CTC Media Inc. rose to a four-week high after the Russian TV-station operator reported quarterly revenue that exceeded analyst estimates and said expenses will rise more slowly than sales as the company cuts costs, Bloomberg reports.

The shares, which only trade in the U.S., climbed 4.1 percent to $6.36 in New York yesterday, the highest since Oct. 2. CTC Media was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2006 and is the only publicly traded Russian television company. The Bloomberg Russia-US Equity Index fell 0.3 percent to 73.44.

CTC Media reported revenue of $158.6 million for the three months ended September, according to a regulatory filing. While sales fell 7.3 percent from last year, they exceeded the average estimate of $155.8 million among six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Operating expenses of $114.3 million were 10 percent less than in the third quarter of 2013. The company has cut costs as international sanctions linked to the Ukraine conflict hurt Russia ’s economy and crimp advertising sales growth.

“The company proved it is able to adjust to slowing economic growth, weakening ad sales and a declining ruble,” Konstantin Belov, an analyst at UralSib Financial Corp. in Moscow, said by phone yesterday. “They managed to keep costs in check. We raised the stock to a buy less than two weeks ago, and CTC didn’t disappoint.”

The Moscow-based company’s third-quarter OIBDA margin, referring to operating income before depreciation and amortization, increased to 31.9 percent from 30.6 percent a year ago, according to the filing. Yuliana Slashcheva, CTC Media’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that the figure should remain at around 30 percent this year, citing cost controls.

Yesterday’s rally trimmed CTC Media’s decline this year to 54 percent. The stock has plunged as Russia passed legislation lowering the foreign-ownership limit in media companies to 20 percent from 50 percent. The new law takes effect in 2016 and gives companies a year to comply.

“Our analysis indicates that most of the potential options will require either delisting or major ownership restructuring,” Slashcheva said on a conference call with investors and analysts yesterday. “We will have to complete the restructuring by the end of December 2015.”

Stockholm-based Modern Times Group AB (MTGB) is CTC Media’s biggest shareholder with about a 39 percent stake, while 36 percent is held by various U.S. and European investors, the Russian company said in a statement last month.