It is highly unlikely that Yandex.Taxi will purchase the assets of “Vezyot” GC , as planned before. In response to the taxi aggregator Gett’s complaint, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service might not allow to conclude a deal in some regions of Russia, where it can have a negative impact on competition. In this case the the Service will order shareholders not to sell assets or sell them to another competitor. Alfa-Bank analysts consider that Mail.ru Group’s “Citymobil” is the most probable competitor to buy the assets of “Vezyot” in the regions.
In July Yandex claimed it planned to buy the software and call-centers of “Vezyot” GC and therefore submitted an application to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service. Mail.ru Group claimed that the parties had to obtain a written permit for asset purchasing from Mail.ru Group, which gave a convertible loan to “Vezyot” in 2018. In return “Vezyot” replied they had not broken lending laws.
Yandex.Taxi IPO launch was planned for 2019 or 2020. According to a recent evaluation, the service costs $7.7–8.5 billion, while the whole Yandex’s capitalization costs $12.4 billion.
In Moscow Yandex.Taxi’s (together with Uber) taxi aggregator market share is over 68%, and “Vezyot” only has 2% of shares. At the same time across Russia Yandex.Taxi has about 47% of shares, while “Vezyot” has 24%. in Moscow Gett got 5.7% market shares and in the whole Russian market it got 9.7%.
According to Discovery Research Group, the Russian taxi aggregator market’s monetary value was estimated at 290.5 billion rubles in 2018 (146.8 billion in the previous year). Analysts note that aggregators put conventional taxi companies under the control of IT companies.
Telecom news
• Beeline launched a 5G pilot testbed in “Luzhniki” and broadcasted it via social networks. The operator claimed during testing they recorded 3.3 Gbps speed per one Huawei device.
• MTS in turn tested Solutions for smart transport in the pilot area in VDNH and presented 3 5G use case scenarios to increase on road safety — “Smart overtaking”, “Smart crossroad” and “Safe pedestrian”.
• First official news about the anticipated reorganizing of the Moscow broadband internet service provide leader, MGTS, came out. From September 16, its Director General Pavel Kuznetsov also holds the position of the MTS Moscow region Director, previously held by Igor Egorov. Previously the news about MGTS reorganization was reported by “Kommersant”. The information about new appointments in top management is stated in the operator’s documents, though MTS had not commented on it yet.
• Moreover, this week MTS launched a ticket selling platform “MTS Afisha” and plans to open “MTS Live Arena” concert venue for up to 11.5 thousand people. It Will be located near “Skolkovo” innovation center.
• Vitaliy Klishin was appointed Director of the Moscow branch of “ER-Telecom”. He previously held the position of Vice President of “AMT-Group” and worked for “Volga Telecom” and “AKADO”. He will start modernizing the network and increasing revenues, including B2B segment, which the company has been working in since last autumn.
• Tele2 obtained the permission to continue eSIM testing from the Ministry of Communications. The Ministry stated that the operator fixed all eSIM security issues and the test algorithm full supports subscriber identification. Up to 15 thousand subscribers will participate in the testing.
Retail for online
Experts note that one of the trends in telecom retail is the openness of the infrastructure for partners within the concept of digital services department store. Last week two pieces of news were dedicated to the examples of such cooperation.
MTS in its phone stores will offer clients to install a set of apps with Yandex services (Yandex.Browser, Yandex.Taxi, Yandex.Drive and Auto.ru)on their smartphones. The internet company’s apps will be available in other retail stores.
Megafon in its phone stores allowed users to verify their identity in Yandex.Money. This option is also available in “Svyaznoy”, “Euroset” stores and “Unistream” offices.
