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Russian internet company Yandex will pay $ 1 billion to buy Uber from joint ventures in food and grocery delivery, logistics and autonomous driving.
The cash deal gives Yandex full control of Yandex.Eats, the Yandex.Lavka grocery fast delivery service, and the Yandex.Delivery logistics company, as well as its separately owned autonomous vehicle division, has the company announced on Tuesday.
The sale says Yandex, which is Russia’s answer to Google’s search, is doubling its food and grocery deliveries after rapid growth during coronavirus shutdowns. Yandex is also rapidly expanding its online shopping and entertainment streaming offerings.
Yandex, which had nearly $ 3 billion in cash and deposits at the end of the second quarter of 2021, is among many Russian companies vying to set up Chinese-style “ecosystems”.
The idea is to harness the masses of user and payment data of tech giants to offer users a range of different products within “super apps”. Yandex and Russia’s two largest e-commerce companies, Wildberries and Ozon, all bought small banks this year that they plan to use as platforms to expand into financial services.
Meanwhile, Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, has also invested heavily with Yandex’s biggest competitor, Mail.ru, in a joint venture that includes rival taxi and catering apps Citymobil and Delivery Club, although the partnership either on the rocks since last year after disagreements. on its direction.
Yandex.Eats increased revenue 93% year-on-year in the last quarter to 8.1 billion rubles ($ 110 million), although its losses tripled in the same period to 3 billion rubles.
The unit as a whole, run by one of the few profitable ridesharing apps in the world, had earnings adjusted for interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of 1.5 billion rubles.
The deal also gives Yandex an additional 4.5% stake in MLU, the joint venture it formed when its taxi business merged with Uber in a 2018 deal valued at 3.8. billions of dollars.
The Russian company will own 68 percent of MLU, and an additional 3 percent will be reserved for its employees.
As part of the deal, Yandex will also have a two-year call option to buy Uber’s remaining 29% stake in MLU for at least $ 1.8 billion, up to $ 2 billion. by the end of the period. Yandex also extended its rights to the Uber brand in Russia and several other countries until 2030.
The deal, which has already been approved by the Yandex and Uber boards of directors, is expected to be concluded by the end of the year.
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