reported, show that the company made $342 million in revenues last year on an operating loss of $108 million.

Total losses stood at around $173 million after tax.

Telegram is fully owned by Durov, who sits on a multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency fortune, but the company has raised about $2.4 billion in debt financing set to mature in 2026. This includes a $1 billion bond offering in 2021 where Abu Dhabi state funds were among the investors.

Most recently, $330 million was secured earlier this year in an issue Durov has said was oversubscribed. Durov has personally bought at least $64 million in Telegram bonds, according to the company’s 2023 financial statement, as part of what he has previously described as investing "hundreds of millions” into Telegram’s growth.

The price of Telegram’s bonds have fallen by nearly 10 percentage points, to trade at around 87 cents on the dollar, yielding over 16 percent, down from around 96 cents prior to his arrest on Saturday after he landed at an airport outside Paris on a private jet.

The company is closely associated with Toncoin, a cryptocurrency that was initially developed by the Telegram team and drew in individual and institutional Russian investors, among others. In 2023, Telegram’s financial losses were partially offset by an appreciation of the digital assets it holds on its balance sheet, which were worth nearly $400 million that year in total.

Meanwhile, in 2024, the company also sold Toncoins for over $244 million in cash, financial documents show. However, the company’s digital assets have been hit by the arrest in France, with Toncoin trading down nearly 20 percent in the wake of the news.

www.anews.az