Page 94 - RusRPTJul19

9.1.7 TMT sector news
Online sales of smartphones in Russia spiked 35% on the year to 1.4mn devices in January–April, a record rise in Internet sales over the last three years, for 27bn rubles in total, mobile electronics retailer Svyaznoy-Euroset said on Monday in a statement. “In 2019, the share of online sales keeps on rising. It is explained by a more available Internet in regions, a growing share of mobile traffic, while retailers actively expand their logistics infrastructure, which makes delivery to a customer much quicker,” Vice President of sales David Borzilov said. “I’d like to point out that Russians prefer more expensive smartphones in online. The category of smartphones for more than 60,000 rubles showed the highest growth in money in January–April, by 24%.” The average price rose 3% to 19,380 rubles. In money, Apple remained the leader. In units, the bestsellers were Xiaomi, Honor, and Samsung.
One of Russia's "big four" mobile operators Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) is in talk to acquire a stake in mobile taxi ordering service Gett in Russia, Kommersant daily reported cited unnamed sources. Reportedly, Gett also discussed a partnership with internet major Mail.ru, but could not settle on a price for the deal. Mail.ru reportedly valued Gett's Russian business at $150mn, while Gett saw the valuation at $450mn-600mn. Another option included transferring Gett's business in Russia to Sberbank as part payment for an outstanding debt; according to previous reports in 2016 Sberbank granted the company $100mn loan. Commenting on possible acquisition of Gett by MTS, BCS Global Markets wrote on June 18 that "in general, we do not think it makes sense for MTS to tie up with a taxi business, which requires significant investments and has no clear synergy with telecom business." BCS GM has a buy recommendation on MTS shares with target price of $10 per share and implied $18 upside. Uralsib Capital on June 18 reminded that MTS already tried to enter online taxi market setting up MTS Taxi in 2017 jointly with Citimobil aggregator, but later shut down the project. The mobile operator is
94 RUSSIA Country Report July 2019 www.intellinews.com