Mail.ru Group, started in 1998 year from the postal service, still owns the attention of most of the Runet audience. How a business manages to increase user interest for more than twenty years, analysts figured out ABF "Economics today».
Rapid growth was not long in coming
The history of the development of a technology corporation began in 1998 year, code programmers, working in the St. Petersburg office of the American company DataArt Enterprises Inc., created software for a web mail server and made it publicly available as an experiment.
platform, which was supposed to be sold in the West, began to gain popularity in the Russian Federation and became the starting point for the creation of CJSC Port.ru. His main task was to implement a matrix-type Internet portal model based on numerous services., thematic sections and technologies. In addition to the development of the postal direction, young business tried his hand at creating various thematic sites, chat rooms and even e-commerce platforms.
AT 2001 Port.ru merged with NetBridge, which then acted as the basis for creating Internet projects based on successful Western models. The achievements of both companies made it possible to get business, leading in the sector in terms of market share and audience coverage. The combined brand was eventually named Mail.ru, after the most popular brand awareness product..
Four years later, the postal service crossed the mark of 20 million users, at 20 times increasing the number of customers of the service. However, the company did not stop there and continued to actively develop new directions., parallel redesign of existing services. So, Mail.ru first released a multiplayer online game and began to enter the market of educational services.
Finally 2007 the business has already been valued at 1 billion, what became the record value of an asset in Runet. At the same time, the company began to expand and launch new offices in different regions of the country., as well as outside, opening a representative office in Ukraine, thereby paving its way to the CIS market.
The company entered a new stage of development after the IPO
With the advent of the new decade, the business began preparations for the public offering of its global depository receipts on the London Stock Exchange. The organizers of the IPO were investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and VTB Capital. Pre-subscription for the company's securities during the initial offering exceeded the supply by 20 time, and their purchase was at the upper limit of the declared price range.
Later, at 2014 year, the company consolidated a 100% stake in the VKontakte social network, which she had to spend almost all the cash available at that time and even take out a four-year loan for 22,2 billion rubles. And two years later, Mail.ru bought out the Delivery Club service., which acted as a leader in the domestic market for searching and ordering ready-made food. The purchase cost her 100 million dollars.
Companies are currently, starting with email, managed to create many services, that have successfully integrated into the lives of users, which allows the business to receive high revenues from advertising within the platform. The current year has become a landmark for business, as it is the first time 20 rebranded for years, changed name to VK, to make it easier for users to associate it with the VKontakte social network.
Besides, among VK assets on 2021 three more social networks are celebrated, including "Odnoklassniki", "My World" and "Mail.ru Mail", ICQ messengers, "Agent Mail.ru" and "TamTam", bulletin board "Yula", search engine "Search Mail.ru". The corporation also owns online educational platforms Skillbox, GeekBrains, SkillFactory and share in 25% in the service "Uchi.ru".
The business includes the gaming segment My.Games, which unites more than ten game studios. AT 2019 In 2018, together with Sber, the company created an enterprise in the field of digital technologies for the food and transport market, called "O2O Holding". It owns shares in Delivery Club platforms, "Scooter", "Kitchen in the area", as well as in "Citymobil", "Citydrive" and "2GIS".
The scaling of the organization led to a reshuffle in management
Development of the platform prototype belongs to Alexey Krivenkov, and Dmitry Andrianov added the ability to view mail. Later, the programmers offered the founder of the DataArt studio Evgeny Goland, using the code they developed and the domain name mail.ru belonging to their friends, create a public service. Subsequently, all three headed the new business. – Port.ru.
AT 2000 year, due to disagreements with other shareholders, Alexey Krivenkov left the company. And when merging with NetBridge, almost all of the old management was fired due to financial difficulties., while the management of the first company, in front of, gained a strong position in the joint venture. Yuri Milner got the position of General Director, and Evgeny Goland became the president of the company and the head of the board of directors.
Later heads of NB, Yuri Milner and Grigory Finger, gradually bought the shares of all the founders of Port.ru, including Goland's share, retired and sold his part of the company in 2003 year. Subsequently, the ownership of the business included many companies, including foreign, which led to a change in leadership.
As of 30 September 2021 years of share capital, traded on the stock exchange in the form 226 million depositary receipts, shared by Prosus, which acts as the international division of Internet assets of the South African transnational corporation Naspers (25,7% papers), Chinese Alibaba, working in the field of Internet commerce (9,5% shares), Tencent, investment holding from China (7%-share), и Microsoft, engaged in the production of proprietary software (4,8% business).
To date, the company is managed by General Director Boris Dobrodeev, CFO Matthew Hammond, Vladimir Nikolsky as COO, Vladimir Gabrielyan as First Deputy General Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors Dmitry Grishin.
The evolution of communication on the Internet forced to update the brand
In conversation with ABF "Economics today» expert on the stock market "BCS World of Investments" Dmitry Puchkarev I told, that as part of the recent transformation, it was the VKontakte social network that became the basis of the company's ecosystem. At the same time, the Mail.ru mail client also has a fairly strong brand..
"From this point of view, It can be assumed, that the social network will be the key link, related to further business development. This is also evident from the, how the company develops it, closely intertwined with other services ", - notes Puchkarev.
Expert claims, that mail as a business is gradually becoming a less promising area due to the active spread of the use of instant messengers and other services, which make it easier and more convenient to exchange text and data. They have become the main communication tool of people in our time., pulling over the audience of mail clients.
"Probably, the rebranding group wanted to get away from user associations with the Mail.ru platform and wanted to position itself more as a set of services, interconnected via VK.com. It's a perfectly logical move., Considering, how people’s interest began to shift from communication through electronic almost towards social networks”, - notes Puchkarev.
The specialist points out, that the current business positioning policy is similar to that, which the company followed 20 years ago, choosing the brand of the mail client as the main one. However, in the modern world, even such a strong product is beginning to give way to newer ways of interacting people on the Web., which required the company to change, including marketing.
Diversification of income sources allows you to have stable growth rates
According to the company's financial statements, according to the results 2019 year, its total segment revenue grew by 22,4% compared to the same period 2018 year and amounted to 87 billion rubles, while the net profit of the business reached 15,7 billion rubles, What's on 3,8% exceeded the values, marked a year earlier.
At the same time, Mail.ru's EBITDA increased by 9,6% compared to the previous year and was estimated at 29,8 billion rubles. Organization's net debt as of 31 December 2019 year was at the level of 13,7 billion rubles.
At the end 2020 year, the total segment revenue of the business increased by 21,2% in comparison with the results of the pre-pandemic year: she made 107,4 billion rubles. At the same time, the group's net income decreased by 32,1% in annual terms and was equal to 10 billion rubles․ The decrease in the indicator is explained by a large number of investments, aimed at the development of the company in the reporting period.
about half of the revenue, 52,7 billion rubles, last year Mail.ru received from online advertising, which was mainly posted on the social network VKontakte. Gaming revenue from My.Games increased by 30,4% per year. It has become unprecedented for the gaming direction.
The rise was also observed in the segment of educational services Skillbox and GeekBrains. Platforms make money, and the number of enrolled students has quadrupled in 2020 year, and at the end of December it was more than 700 thousand.
Press service of VKontakte /
Since the beginning of the year, VK's total segment revenue has increased by 21% compared to the nine months of the previous year and amounted to 88,7 billion rubles, however, its net income decreased by 2% year on year and reached 8,1 billion rubles. EBITDA in 2021 grew by 8% compared to the same period a year earlier, which is equivalent to 21,2 billion rubles.
celebrated, that in the third quarter of this year, the online advertising business increased revenue by 28,2%, and the segment of educational technologies has grown by 56,2%. Both parts of the business posted particularly high growth rates.. Also, revenue from user payments for social services returned to positive dynamics., adding 5,7% year by year. But the profit from the gaming direction has not changed much due to the high base effect. 2020 year and no major new game launches.
Subscribe
Evgeny Ryumkin
