CASE STUDY: Into first-time IFRS reporting for a telecom operator

Audit

1. Context

A mid-sized telecommunications company operating in Ukraine with more than 250,000 customers across 1,000+ locations.

The business has been operating for over a decade and is entering a new phase of growth. For the first time, IFRS financial statements became critical due to:

requests from potential investors
regulatory thresholds

The company had never prepared IFRS financials before and had no in-house IFRS expertise.

2. The Challenges that this created

Several issues surfaced immediately:

High volume of lease contracts
Around 400 lease agreements required analysis and calculations under IFRS 16.
Accrual principle violations
Some transactions were still reflected on a cash or simplified basis.
Local GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles)
Certain balances and operations followed by local accounting rules, not IFRS.
Lack of IFRS expertise
No clear understanding of deferred tax calculation, credit loss (ECL) models or other key audit elements.

All of this led to a high likelihood of delays, lower-quality audit, and potential investor concerns.

3. Our goals in helping our client

Prepare IFRS-compliant financial statements
Successfully pass the first IFRS audit
Work quickly and efficiently, with minimal disruption to the internal team

4. Our approach

In applying our solutions, we focused on speed and knowledge transfer, leveraging the experience of our team to ensure that the audit was ready in time and we could the company’s first IFRS cycle a success.

Key steps:

Helped set up a data room and collected all required source information
Prepared IFRS calculations, with a major focus on IFRS 16 Leases
Built a transformation file in Excel and a draft IFRS report in Word
Prepared a separate data room for auditors
Supported management in responding to audit queries

5. Results

Within a 3-week work window we achieved:

Fully prepared IFRS financial statements prepared from scratch
400 lease contracts analyzed and reflected under IFRS 16
An audit completed to a high standard
Higher-quality audit opinion than expected for a first-time IFRS adopter
The client invited us to support the next year’s IFRS and audit cycle

6. Business value

Beyond the numbers, the client gained:

A repeatable IFRS process for future periods
Stronger internal expertise through hands-on collaboration with our team
Lower audit and compliance risk
Increased confidence in discussions with investors and regulators

We showed that first-time IFRS adoption doesn’t have to be painful or chaotic, and that with the right structure and support, it can become a growth enabler instead of a bottleneck.