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AliExpress Russia, the e-commerce joint venture between Mail.ru Group and Alibaba Group, is considering going public in 2022, Tatiana Volochkovich, Investor Relations Director of Mail.ru Group, announced during the Mail.ru Group webinar Sources of Growth and Strategic Goals.
“If nothing changes, the [company] results will be decent and the market will be ready for this kind of placement. Once the board of directors supports such a strategic management vision, then…it could be seen by as early as next year but no [final] decision has yet been made,” she said.
In 2019, the company stated that the IPO could happen over a 3 to 5 year time horizon. Gevork Vermishyan, General Director of MegaFon, which owned a stake in AliExpress at the time, said that the company saw “great potential” in the shareholder value of the joint venture. However, in August, MegaFon sold its 24.3% stake in AliExpress Russia to its own sole shareholder USM International.
AliExpress Russia’s net losses widened in the first half of 2021 to almost a billion roubles (around $13 million) against 533 million roubles ($7.2 million) for the same period in 2020.
In April, financial disclosures from AliExpress Russia showed total gross merchandise volume (GMV) of 229 billion roubles ($3.1 billion) for the fiscal year ending March 31, compared to 210 billion roubles ($2.85 billion) for the previous year. The total number of unique buyers on the platform for the financial year exceeded 26 million.
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Telco MegaFon Sells AliExpress Russia Stake to USM International
AliExpress Russia was created as a joint venture between Alibaba Group, Russian e-commerce player Mail.ru Group, MegaFon and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) in 2019.
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