At the printer’s distance – Newspaper Kommersant No. 141 (7342) dated 08/05/2022

The parent company of one of the largest electronics distributors in the Russian Federation, Marvel Distributions, has acquired the Russian division of the American printer manufacturer Lexmark. The new owner will receive employees of the Russian office and contracts in the Russian Federation, and the equipment will continue to be produced at the same factories, but under a new brand. The deal will allow “Marvel” to gain a foothold in the segment of printing equipment against the backdrop of the departure of HP, Xerox and Canon, market participants admit.

A representative of F-Plus Equipment and Development (the parent company of the Marvel Distribution group) told Kommersant that the company had bought the Russian business of the American printer manufacturer Lexmark. The Russian legal entity of Lexmark International Rus LLC will be renamed F-Plus Imaging LLC and will continue to conduct all current Lexmark contracts in Russia, F-Plus specified. The amount of the transaction is not disclosed.

Also, F-Plus Imaging plans to transfer employees of the local representative office to its staff: sales managers and certified engineers who provided customer service support, the company added. “Lexmark has no production facilities, the main value of the company is the staff and customers,” added F-Plus. F+ imaging branded equipment will continue to be contract manufactured at the same factories as Lexmark equipment.

Almost all manufacturers of printing equipment, such as HP, Xerox, Canon and others, have left Russia, are selling off their inventory and not carrying out any expansion, said Alexey Melnikov, CEO of Marvel Distribution. According to him, in the coming years, the print market will be represented by an extremely limited number of participants, including Asian vendors: “We plan to take up to 20% of the market.”

According to SPARK-Interfax, at the end of 2021, the revenue of Lexmark International Rus LLC amounted to 1.27 billion rubles. Net profit – 24.9 million rubles. In 2020, the company’s revenue was 1.65 billion, and net profit was 193.2 million.

According to Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn, the value of Lexmark should be about $700 million. “But if this business has nothing but staff and customers, then the cost can be an order of magnitude lower,” he said.

Marvel Distribution launched its own production cluster of F + Tech corporate equipment in the spring of 2021, starting to produce lines of servers, network equipment and data storage systems and printing equipment (see Kommersant dated March 29, 2021). In February, Marvel Distribution received a 20% stake in Printum, a domestic developer of print management software.

Leonid Markov, head of managed services development at Softline IT company, believes that now demand exceeds supply in the printing equipment market due to a shortage of equipment: “We see excellent opportunities for the development of the industry.”

Anastasia Gavrilyuk