Page 98 - bne IntelliNews Country Report: Russia Dec17

of 22% year-on-year to RUB2.3bn ($38.6mn) for the third quarter , beating the consensus expectations by 5%. "The growth was driven primarily by the continuing strong trends in E-Commerce and Money Remittance verticals, with net adjusted revenues in these verticals growing 38% y/y and 49% y/y, respectively," VTB Capital commented on November 16. Qiwi's adjusted Ebitda, however, declined 21% y/y to RUB 1.3bn and came just slightly above VTB Capital's and the consensus forecasts. The company did not provide the earnings numbers excluding Sovest payment card recently launched.
The Russia-China Investment Fund (RCIF), backed by Russia’s sovereign fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and China Investment Corporation, announced in the middle of October that it took part in a $1bn Series D round of investment in Chinese e-car maker NIO . Led by China-based Tencent Holdings, the round also involved several institutional investors from the United States, Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
CarMoney, a Russian startup, which allows you to borrow money against your car, attracted a $10mn bridge round from Russian business angels . The investors the names of whom remain undisclosed acquired a minority stake in the company. The fresh capital will be used to develop in-house IT solutions, improve CarMoney’s scoring system, automate the decision-making system, and for marketing purposes. As of November 1, CarMoney’s loan portfolio amounts to nearly 1.3 billion rubles (approximately $22 million at the current exchange rate), with the market value of securities reaching over 3.5 billion rubles (some $59 million).
9.2.8 Telecoms corporate news
Russia's Alfa Telecom is interested in increasing its stake in T urkey’s largest mobile operator Turkcell by buying out Turkish firm Cukurova, which missed a recent debt repayment and could consider offers, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on November 10. If the offers are attractive, Cukurova may consider selling its 13.8% stake in Turkcell, given as collateral to Turkey's state-run lender Ziraat in 2014, in order to pay a $1.6bn loan from the bank, the people reportedly added.
Richard Branson's Virgin Group launched a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in Russia on November 27. MVNO Virgin will use network capacities of T2 RTK Holding, which runs the mobile phone operator Tele2, the upstart fourth mobile phone service provider in the Russian capital, Vedomosti reported.
Sonera Holding B.V, a division of Swedish telecom company Telia, sold a 18.96% share in major Russian mobile phone operator Megafon to Gazprombank , TASS reported on November 10. The sale signified the complete pullout of the Swedish company from Megafon, in which it was an original investor, alongside Finland's Sonera and Norway's Telenor Invest AS, back in 1993. The total value of the deal was RUB60.4bn ($1bn), and Gazprombank pledged not to resell the shares for the next six months.
Russian mobile major VEON (rebranded from Vimpelcom) beat the consensus by 9.5% on Ebitda in July-September thanks to one-off gains and stable underlying profitability. Underlying Ebitda was 4% ahead of consensus, helped mainly by improving performances in Russia, Pakistan,
98 RUSSIA Country Report December 2017 www.intellinews.com