Owner of Russia's Severgroup in talks to acquire Azbuka Vkusa - media

MOSCOW. Feb 14 (Interfax) - Severgroup, which is owned by Alexei Mordashov, is in negotiations to acquire the supermarket chain Azbuka Vkusa, Vedomosti reported, citing sources close to both companies.

According to their information, the deal involves the sale of the entire business, which includes 103 supermarkets under the Azbuka Vkusa brand and 59 Azbuka Daily mini-markets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as its own culinary production facilities in these cities with a capacity of up to 50 tonnes of products per day.

The owners of the retailer are aiming to receive around 40 billion rubles from the sale. Severgroup is currently conducting an evaluation of Azbuka Vkusa.

Severgroup previously considered acquiring Azbuka Vkusa in 2019, when it purchased the Lenta chain, and again two years later, one of the sources said.

Representatives of Azbuka Vkusa and Severgroup declined to comment.

Severgroup entered the retail market in April 2019 by acquiring a 41.9% stake in the hypermarket chain Lenta for $730 million. It later increased its stake to nearly 80%. The current shareholder structure is not disclosed. In February 2022, the company completed a 20 billion ruble acquisition of the online retailer Utkonos. At the end of 2023, Lenta purchased the neighborhood grocery store chain Monetka (2,100 stores, most of them located in the Urals and Western Siberia). In 2024, the company acquired the cosmetics and household goods retail chain Ulybka Radugi (1,535 locations).

Gorodskoi Supermarket LLC, which operates Azbuka Vkusa, has not yet published its financial results for 2024. In H1 2024, the company's EBITDA increased 2.7-fold to 2.35 billion rubles, revenue grew 21% to 48 billion rubles and net profit amounted to 760 million rubles, compared to a loss of 830 million rubles in the same period of 2023.

Azbuka Vkusa was founded in 1992 by Maxim Koshcheenko, Oleg Lytkin, Sergei Vereshchagin and Oleg Trykin. As of December 2021, Koshchenko and Lytkin jointly owned 42.5% of the company, another 41.1% was held by the investment funds Invest AG (owned by Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov) and Millhouse (owned by Roman Abramovich), 12% was held by Cyprus-based VMHY, and 4.4% belonged to the company's management.

In the spring of 2024, entities associated with Abramov and Frolov exited the capital of Azbuka Vkusa, and the new shareholder and investor became JSC Bavero Group, whose owners are not disclosed, Vedomosti said. At that time, according to the website of Azbuka Vkusa, the company's largest shareholders were Russian investment funds (their names are not specified) with a 39.6% stake, Koshchenko with 25.7%, Lytkin with 17.2% and management with 3.1%.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, in the summer of 2024, Gorodskoi Supermarket LLC became the owner of 99% of its own capital. Previously, this stake belonged to Cyprus-based Demanor Investments Limited, whose corporate rights to the subsidiary were suspended by the Moscow Region Arbitration Court on April 26. Another 1% of the legal entity belongs to Azbuka Vkusa LLC.

Previously, Gorodskoi Supermarket was included in the list of economically significant organizations (ESO).