Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Telegram leapt to a $540mn profit last year, as the messaging app achieved rapid growth despite the ongoing threat to its leadership from French legal proceedings against its founder Pavel Durov.
The Dubai-based group told investors that revenues reached $1.4bn in 2024, up from $343mn a year earlier, according to a company presentation seen by the Financial Times. The company also went from a $173mn loss in 2023 to its first annual profit.
According to people familiar with the matter, the bumper earnings were shared with potential backers ahead of Telegram launching a bond offering of about $1.5bn in order to buy back existing debt. The debt sale, which began on Tuesday, could wrap up as early as next week.
The results suggest Telegram has been boosted in part by a surge in paying users and gains from tie-ups related to the cryptocurrency it founded.
The growth comes despite doubts over the group’s future following its founder’s detainment by French authorities in Paris in August last year.
Durov, who was born in Russia but now has French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, faces charges around the app’s alleged failure to address criminality including child abuse and terrorism on its platform. The case could result in a prison sentence.
In recent days, Durov has attacked authorities over the case. On Monday, he wrote that while French intelligence services had indicated that fighting child sexual abuse was the pretext for his detainment, “their main focus was always geopolitics”.
Durov had previously claimed he refused a request by Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections in the country. “Falsely implying Telegram did nothing to remove child porn is a manipulation tactic,” he wrote on X. The French intelligence service has rejected Durov’s claims.
Telegram now has more than 1bn monthly active users globally and is run by a small team of about 60 staff, while outsourcing most of its moderation to contractors.
According to several people familiar with calls with potential investors of the deal, Telegram’s chief investment officer John Hyman said the company has hit all of its financial milestones and that a potential initial public offering was possible if markets became more friendly.
The company also acknowledged that the French investigation could be a barrier to an IPO, but noted that it could be resolved as early as this year, one of the people said.
The new bond offering, which is being sounded out at a 9 per cent yield, would give investors an option to buy shares in any future IPO at a 20 per cent discount, mirroring the terms of previous bond sales, the person added.
According to the investor documents, about half of Telegram’s 2024 revenues worth $1.4bn came from what it labelled “partnerships and ecosystem”, while about $250mn came from advertising and $292mn from its premium subscriptions.
The partnerships and ecosystem business stem largely from developers building their own so-called “mini apps” directly into Telegram in areas such as commerce and gaming.
This platform is underpinned by the Ton blockchain, which was originally developed by Telegram but is now maintained by the open source community. Its Toncoin cryptocurrency is deeply integrated into the app and used for payments on mini apps, or for buying Telegram advertisements.
Previous filings seen by the Financial Times show its business last year profited from deals with third-parties related to Toncoin, as well as sales of its own holdings of the cryptocurrency.
According to the investor documents, Telegram is targeting revenues of $2bn in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 46 per cent. It is also aiming to achieve $720mn in profit next year. The group had about $530mn in cash as of February 2025, a figure that does not include its cryptocurrency assets.
Telegram, which is fully owned by Durov, has issued about $2.4bn in bonds over the past four years, according to the documents. Between September and December 2024, it repurchased $375mn of its outstanding bonds, it said in the documents.
In the presentation, Telegram also pointed to opportunities around artificial intelligence, saying it was becoming the largest open platform for “conversational AI”.
It highlighted a new partnership with Elon Musk’s AI group xAI. The messaging group said it had integrated xAI’s Grok chatbot into Telegram “with plans to promote it within the platform and split the resulting revenue”, without disclosing further details.
The tie-up marks the first major expansion by Grok into a new social media service beyond Musk’s X platform.
Durov and Musk are also aligned by their stances on free speech. On Sunday, the X owner shared Durov’s post about the French intelligence request on Romania to his 220mn followers writing: “Wow”.
Telegram declined to comment.
Read the full article here
