“Magnit” will buy 33% of the Far Eastern chain “Samberi”

“Magnet” will buy a 33.01% stake in the largest Far Eastern supermarket chain Samberi (legal entity – Far East Nevada LLC), the press service of Magnit reported. The deal also includes an option to further buy out the remaining part of the network within five years. The parties have yet to obtain approval from the Federal Antimonopoly Service. Magnit plans to close the deal in the summer of 2024.

Samberi did not provide a prompt response to Vedomosti’s request.

Sambury is the largest retailer in the Far East in terms of number of stores and revenue. The Sambery group includes 291 stores, in particular 31 Sambery hypermarkets, 42 Sambery and Sambery Express supermarkets, as well as 82 Raz Dva minimarkets and 136 Blizky discounters. The total retail area is 211 thousand square meters. m. Retail outlets are represented in more than 50 settlements of the Primorsky Territory, Khabarovsk Territory, Jewish Autonomous Okrug and Amur Region. Samberi operates three distribution centers in Khabarovsk, one in Vladivostok and a cross-docking warehouse in Blagoveshchensk.

According to SPARK-Interfax, the revenue of DV Nevada LLC according to RAS in 2022 amounted to 70.4 billion rubles, net profit – 2.5 billion rubles. The main owner of the company is entrepreneur Yuri Egorov, who owns 43.7%. Another 29.45% belongs to Marina Merkulova, 21.85% and 5% to Sergei Bulygin and Lev Volkov, respectively.

Magnit is the second largest retailer in the country after X5 Group (“Crossroads”, “Pyaterochka”, “Chizhik”). The company was founded by Sergey Galitsky. In 2018, he sold 29.1% of shares to structures VTB, and they, in turn, gradually sold the stake to the investment company Marathon Group over the next few years. At the end of 2022, 66.8% of the retailer’s shares were in free float, 29.2% belonged to the Marathon Group, 3.7% belonged to Tander JSC, and 0.3% belonged to the company’s management. Since the summer of 2023, Magnit has been implementing a program to buy back shares from foreign investors.

At the end of the first half of this year, Magnit operated more than 28,300 stores. The company’s revenue in the first half of 2023 amounted to 1.2 trillion rubles. – 8.2% more than a year earlier. Net profit increased by 16.5% to RUB 37.3 billion.

General Director of Infolne-Analytics Mikhail Burmistrov estimates the deal with the owners of Samberi at 6.6-8.3 billion rubles, and the entire asset at 20-25 billion rubles.

The Far East is an extremely attractive region where federal retail is still poorly represented, the expert notes. In his opinion, entering here through the purchase of the undisputed leader looks justified and is in line with Magnit’s development strategy. This is a faster way to gain market share compared to opening retail properties and building distribution centers on your own.

Sambury has a strong position in all key formats – hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores and hard discounters. Over the past year and a half, the company has bought several regional chains and received a number of attractive locations (primarily for the development of the Blizky chain of hard discounters), he recalls.

In 2021, the largest retailers in the Far East, Samberi, Krasny Yar and Slata, united into the Eastern Union alliance under the leadership of the ex-head of Magnit Olga Naumova. The goal of the alliance was to reduce costs through synergy in purchasing and logistics and to successfully compete with federal networks. But last year, X5 Group bought out 70% of the capital of Krasny Yar and Slata and received an option to buy out the remaining shares.

X5 also negotiated with Samberi. A source close to one of the companies told Vedomosti that it was not possible to agree on the amount of the transaction. In addition, the interlocutor added that in recent years X5 Group has begun to abandon the hypermarket format (for example, it closed Karusel), of which Samberi has many.

In addition to X5 Group, the Torgservice chains (discounters Svetofor and Mayak) and Krasnoe i Beloe operate in the Far East.

Samberi is not the first major acquisition that Magnit has planned for the near future. In October 2023, it became known that the retailer agreed to buy out the KazanExpress marketplace from its founders and AliExpress in order to develop Magnit Market on its basis. The transaction amount is estimated at 10 billion rubles.