Citylink co-owner transferred a third of the company to the new JSC

The new company received 33.33% of the LLC from Citylink co-owner Oleg Karchev. The deal was closed on November 21, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The second participant in the company remains Alexey Abramov, who owns 66.67%.

• Three co-owners of Citylink, Oleg Karchev, Alexey Abramov and Vladislav Mangutov, each received a third of the company from offshore Cyprus in July 2022. Mangutov transferred his share to Abramov in August 2022.

JSC Merlion with an authorized capital of 7.5 billion rubles was registered on November 2, 2024, its shareholders are not disclosed. The general director of the company, the main activity of which is indicated as a holding company, is Alexander Varavin. The new JSC also received shares in other companies of the Merlion group of companies: Merlion LLC, Network of Computer Clinics LLC, Merlion Consult LLC, Merlion Distribution LLC and other companies. Both Karchev and Abramov transferred their shares in the joint-stock company.

Citylink declined to comment. Industry sources that RB.RU was able to speak to suggested that the ownership change may have been necessary to obscure the ultimate beneficiaries of open sources.

Finam financial group analyst Leonid Delitsyn believes the company may be preparing for sale. According to him, simplifying the ownership structure and consolidating shares under a single owner is “part of the pre-sale preparation.”

“The IPO is not the only option; An acquisition operation by a strategic investor is possible. Consolidation in this market seems quite likely,” said the expert.

Freedom Finance Global Lead Analyst Natalya Milchakovabelieves that if a company is owned by a legal entity registered in Russia, and even more so by a joint stock company, this means that such a group of companies will be more transparent for tax authorities, creditors and investors.

“Joint-stock companies, if they have control over other legal entities, are obliged to publish consolidated annual statements, from which information can be obtained about the subsidiaries included in the group of companies and some of the financial results of their activities,” Milchakova said. . .

According to her, precisely in the group of companies that includes Citilink and Merlion, this is not the first time that changes have occurred in the composition of the owners. Previously, several Russians became owners. The expert suggested that this may be because it has become risky for companies of Russian origin to remain under the control of the Cypriot owner from 2022.

“Now the owner has become a joint-stock company registered in the Russian Federation. It is not yet clear why one of the owners transferred his stake to a legal entity that has the same name as the Cypriot offshore, but it is quite possible that such changes are due to the fact that the company intends to make the structure of its shareholders is more transparent,” Milchakova believes.

According to Milchakova, it cannot be ruled out that Citylink will go public in the future, but it will not necessarily be an initial public offering (IPO).

“This could also be a bond issue, because for issuers of equity securities in Russia, the openness and transparency of the ownership structure is of great importance, since potential investors in securities are always interested in this. emission. Several years ago, Citilink’s management did not rule out the company’s IPO, but these plans were postponed due to the difficult geopolitical situation and the unstable dynamics of the stock market. There is still no information on whether the management will again plan an IPO next year,” the expert concluded.

• Citylink’s revenue in 2023 amounted to 132.7 billion rubles, and net profit – 798 million rubles.

• Until the end of 2024, Citylink aims to increase the number of associated collection points (POPs) by another 15%, up to 7.2 thousand points, which, together with Citylink’s own collection points and stores, will amount to 8 thousand POPs. .

• The company planned an initial public offering in 2022.
• In May 2024, electronics store chain Citilink began laying off employees and merging individual divisions with Merlion for optimization purposes, Vedomosti learned from company employees. Denis Kuskov, CEO of TelecomDaily, then suggested that the network could not compete with the markets due to insufficient distribution of certain types of products.