Yandex and Lanit abandoned the server production plant
[ad_1]
Yandex and JSC Digital Technologies, created by Dmitry Kazansky in August 2023, each own 50% of Open Development Center LLC (OpenYard legal entity), follows from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. According to SPARK-Interfax, the share of Lanit Ventures LLC has already been transferred to Digital Technologies, and the same should happen with the share of Yandex. In 2022, the revenue of the Open Development Center amounted to 124 million rubles, the net loss was 23 million rubles.
After the deal is closed, the company will retain production on the territory of the Ryazansky industrial park near Ryazan, the rights to technological developments, as well as a team of employees and the OpenYard brand, the sellers said in a statement. The transaction amount and names of buyers are not disclosed.
After leaving the joint venture, Yandex will focus on developing its key technologies and businesses, and Lanit will continue to engage in integrator business and the distribution and development of its own software products.
On the creation of a joint venture for the production of hardware: Yandex, Lanit, the Taiwanese company for the production of motherboards and video cards Gigabyte and the bank VTB announced in June 2021. Then it was said that Yandex and Gigabyte would provide patents, technologies and their own developments for the project, Yandex and Lanit would allocate investments, and Lanit would organize distribution and service, while VTB will act as a financial investor in the joint venture.
The parties reported on the construction of a plant with an area of 8 hectares for the production of server equipment in October 2021. Then it was said that the enterprise under the OpenYard brand would produce servers, data storage systems (DSS), gateways and components of smart devices. The first phase would include production lines, laboratories and testing areas, where everything from surface mounting of components to testing of finished products would be performed.
The joint venture invested more than 1 billion rubles in production, and by the end of 2022 it was supposed to release the first server. But production never started, Forbes wrote at the end of June 2023. The reasons cited were sanctions risks, difficulties with the supply of equipment to Russia, and changing market conditions.
Vedomosti sent additional questions to Yandex, Lanit, Gigabyte and VTB.
According to the latest available data from the analytical company IDC, in 2021, the top three largest server suppliers on the Russian market included two foreign vendors who left after the start of the special operation. In terms of revenue, the American Dell was in the lead (21.1%), the second position was occupied by the Russian Yadro (17%), and the third place with a share of 15.1% belonged to the American Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, 50,200 servers of all types were supplied to the domestic market for more than $530 million. Data for the entire 2021 is not provided in the free version of the analytical company’s report.
Most likely, the cost of the sold asset is unlikely to exceed 2 billion rubles, suggested Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn. According to him, the buyers of the shares could be IT companies specializing in production, such as Yadro, or large IT integrators, such as Softline. In any case, the managing director of Trade123, Vladimir Rozhankovsky, calls the sale of shares in the asset “fire,” and most likely the amount of the transaction may be “negotiable.”
At the same time, losses incurred within the framework of the joint venture, if they occurred, were not significant for Yandex and did not affect the overall activities or financial results, noted Artem Mikhailin, leading analyst at Veles Capital Investment Company.
OpenYard was planned as a partnership of Yandex, “Lanita“, Gigabyte and VTB, so we can assume that the change in plans was due to the fact that Gigabyte lost interest in such cooperation due to sanctions, says Maxim Koposov, director of Promobit (manufacturer of servers and storage systems Bitblaze). Gigabyte acted as a technology partner, OpenYard’s product portfolio corresponded to Gigabyte’s product portfolio, he points out. That is why the joint venture was actually “held” by Gigabyte.
As for VTB, the bank has not lost its willingness to invest, but there is nothing to finance without a technology partner, Koposov believes. In this design, Yandex and Lanit stood for demand, sales and service. The reorganization of Yandex could also be a significant factor, he did not rule out.
The enterprise was a fairly significant image project for Yandex and could potentially ensure the production of finely tuned hardware systems to the company’s needs, Mikhailin points out. Apparently, difficulties have now arisen in the operation of the enterprise, which have forced “Yandex» leave the joint venture. First of all, problems with components and production or lack of consensus among the co-owners played a big role. Activity “Lanita“is not public, so it is difficult to assess the company’s motivation in this case,” he concluded.
[ad_2]
Source link
