Page 154 - RusRPTJun21

believe suggests continued robust economics, which now await the removal of price caps. In 2021, we forecast EBITDA growing 15% y/y to RUB37bn, which would beat the previous year’s all time record and come 6% ahead of our previous model.
9.2.7 TMT corporate news
A Russian court said on May 25 it has fined US technology giants Google and Facebook over a failure to delete content that Moscow deems illegal, the latest development in an escalating standoff between Russia and Big Tech. Russia has already placed a punitive slowdown on US social network Twitter for not deleting banned content, part of a push by Moscow to rein in Western tech companies and beef up what it calls its internet "sovereignty." Facebook was fined RUB26mn ($353,890) in total, on eight separate counts, while Alphabet Inc's Google was ordered to pay a total of RUB6mn for three different offences, Moscow's Tagansky District Court said. Twitter was also threatened and its service slowed but the government relented after it deleted 91% of the objectionable content.
Russian authorities opted not to block Twitter after the social media platform deleted more than 90% of the posts that were not allowed, according to the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media’s website. Russian news agency TASS reports that the watchdog wanted to avoid slowing down Twitter’s loading time for web users, but kept the slowdown for smartphone users.
Yandex has announced new management appointments on May 19, which we see as logical and potentially positive for the company's business development. Acting CFO and former VP for Corporate Development Vadim Marchuk was named the company's COO, while the former CFO of X5 Retail Group Svetlana Demyashkevich was appointed as Yandex’s new CFO, effective from 1 June. We note that previously the positions of COO and CFO were held by Greg Abovsky, who left Yandex at the end of April. We think that given the growing complexity of Yandex's business, splitting responsibilities among more senior managers with strong records makes perfect sense, as it will likely help prevent the dispersion of managerial resources. We also believe that Demyashkevich brings valuable experience from retail, which could give an additional boost to Yandex's efforts to develop ecommerce and egrocery. Our 12-month Target Price of USD 87 implies an ETR of 34%: Buy reiterated.
Mail.ru has announced the purchase of Playkey, a gaming platform which offers solutions for launching games on PCs, tablets and smartphones through video streaming. The price of the deal was not disclosed. We think that this acquisition is relatively small. Nevertheless, Playkey’s solutions are likely to support the development of Mail.ru’s cloud gaming service, which was launched in late 2020. We also note the strong global momentum behind cloud gaming. According to NewZoo, the global cloud gaming market will more than double YoY to USD 1.4bn in 2021 and then increase to USD 5.1bn by 2023. From this perspective, we see the acquisition as positive.
Ozon : Sistema, Baring Vostok agreed to another lock-up. Sistema said on
154 RUSSIA Country Report June 2021 www.intellinews.com