Its former contractor is asking the court to declare the mobile operator insolvent

The Ufa subsidiary of the Samara mobile operator SMARTS, CJSC SMARTS-Ufa, is facing bankruptcy. The corresponding claim of the Samara-based Srednyaya Volga Spets-Stroy LLC (SVSS) was accepted for consideration by the arbitration court of Bashkiria. SMARTS says that it will not allow bankruptcy and will pay off its debts, despite the unprofitability of the Ufa company, and also confirmed the fact that negotiations on the sale of SMARTS-Ufa are continuing. Experts consider the Ufa company not very attractive to the market.

Pre-sale preparation of the Ufa subsidiary of SMARTS was fueled by a bankruptcy claim
Photo: Dmitry Kolpakov, Kommersant

Last Tuesday, the Arbitration Court of Bashkortostan accepted for proceedings the application of Samara-based Srednyaya Volga Spets-Stroy LLC to declare SMARTS-Ufa CJSC, the Ufa subsidiary of the Samara mobile operator SMARTS, insolvent. The hearing of the claim is scheduled for March 24. The court plans to consider the candidacy of an arbitration manager - representative of the Northern Capital SRO, Alexander Boltakov.

The debt of SMARTS-Ufa to the Middle Volga Spets-Stroy, as follows from the court materials, arose back in 2006: the contractor installed antenna supports in the Ilishevsky and Ufa districts at the request of a telecom operator. The total contract amount was 17.8 million rubles. The plaintiff considered that SMARTS did not pay an additional 369 thousand rubles for the work performed; the arbitration court satisfied the claim for recovery of the amount in December last year.

Yesterday it was impossible to contact representatives of the Middle Volga Special Construction.

• CJSC SMARTS-Ufa is a 100% subsidiary of the Samara mobile operator OJSC SMARTS. The company was formed in August 2012 through a spin-off from the parent company, the authorized capital is 54.3 million rubles. The company's activities in 2012, according to Kartoteka.ru , were unprofitable: a net loss on revenue of 3.04 million rubles. amounted to 5.4 million rubles, accounts payable - 3.3 million rubles. In November last year, FAS Russia allowed the Tatarstan operator OJSC Tattelecom to acquire 100% of SMARTS-Ufa. There was no further information about the deal. SMARTS-Ufa does not publish official data on its subscriber base and coverage. Acting General Director of SMARTS-Ufa Alexander Timofeev in the media at the end of last year called the subscriber base in Bashkiria comparable to Tatarstan, where it numbered about 120 thousand subscribers. According to him, the company is present in 15 cities and five rural areas of Bashkiria - “from Kumertau to Yanaul and along the M-5 highway from Ufa to Oktyabrsky.”

SMARTS says it will pay off the debt and prevent bankruptcy. As the chairman of the company’s board of directors, Alexander Kurochkin, told Kommersant, “this is such a minor issue that there is no need to talk about bankruptcy.” He added that SMARTS continues negotiations on the sale of its Ufa subsidiary. “The asset may be very interesting, first of all, to the future holding of TELE2 and Rostelecom (the creation of a joint venture company - T2 RTK Holding - was announced at the end of last year - Kommersant), because these companies do not have 1800 MHz frequencies and there is nowhere else to take,” Mr. Kurochkin believes. “If they don’t come to an agreement with us, then they will have a ‘hole’ in the coverage on the territory of Bashkortostan.” The top manager added that negotiations are also underway with other operators, whose names he did not give.

Tele2 and Tattelecom refused to officially comment on the topic of negotiations with SMARTS. An interlocutor at Tattelecom, on condition of anonymity, noted only that the Ufa subsidiary of SMARTS was not of interest to the company (“Tattelecom acquired the Kazan subsidiary of the operator in July 2013”).

Experts believe that SMARTS-Ufa is not particularly interesting to the market. According to Denis Kuskov, CEO of the TelecomDaily agency, in recent years interest in this telecom operator has decreased, and “during this time it has fallen head and shoulders behind its competitors, and not only from the Big Three,” while finally putting an end to negotiations on The company cannot be sold.

According to Anton Pogrebinsky from the analytical company ACM-consulting, the company may be considered for purchase “as a preventive measure to prevent competitors from entering the market, or the buyer may thus add SMARTS frequencies to its asset.” Alexey Boyko, an expert at the telecommunications market research agency MForum Analytics, agrees that the only sought-after asset of SMARTS-Ufa is licenses for the 1800 MHz band. “They are interesting even taking into account the company’s debts, primarily, probably, for Tele2, although at a reasonable price other operators would not refuse to expand the frequency pool,” the expert noted. Maxim Savvatin, a consultant at iKS-Consulting, also believes that “SMARTS’ subscriber base in Bashkiria is definitely not a motivator for acquiring a company; rather, operators may be interested in its frequencies or base stations.” In the end, the whole question is about the price; I wouldn’t say definitively that the company is not interesting to the same Tattelecom,” added Mr. Savvatin.

Experts interviewed by Kommersant found it difficult to even name the cost of the Ufa division of SMARTS.

Bulat Bashirov, Natalya Pavlova

SMARTS in Ufa received a bankruptcy signal