RBC: IT will leave for Armada

    RBC poses to shareholders the question of separating IT-business into a separate company, Quote.ru reports . It will be called Armada, and as it develops, it may conduct an IPO on one of the Russian exchanges. The formation of Armada on the basis of the IT department of the holding will be approved on December 18 - on this day the RBC Board of Directors has appointed a meeting of shareholders.

    After the establishment of the new structure, 95% of its shares are supposed to be handed over to RBC shareholders, Vedomosti quoted the press release of the holding. The remaining 5% will go to the reserve for the option program. Until July 2007, about a quarter (15-25%) of the shares of the newly formed company are planned to be placed on the domestic stock market.

    According to the general director of RBC, Yuri Rovensky, most of the revenue of the IT-division comes from custom programming. This service is followed by system integration and sale of computers. It is known that in the first half of the year the revenue of the IT department amounted to $ 28.3 million, and more than half of this amount - $ 14.6 - came from Helios Computer (PC assembly) and ASKO-TBS Consulting (IT consulting) acquired a year ago )

    Experts believe RBC wants to get rid of IT in order to improve the performance of its core business. MDM Bank analyst Elena Bazhenova says that the profitability of the media business in Russia exceeds 40%, and IT business - 20-25%.

    “The Russian stock market now needs new companies altogether,” Leonid Delitsyn, an expert at the Finam-Information Technologies fund, told Habrahabr. - From “blue chips”, few expect the cost to increase significantly (and by the summer of 2007 the majority in this opinion will be strengthened), and investors' hopes to earn have not yet died out. Moreover, there are no IT companies in the Russian stock market yet, so a company in this sector will be very helpful there. So
    at least in the summer of 2007, the time for an IPO can be quite favorable. ”

    Anatoly Gaverdovsky, senior vice president of a major East European developer EPAM Systems, in turn, notes that, despite RBC's plans this year to bring its revenue in IT to $ 75-80 million, its units are almost imperceptible in the Russian market. “With such a scale of business, more than a thousand programmers should work in the company, but they simply don’t have enough space in the RBC building,” he said, adding that perhaps “RBC uses the work of Indian programmers, but does not tell us anything about this.” According to the RBC website, its IT department has more than 260 employees, the newspaper said.

    Evaluating Armada, some analysts are talking about $ 180-190 million, while others - about $ 160 million.

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