Page 11 - BNE_magazine_10_2020

bne October 2020
Companies & Markets I 11
got an extra boost. The total revenue of the company's online services increased by 30.8% to BYN141mn ($60.4mn), which is 6% of net retail revenue.
EBITDA increased by 24.1% to BYN195.6mn ($83.8mn). EBITDA margin increased by 1 percentage point to 7.6% due to a reduction in administrative and selling expenses.
The press release notes that the gross margin for the first half of the year decreased by 0.2 pp for a decline of 25%. The company attributed the decline in margins to the expansion of wholesale operations and the effect of the closure of its drug stores. Net profit fell to 3% largely due to the FX effects. At the same time, the adjusted net profit margin was 2.8%, an increase of 1.6 pp.
Debt ticks up, but remains a golden investment opportunity
As one of Belarus’ most attractive privately owned companies in October 2017 it launched Belarus’ first ever corporate eurobond issue, raising $340mn with a bond that matures in 2022 and pays a coupon of 8.75%.
The company then followed up a year later in October 2018 and attempted to launch a $300mn IPO on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the country’s first ever public listing. While there was some interest, the offer was withdrawn a month later due to insufficient interest from investors.
While its appeal to London-based investors has been capped, the company is a lot more familiar to Russian investors,
and it issued a RUB5bn five-year bond on the Russian securities market in June last year and then followed up with a RUB3.5bn ($52.7mn) syndicated loan facility agreement with a consortium of Russian banks in August.
Eurotorg’s bonds make it the only privately owned tradable security in the country and analysts say the current crisis has created a golden investment opportunity.
As of June 30, 2020 the company's total debt had reached $589.8mn, an increase of 1.8% since the end of 2019. In the
national currency equivalent, the debt increased by 16.1% to BYN1.42bn. The company's net debt amounted to $489.2mn as of June 30 (an increase of 11.3% over the half-year).
"Due to the company's focus on constant optimisation of the loan portfolio," the share of short-term debt remains at a low level of 6.7% of total debt as of June 30, the company said in its press release. “At the same time, the company notes a high liquidity reserve. So as of the reporting date, the volume of undrawn credit lines amounted to about $300mn in equivalent,” Eurotorg added.
"The company showed strong results for the first half of 2020, despite serious challenges in the form of the coronavirus pandemic. Even in these conditions, we were able to continue expanding the store network in accordance with the strategy of low-cost growth, strengthened our leadership in the retail market in Belarus," the company’s general director, Andrey Zubkov, said in the press release.
“Eurotorg’s bonds make it the only privately owned tradable security in the country and analysts say the current crisis has created a golden investment opportunity”
The general director also commented on the impact of the internal political crisis in Belarus on Eurotorg. “As you know, the situation in Belarus in recent weeks has not been easy, but it does not affect the operation of the chain's stores, and our activities continue as usual,” said the general director, noting that the company intends to “continue to work as usual”.
The official exchange rate for September 8 is BYN2.6665 to the dollar.
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Contents
Top stories
Russia’s top retail and tech companies
March 2020
www.intellinews.com
@bneintellinews
join forces to hunt for innovations in rest of the world
Ukraine-born startups raised more than half a billion dollars in 2019 Russian video streaming platforms gain speed
Cloud services take off in Russia SEMrush to SEO success
Leaders
Russia’s internet giant Yandex announces growing and more diversified revenues in 2019 Russian telecom major Rostelecom misses on earnings in 4Q19, cash flow solid
Investment
the
2
4
5 6 8
9
10 12
13
Russia’s top retail and tech companies
join forces to hunt for innovations in
the rest of the world
BAs Russia’s retail and tech sectors consolidate, the leading companies are turned their gaze outwards to hunt for
World Bank approves $35mn project
to modernise Kyrgyz tax administration and statistical system 13 Romanian online home decoration
retailer raises €3.5mn in bonds 14 Russian billionaires Abramovich, Gutseriev, said to invest in Telegram
crypto project TON 14 Russian fund Da Vinci Capital gets
€30mn from Germany’s DEG to invest
in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan 15
Fintech & E-commerce 16
Russian e-commerce major
Wildberries to add self-employed
vendor products to offering 16 Russian Dixy retailer to launch online sales with Ozon 17 Valuation of Sistema’s e-commerce
asset Ozon boosted to $1.8bn 17
Telecom 19
Makedonski Telekom’s net profit
up 6% y/y in 2019 19 Romanian telco Digi grows by double
digit rates in 2019 19 Russia could postpone 5G rollout
from 2022 to 2024 20
NIBs 21
bne:Tech
new technology and innovation.
See page 2
Ukraine-born startups raised more
than half a billion dollars in 2019
In 2019, the venture capital and private equity funding volume for Ukrainian and Ukrainian-founded tech startups reached $544mn (up from $323mn in 2018 and $265mn in 2017), says AVentures Capital’s latest industry report ”DealBook of Ukraine”,
reports Adrien Henni of Ukraine Digital News. See page 4
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