VK changes co-owners, this time – the largest voting shareholder. Alisher Usmanov’s USM is exiting the capital of VK, selling the stake it owned through MegaFon to SOGAZ Group.
At the end of November, Sberbank, for its part, sold its second largest stake in VK to Gazprombank. Thus, an absolute majority of VK’s voting shares will be consolidated in the hands of structures somehow related to Gazprom, according to Kommersant.
SOGAZ has published a statement on its website saying that its board of directors approved of “a 45 percent participation in the capital of MF Technologies which controls 57.3 percent of votes of VK”. It is about the share, which belonged to the holding USM through Megafon. USM confirmed the fact of the deal. The cost of securities is not disclosed.
“Shareholding in VK has largely determined the development and has become an important part of our holding company’s history. Our approach is maximum leeway for young and energetic management, so three years ago my partners and I transferred the right to vote our shares in VK to its management. Today we are withdrawing from the company’s capital, leaving it at the peak of its indicators both in terms of the number of audience and financial metrics,” the group’s founder Alisher Usmanov said in a statement.
CEO and co-owner of USM Ivan Streshinsky has clarified that USM business strategy will now focus on the “green agenda”, which is being implemented in mining and metallurgical companies Metalloinvest and Udokan Copper. Also, the top manager added, the telecoms business, related digital projects and labelling require “a lot of attention”.
Chairman of the SOGAZ Board of Directors and head of Gazprom Alexei Miller emphasized that “the management and team of VK Group, USM and MegaFon as shareholders have done a tremendous job.”
“We consider participation in capital of MF Technologies JSC as perspective strategic investment, – added Mr. Miller – the transaction is carried out on market conditions. We see great potential for the development of VK. As a result, MF Technologies shareholders do not have one controlling legal entity and all actions of the new shareholder will be based on purely market principles”.
In the middle of November it became known about the change of one more shareholder of “MF Technologies”: Sberbank announced the plans of selling 36% of the company to Gazprombank for 12,8 billion rubles. Based on this estimation, the stake bought out by SOGAZ could be worth 16 billion rubles. Another 10% of MF Technologies is owned by Rostec. USM owns another 9% in MF Technologies directly. The holding explained to Kommersant that this stake “is in a deal with Gazprombank”.
VK is the new name of Mail.ru Group.
The rebranding was announced on October 12, but according to the group’s website, its shareholders “holding at least 65% of shares” only made a “written decision” to change the name on November 29. The company’s GDR ticker on the Moscow Stock Exchange and LSE will change from MAIL to VKCO starting on December 14. The value of VK shares on the LSE as of the evening of December 1 was $4.15 billion.
According to the group’s IFRS statements, its “aggregate segment revenue” in January-September increased 21% year-on-year, to 88.7 billion rubles, EBITDA increased 8%, to 21.16 billion rubles, but net income decreased 2%, to 8 billion rubles. Taking into account “key strategic associates and joint ventures”, the group received a net loss of RUB 5.3bn against a profit of RUB 674m for the same period in 2020. The main losses were generated by JV with Sberbank O2O, JV AliExpress Russia and Uchi.ru.
SOGAZ Group is one of Russia’s largest federal-level insurers and has long been unassociated only with the gas industry. According to the group’s 2020 IFRS report, its largest shareholder with a 32.3% stake is LLC Aquila (half of it belongs to major shareholder Yury Kovalchuk and his family members of Rossiya Bank), followed by Gazprom with 21.2% and SG-Invest with 16.5%.
VTB has another 10% following the sale of the group’s insurance business to SOGAZ in 2018. According to the same report, undistributed profit of SOGAZ at the end of 2020 exceeded 197 billion rubles, and taking into account the results of last year, the equity owned by shareholders of the company reached 234.6 billion rubles.
Despite really active insurance business, both in corporate and retail segments (more than 44 million people are insured, about 30.6% of the RF population), recently SOGAZ has been noticed in a number of major non-core deals. In spring the group received a 20% stake in First Channel and a 6.25% stake in SIBUR, Russia’s largest oil and gas chemical holding (analysts had estimated the stake at more than $1 bln). By that time, the group already had 21.22% in the National Media Group, 18% in REN TV and 3% in Channel 5.
Gazprom Chairman Alexei Miller. Photo: Yandex Images
