VK and Sber agreed to divorce

VK and Sber have finally agreed on a divorce in their joint venture O2O Holding, The Bell learned. As a result of the transaction, VK will receive the Delivery Club food delivery service, which will then be exchanged for Zen and News with Yandex. Sber will get all the other assets of the joint venture, including Citydrive carsharing and Samokat express delivery service.

What's happened

The fact that Sberbank and VK finally agreed on the terms of the divorce was told by The Bell by two interlocutors close to the negotiators. According to them, the shareholders of the O2O holding are preparing to announce the conditions for the division of assets in the near future.

VK and Yandex declined to comment on the topic. Sber did not respond to The Bell's request.

As a result of the transaction, VK will receive the largest asset of the joint venture, the food delivery service Delivery Club. However, VK will not leave him to himself. After Delivery changes its shareholder, the service will become part of another deal: an asset swap with Yandex, in which Yandex will receive Delivery Club, and VK will receive Yandex's News and Zen services.

that Yandex is interested in acquiring its longtime competitor in the ready-to-eat food delivery market The Bell wrote in early July . Even then, it was discussed that VK and Yandex could exchange assets. However, this deal is yet to be reviewed by the FAS.

Sberbank will receive the remaining assets of the joint venture in the event of a divorce, sources say. that the deal was being discussed in this configuration wrote Earlier, Forbes . Among them, the bank is primarily interested in the Samokat food delivery service, says The Bell's source. This was confirmed by Forbes sources: according to one of them, Samokat has “deep integration with Sbermarket.” Citydrive is also much more closely integrated with the bank than with VK, a source close to the JV told The Bell. Most of the service vehicles are leased from Sberbank.

In addition to the above, O2O Holding also includes the Kitchen in the District food delivery service, the r_keeper restaurant automation service, and Performance Group, a manufacturer of ready-made food rations. This February, the holding bought the Proil offsite refueling service.

Interests diverged

VK and Sberbank, after the start of the war and the imposition of sanctions, audited the assets on the basis of which they were going to develop their ecosystems. In March, the partners decided to close the Citymobil taxi aggregator, but later agreed to sell the assets of the service to People & People (the owner of Taxovichkof and Gruzovichkof). In addition, in March it became known that VK and Sber could sell or close another service from their joint venture - Kitchen in the District.

Partners also change their strategies individually. As The Bell wrote, based on the results of the review of assets in Sber, it was decided to close the gaming division of SberGames, other assets of the bank, such as SberDevices, could also be in limbo (last week, the word "Sber", now it is called "Salyut Devices"). In addition, in May, the bank suddenly sold (or simply removed it from the group's perimeter, fearing sanctions) five key services for the ecosystem to an unknown buyer.

VK, on ​​the other hand, is rebuilding its motley business around its main asset - now it will be a content and media company. The new CEO of the service, Vladimir Kiriyenko (son of the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Kiriyenko), put all his efforts and resources into developing the main asset of the VK social network. According to The Bell interlocutors close to the company, the new management of VK considered the assets from the joint venture with Sberbank to be less priority even before the start of the war. And after February 24, the management confirmed the idea to get rid of now non-core and loss-generating projects.

The joint venture continues to bring losses to Sberbank and VK: in 2021, the net loss of O2O amounted to 14.4 billion rubles, the year before it was 10.5 billion rubles, follows from VK's annual reporting. Delivery Club's revenue over the past year increased by 60%, to 16.2 billion rubles, the number of orders increased by almost one and a half times, to 87 million. In the first quarter of 2022, Delivery Club was the leader in the number of purchases, according to Tinkoff Data based on transactions 20 million of its customers. The service accounted for 42% of purchases. Its closest competitor, Yandex.Food, has 35%.