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Eastern Europe
May 11, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
and the heavy-handed use of police at events like this demonstration, in the March elections Putin gained 10mn more votes than in the previous election in 2012 – and that is after subtracting the approximately 10-12% of extra votes that were added by the state to push Putin’s result over 50% of votes from the entire population.
With more than 56mn votes, almost 77% of the total number of registered voters, his March elec- tion win was his biggest ever and the largest by any post-Soviet Russian leader, something he and his allies say gave him an unequivocal mandate to govern. In 2012, Putin won a total of 46.6mn votes or 63.6% of the vote. In both elections, statisti- cians have shown that the Kremlin injected some 5-12% of extra votes into the system to push Putin’s result over key constitutional thresholds. However, in both votes even dropping these extra
votes from the counting leaves Putin clearly com- manding a simple majority of genuine votes.
In other words Putin is genuinely popular and “For- tress Russia” and “Reject the west” messages reso- nate with a large and growing part of the population.
Putin has dismissed Navalny as a troublemaker bent on sowing chaos on behalf of Washington.
On the other side of the balance sheet, Navalny commands the support of only 2% of the population in opinion polls. Clearly his popularity is suppressed by the total control the Kremlin exercises over the airwaves, but it remains open to debate how well he would do if the media was free – better than 2% surely, but as things stand it is unlikely he would be able to seriously challenge Putin’s ratings even in a open society.
Russia’s toy store giant Detsky Mir is mulling a launch in Belarus
bne IntelliNews
Russia’s toy store giant Detsky Mir is mulling a launch in Belarus, the company said on May 7.
Detsky Mir is currently considering opening branches in Belarus in the leading stores and shopping malls as well as looking at entering the market via the acquisi- tion of local retail players, according to Kommersant.
“Detsky Mir is already present in other neighbour- ing markets, operating 22 stores in 12 cities in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Entering the Belarus market could support the company’s aggressive development pipeline: management guidance points to at least 70 new stores in 2018 and 250 new outlets in 2018- 21F,” VTB Capital (VTBC) analysts said in a note.
“The figures would imply a blended selling space compound average growth rate (CAGR) of 10%,
which would make Detsky Mir one of the fastest growing companies in our coverage universe. In our view, Detsky’s scale, the recently streamlin- ing of processes and the strong awareness of its brand in Belarus from Soviet times provide good grounds for successful retail operations,” the bank added.
VTBC forecast the company’s revenues would grow by 15% y/y in 2018 and with profitability margins remaining comparable y/y.
“The capex-lite roll-out and robust cash flow generation mean that our model returns a 12-month dividend yield of 9%. We consider the 2018F EV/EBITDA multiple of 6.9x as appealing,” the bank added.