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VEON, VEON Ltd. ADS

Telecom Operators capital-intensive Cyclical

VEON is a leading global provider of connectivity and digital services, currently headquartered in Dubai.

Property, Plants and Equipment Buildings On December 19, 2024, we announced the completion of the move of our Group headquarters from Amsterdam to the DIFC.

Our mobile networks, which use mainly Ericsson, Huawei, ZTE and Nokia equipment, are integrated wireless networks of radio base station equipment, circuit and packet core equipment and digital wireless switches, connected by fixed microwave transmission links, fiber optic cable links and leased lines.

Latest annual: FY2025 20-F · 1 ADS = 25 ordinary shares

VEON · VEON Ltd. ADS

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$4.4B

+9.9% YoY · 5% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $4.4B 5-yr avg $3.9B

Operating margin 32.7% 5-yr avg 28.6%

Owner-earnings margin 41% 5-yr avg 12%

Free cash flow margin 41% 5-yr avg 12%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What it is: Revenue is Telecommunication and infrastructure (83%), Digital financial services (10%) and Other digital (8%).
Situation: Cyclical. Margins collapse and recover repeatedly across the record; a single year, good or bad, misstates the through-cycle earning power.
What moves the needle: Operating margin has run about 24% through the cycle, a solid margin the cost base and competition set as much as the price does. The margin is cyclical, swinging between 6.1% and 33% over the years, so the through-cycle figure carries more than any single year — and the balance sheet at the trough more than the peak. Capital spending runs about 17% of sales, so the return earned on what it sinks into that plant weighs as much as the margin. Read this kind of business on subscribers, revenue per user, and network capex. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on going-concern doubt, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

Where the money comes from

read the 20-F →

Telecommunication and infrastructure is 83% of revenue, with Digital financial services the other meaningful line at 10%.

Revenue by product line, FY2025

Telecommunication and infrastructure83%$3.6B
Digital financial services10%$425M
Other digital8%$337M

From the segment footnote of the company's own 20-F. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2016’16	2017’17	2018’18	2019’19	2020’20	2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMDec 2025
											Income statement
$8.9B	$9.5B	$9.1B	$8.1B	$3.5B	$3.9B	$3.8B	$3.7B	$4.0B	$4.4B	$4.4B	RevenueRevenue
$1.1B	$1.5B	$554M	$1.9B	$823M	$1.0B	$1.2B	$929M	$1.1B	$1.4B	$1.4B	Operating incomeOp. inc.
12.2%	15.5%	6.1%	23.1%	23.6%	26.6%	31.0%	25.1%	27.7%	32.7%	32.7%	Operating marginOp. mgn
$2.4B	($534M)	$362M	$683M	($316M)	$801M	($9M)	($2.5B)	$487M	$591M	$591M	Net incomeNet inc.
21%	—	50%	40%	—	30%	—	—	31%	25%	25%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$1.9B	$2.5B	$2.5B	$2.9B	$2.4B	$961M	$933M	$1.2B	$1.1B	$1.4B	$2.5B	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$1.4B	$1.5B	$1.3B	$1.5B	$553M	$605M	$557M	$527M	$529M	$578M	$1.5B	DepreciationDeprec.
($2.0B)	$1.6B	$814M	$754M	$2.2B	($445M)	$385M	$3.1B	$134M	$184M	$492M	Working capital & otherWC & other
$1.7B	$2.0B	$1.9B	$1.6B	$550M	$699M	$634M	$531M	$627M	$733M	$733M	CapexCapex
18.6%	21.5%	21.4%	19.6%	15.8%	18.2%	16.9%	14.4%	15.7%	16.7%	16.7%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$224M	$438M	$567M	$1.4B	$1.9B	$262M	$299M	$629M	$523M	$620M	$1.8B	Owner earningsOwner earn.
2.5%	4.6%	6.2%	16.9%	54.4%	6.8%	8.0%	17.0%	13.1%	14.1%	41.0%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$224M	$438M	$567M	$1.4B	$1.9B	$262M	$299M	$629M	$523M	$620M	$1.8B	Free cash flowFCF
2.5%	4.6%	6.2%	16.9%	54.4%	6.8%	8.0%	17.0%	13.1%	14.1%	41.0%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
$61M	$518M	$508M	$520M	$259M	$0	$0	$45M	$83M	$67M	$0	Dividends paidDiv. paid
—	—	—	—	—	—	$0	$0	$8M	$105M	—	BuybacksBuybacks
41%	-12%	10%	56%	-194%	137%	-2%	-286%	44%	44%	44%	Return on equityROE
40%	−24%	−4%	13%	−353%	137%	−2%	−291%	37%	39%	44%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
											Balance sheet
$2.9B	$1.3B	$1.8B	$1.3B	$1.7B	$2.3B	$3.1B	$1.9B	$1.7B	$1.7B	$1.7B	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$685M	$755M	$577M	$512M	$572M	$690M	$456M	$542M	$448M	$601M	$601M	ReceivablesReceiv.
$125M	$72M	$141M	$169M	$111M	$111M	$18M	$23M	$15M	$32M	$32M	InventoryInvent.
$1.7B	$1.5B	$1.6B	$1.8B	$1.9B	$2.0B	$1.1B	$1.2B	$1.3B	$1.4B	$1.4B	Accounts payablePayables
($934M)	($717M)	($906M)	($1.2B)	($1.3B)	($1.2B)	($613M)	($635M)	($813M)	($809M)	($809M)	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$4.5B	$3.9B	$3.1B	$2.5B	$2.9B	$3.6B	—	—	—	—	$3.6B	Current assetsCur. assets
$6.6B	$4.6B	$4.4B	$5.8B	$4.4B	$4.4B	$4.6B	$3.6B	$3.6B	$3.4B	$3.4B	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
0.7×	0.8×	0.7×	0.4×	0.6×	0.8×	—	—	—	—	1.0×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$4.7B	$4.6B	$3.8B	$4.0B	$2.7B	$1.5B	$394M	$349M	$338M	$399M	$399M	GoodwillGoodwill
$21.2B	$19.5B	$14.1B	$16.1B	$14.6B	$15.9B	$15.1B	$8.2B	$8.0B	$9.2B	$9.2B	Total assetsAssets
1.3×	1.6×	0.7×	2.1×	1.4×	1.7×	2.0×	1.7×	2.2×	2.7×	2.7×	Interest coverageInt. cov.
$6.0B	$4.3B	$3.7B	$1.2B	$163M	$586M	$569M	$858M	$1.1B	$1.3B	$1.3B	Shareholders’ equityEquity
											Per share
1.75B	1.75B	1.75B	1.75B	1.75B	1.76B	1.75B	1.76B	1.77B	1.75B	1.75B	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$5.08	$5.42	$5.19	$4.62	$1.99	$2.19	$2.14	$2.11	$2.26	$2.52	$2.52	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$1.38	$-0.31	$0.21	$0.39	$-0.18	$0.46	$-0.01	$-1.40	$0.28	$0.34	$0.34	EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.13	$0.25	$0.32	$0.78	$1.08	$0.15	$0.17	$0.36	$0.30	$0.36	$1.03	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$0.13	$0.25	$0.32	$0.78	$1.08	$0.15	$0.17	$0.36	$0.30	$0.36	$1.03	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$0.03	$0.30	$0.29	$0.30	$0.15	$0.00	$0.00	$0.03	$0.05	$0.04	$0.00	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$0.94	$1.16	$1.11	$0.90	$0.31	$0.40	$0.36	$0.30	$0.35	$0.42	$0.42	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$3.41	$2.48	$2.10	$0.70	$0.09	$0.33	$0.32	$0.49	$0.62	$0.77	$0.77	Book value / shareBVPS

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	−7.5%/yr	+4.9%/yr
Owner earnings / share	+12.0%/yr	−19.9%/yr
EPS	−14.5%/yr	—
Dividends / share	+1.1%/yr	−23.6%/yr
Capital spending / share	−8.6%/yr	+6.0%/yr
Book value / share	−15.3%/yr	+52.5%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count

1.7Bpeak FY2024

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

The accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.

$620Mowner earningsvs.$591Mnet incomelow FY2016

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetained

Each year's operating cash, by what management did with it: the mix, and how it drifts.

FY2016FY2025

Owner-earnings bridge

FY2021–FY2025cash-flow statement, SEC EDGAR →

Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.

In fiscal 2025 the business turned $591M of profit into $620M of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

Reported net income$591M

Owner earnings$620M · 14% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$591M	$487M	($2.5B)	($9M)	$801M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$578M	+$529M	+$527M	+$557M	+$605M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	+$184M	+$134M	+$3.1B	+$385M	−$445M
Cash from operations	$1.4B	$1.1B	$1.2B	$933M	$961M
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$733M	−$627M	−$531M	−$634M	−$699M
Owner earnings	$620M	$523M	$629M	$299M	$262M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	14%	13%	17%	8%	7%

Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position .

Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.

III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 20-F · source on SEC EDGAR →

Will it survive?

Can it pay its interest? 2.7×

Adequate

Operating income $1.4B ÷ interest expense $535M

What this means
Comfortable in a normal year, but below the margin of safety Graham looked for. Worth checking how stable the coverage has been across a full cycle.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? —

Debt under-captured — leverage unknown, not low

What this means
This company pays far more interest than its tagged debt implies (the rest sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so its net cash or net debt cannot be read honestly: the gap is unknown, not zero, and 'net cash' here would be exactly the fiction the figure is meant to prevent. Judge it on the record and owner earnings instead.
How long is cash tied up? —

Not enough data

What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.

Is it a good business?

Return on invested capital —

Debt under-captured

Industry peers: median 1%

What this means
This company's interest bill implies far more debt than its filings tag at the consolidated level (the rest sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so invested capital, and the return on it, cannot be read honestly. Judge this one on Owner Earnings and the record instead.
Owner-earnings margin 8%

Solid through the cycle

10-yr median margin, range 3%–54%; latest $1.8B = operating cash $2.5B − maintenance capex $733M

Industry peers: median 7%

What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's 41% of revenue this year, a 8% median across 10 years.
Are earnings backed by cash? 4.29×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $2.5B ÷ net income $591M

What this means
How much of reported profit showed up as operating cash. Above 1× is reassuring; well below suggests earnings lean on accruals. One year is noisy, growth and working-capital swings distort it, and this is operating cash, not free cash. Watch the multi-year trend.

How is the cash used?

Where do the earnings go? 6%

Reinvests most of it

Dividends + buybacks $105M ÷ Owner Earnings $1.8B

What this means
Of $1.8B Owner Earnings, $105M (6%) went back to shareholders, $0 dividends, $105M buybacks. Returning most of it is the mark of a mature business with little left to reinvest at a high return; reinvesting most could mean a long runway, or empire-building. The split doesn't say which; the return earned on it (see ROIC) does.
Investing or harvesting? 0.50×

Harvesting

Capex $733M ÷ depreciation $1.5B

What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.

Graham’s defensive tests · 1 of 5 met

Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.

Adequate size Pass

Revenue ≥ $2B · $4.4B

What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
Strong liquidity Miss

Current ratio ≥ 2× · 1.04×

What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
Conservative debt —

Debt ≤ working capital · —

What this means
The filings tag only a fraction of the debt this company's interest bill implies (much of it sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so this test can't be run honestly.
Earnings stability Miss

A profit every year (10-yr record) · 4 loss years

What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
Dividend record Miss

Uninterrupted dividends · 8 of 10 yrs

What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
Earnings growth Miss

Earnings +33% over the record · −161%

What this means
At least a third more earnings than a decade ago, averaging three years at each end. Net income (not per-share), so stock splits don't distort it, buybacks and dilution show up in the share-count line instead.
Moderate price —

P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price

What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $-0.25/share (latest year $0.32), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $0.72/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.

Durability & moat, 2016–2025

Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.

Profitable years 6 of 10

What this means
Lost money in 4 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Operating margin 11% → 29% (3-yr avg ends)

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about 11% early to 29% lately, median 24% — pricing power intact or improving.
Owner earnings growth +6%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings grew about 6% a year over the record.
Worst year 2018 · 6.1% op. margin

What this means
Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.
Share count −0.0%/yr

What this means
Roughly flat share count, little dilution, little buyback.
Dividend record rising

What this means
Paid and raised the dividend across the record, the continuity Graham prized.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Low contestability

The moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.

In its own filing Raised, but not as a competitor

The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product.

AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat.

Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Current Position

as of fiscal year-end, Dec 31, 2021

Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.

Current assets$3.6B

Cash & short-term investments$1.7B
Receivables$601M
Inventory$32M
Other current assets$1.2B

Current liabilities$3.4B

Accounts payable$1.4B
Other current liabilities$2.0B

Current ratio1.04×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio1.03×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio0.50×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$121Mthe cushion left after near-term bills

Deeper floors

Tangible book value($788M)equity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Debt incl. operating leases$2.0B$2.0B of it operating leases

Deferred revenue$144Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

How the cash was used, 2016–2025

Over the record, the business generated $17.8B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a reinvestor, most operating cash is plowed back into the business.

Reinvested$11.0B · 62%
Dividends$2.1B · 12%
Buybacks$113M · 1%
Retained (debt / cash)$4.6B · 26%

Returned to owners$2.2B
32% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $2.1B as dividends and $113M as buybacks.
Average price paid for buybacks—
Buybacks ran $113M over the span, but the filings don't tag the share count needed to deduce the average price paid.
Net change in share count−0.2%
The diluted count barely moved (1749M to 1746M): buybacks roughly offset the stock issued to staff.
Dividend record$0.04/sh
Paid in 8 of the years on record, the per-share dividend growing about 1% a year. It was cut at least once along the way.

Buybacks are gross of stock issued to staff; the share-count line above is the net of that, the figure that decides whether owners gained. The average price paid blends a year of purchases (and any accelerated repurchase), so it is close, not exact. The record of where the cash went and on what terms.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill & intangibles$2.1B23% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

Against book equity30%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital

Cash spent acquiring$0over 10 years buying other businesses, against $11.0B of capital spent building

None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.

Inverting the record

Invert: instead of why VEON Ltd. ADS is a good business, the question is what would make owning it a mistake, and whether those marks are in the record. Disconfirming tests across 2016–2025.

None of the 4 tests turned up a mark; each came back clean. A clean panel says only that these particular ways of being wrong are not written into the record.

Each test came back clean

Is it less profitable than it was?
Did the share count rise anyway?
Did reported profit become cash?
Did receivables and inventory outpace sales?

Each test is read from the filings and is noisy alone; a flag can mark a cyclical trough or a year of heavy investment as easily as a problem. The filing says which.

Peers, Telecom Operators

The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.

Company	Revenue	Gross margin	Op. margin	ROIC	Owner earn. margin
NXSTNexstar Media Group Inc.	$4.9B	—	24.3%	9%	22%
LBTYALiberty Global Ltd. Class A	$4.9B	72%	6.5%	1%	30%
ROKURoku Inc.	$4.7B	44%	-4.6%	-15%	5%
VSATViaSat Inc.	$4.6B	88%	-2.7%	-2%	7%
FWONALiberty Media Corporation	$4.5B	73%	13.6%	4%	18%
LILALiberty Latin America Ltd.	$4.4B	77%	2.0%	0%	2%
VEONVEON Ltd. ADS	$4.4B	—	24.4%	—	11%
UNITUniti Group Inc.	$2.2B	—	32.9%	3%	1%
Group median	—	—	10.0%	—	9%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Enter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. Per the filing's own cover, “American Depositary Shares, or ADSs, each representing 25 common”; VEON Ltd. ADS reports in USD, so every figure in this tool is stated per ADS so your dollar quote reconciles exactly. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed.

Type today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what VEON Ltd. ADS has delivered.

Today’s price $

Base Normalize · through-cycle ($591M) Net of stock comp

—

The assumptions Required return 9% Years of high growth 10 Terminal growth 2.5%

9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.

Enter a price above to run it.

Implied by the price—

Owner-earnings growth · ’21→’25+19%/yr

Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25+6%/yr

Owner-earnings yield—

P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)—

P/B—

Graham’s price gate—

Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.

Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%

Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.

Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.

Owner earnings $1.8B on 74M shares outstanding, per the 20-F cover, as of 2025-12-31; net cash $1.7B. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.

Weigh VEON against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "VEON Ltd. ADS (VEON), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/VEON, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← VBNK its page in the Manual VET →

Industry order: ← UZF the Telecom Operators chapter VIV →