The owner of M.Video may become a new partner of Sberbank in e-commerce

After a divorce from Yandex and a failed deal with Ozon, Sberbank is looking for a new entry into the e-commerce market - the bank is negotiating with the owner of the M.Video group, Mikhail Gutseriev, on the joint development of the Goods.ru online marketplace owned by it. Sources of The Bell on the market claim that negotiations are also underway on a partnership in M.Video itself, but Gutseriev's Safmar group denies this.

The fact that Sberbank and Safmar are negotiating a partnership in online retail was told by The Bell by four sources in this market. According to them, Sberbank is negotiating the purchase of the Goods.ru online marketplace owned by M.Video, and possibly M.Video itself.

A source close to one of the parties to the possible deal confirmed the talks on the joint development of Goods.ru. At the same time, Safmar categorically denied negotiations on the possible sale of M.Video and stated that they intend to further develop this asset comprehensively. The first deputy chairman of Sberbank, Lev Khasis, in response to both questions, said that he did not comment on the rumors. President of M.Video and co-owner of Goods.ru Alexander Tynkovan declined to comment.

The Goods.ru marketplace was founded in 2016 and launched in 2018. 80% of the company belongs to the M.Video-Eldorado group, 20% belongs to the founder and former owner of M.Video Alexander Tynkovan. According to SPARK, in 2019, Goods.ru managing director Marketplace LLC received 269 million rubles in revenue. At the same time, the owners of the company have invested 6 billion rubles in it for four years, follows from the reports of Marketplace.

Goods.ru is a small player, but it has IT, an application, a base of sellers, and most importantly, the M.Video infrastructure, which can serve large volumes, says one of The Bell's interlocutors. For Sberbank, it could become a base for the development of non-grocery e-commerce, he believes. Sberbank, which now owns the Rambler Group, could provide the retailer with a rapid increase in traffic, says another. The third interlocutor of The Bell believes that the marketplace is so connected with M.Video that buying the project separately may not make sense.

M.Video is not only the largest seller of electronics in Russia (revenue in 2019 is 435 billion rubles), but also the fourth online retailer in Russia according to the Data Insight agency, which estimates the online revenue of M.Video at 57 .5 billion rubles. The capitalization of M.Video on the Moscow Exchange on the morning of November 20 was 129 billion rubles (approximately $1.6 billion). 73.5% of M.Video's shares are owned by Gutseriev's Safmar group, 15% by the German Media/Saturn group (which developed the Media Markt network in Russia), and 10% are traded on the Moscow Exchange.

After failed e-commerce partnerships, Sberbank is interested in either buying the whole business or taking control of it, says another of The Bell's interlocutors, who is familiar with the details of the negotiations. “Sberbank has already played enough in partnerships, when at first they take money from it, and then they throw mud at it, and in the end everything turns out badly. Now he wants to do business in which he will steer himself, ”he says. The bank is considering various options for the purchase, but negotiations with M.Video's shareholders have gone further than with others, he says.

In June, it became officially known that Sberbank was divorcing its longtime partner, Yandex, with which the state bank was going to build a “Russian Amazon” based on Yandex.Market. After the divorce, the marketplace went to Yandex, and Sber began looking for a new partner.

It could be the oldest Russian online store Ozon, which is now preparing to launch its IPO. In July, Reuters and The Bell sources reported that Sberbank was interested in buying a stake in the online retailer. It was about 30% of the shares. But it was not possible to reach an agreement with the main shareholders of Ozon - approximately 40% of Ozon's shares are owned by AFK Sistema Vladimir Yevtushenkov and the Baring Vostok fund - failed.

Publicly, the companies did not have time to say anything about the deal: from the documents that Ozon filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), we learned that in September Ozon broke off a certain agreement of intent that the company had previously concluded with Sberbank. Ozon considered that it had fulfilled its obligations, but Sberbank demanded a penalty in the amount of 1 billion rubles from the company. On November 12, the parties entered into a settlement agreement: in it, the companies agreed to waive mutual claims. And although Ozon did not acknowledge the violations, the company eventually paid Sberbank the required 1 billion rubles.