"Rostec" leaves the company Yota Devices, a smartphone with two screens will be offered to subscribers of the Xinhua news agency
Photo source: “Kommersant”
A few days ago on Habré was published the news that the YotaPhone 3 phone was not selling well, and its shareholders, including the company China Baoli, were suffering significant losses. Literally today, it became known that Rostec, which sells a 25.1% stake in shares of businessman Winston Xi, a shareholder of China Baoli, is leaving Yota Devices. Despite the losses, the Chinese company decided to continue working on the development and promotion of the smartphone.
Xi has already announced that the third model of a dual-screen phone will be provided to customers of the Xinhua state news agency of China. This was reported"Kommersant". Upon completion of the sale of shares, China Baoli will receive a market share of 65.1%. By the way, the total cost of Yota Devices at the time of March 31 is estimated at $ 239 million.
The fact that the structure of the company China Baoli signed an agreement to purchase a 25.1% stake in the phone manufacturer became known in June. But then it was not reported who exactly acted as the seller. In June, Telconet Capital Ltd of Sergey Adonyev and Albert Avdolyan (34.9%) and Rostec (25.1%) remained co-owners of Yota Devices. As for Rostec, last year it became known that the share of shares of this company would be transferred to other shareholders, and the amount of the sold stake was estimated at 3 billion rubles.
On July 5, the deal was closed, and in documents of China Baoli, among the shareholders of Yota Devices instead of Rostec, with a share of 25.1%, Trinity World Management, a company owned by Winston C., was registered.
China Baoli has been gradually buying back a stake in Yota Devices since February this year. So, the company bought 10% of the manufacturer YotaPhone in February of this year. The seller was the ex-CEO of Yota Devices Vladislav Martynov. In February, the company was valued at $ 155 million. The purchase of 10%, respectively, cost the Chinese about $ 15 million. Of this amount, the bulk was paid in shares and only $ 500 thousand in cash.
Earlier it was reported that the losses from sales of Yota Phone 3 amounted to about $ 15 million. Nevertheless, the shareholders spoke about what is happening in an optimistic manner - they say, you can still fix it. And this is despite the fact that Yota Devices has unpaid debts to Chinese partners in the amount of about $ 73.8 million.
The Chinese company believes that it may happen that this line of work will develop. In order to make this happen, the Chinese are negotiating with the state news agency of China, Xinhua. The goal is to launch a platform for advertising and e-commerce "by distributing customized versions of mobile devices to customers." By the way, this news agency is part of the structure of the Ministry of State Security of China.
According to experts, the valuation of the cost of Yota Devices has grown for a reason, there are two reasons for this. “We are talking about the emergence of a majority shareholder who can form a majority on the board of directors and make strategic decisions, and the fair premium for control in the relevant sector on the PRC market is now about 20–25%,” said Otkry Broker analyst Timur Nigmatull .
Anyway, last year the general director of a Chinese company said that in the first year of sales it is planned to ship approximately 1 million units. From all this amount only 17.3 thousand phones were sold. Now sales of the gadget are not too active pace. Rostec, despite the problems, expressed optimism about this. “On the whole, the volume of orders confirms that the synergies of Yota Devices and China Baoli partnership are being successfully implemented and a foundation has been laid for the further development of Russian technologies and the release of new products in highly competitive international markets,” said Rostec’s press service.
Analysts say that up to now no more than 20 thousand devices have been sold, and to get to the break-even point, much more needs to be sold — about 100 thousand devices.
As for the phone itself, you can buy it through the online channel JD.com and the offline distributor Aisidi. At these sites, the phone is sold with the name Yota 3. OS - Android, models with a memory of 64 GB and 128 GB are priced at $ 300 and are priced at $ 556. The phone went on sale in October last year.