S8 Capital

S8 Capital is a multidisciplinary Russian holding specializing in the creation and development of high-tech products and services. The group of companies has been on the market since 1993 and develops industry competencies, and is also engaged in the development, implementation and distribution of technologies in retail, financial and telecommunications sectors, e-commerce and digital media. The founder and shareholder of the S8 Capital holding is Russian businessman Sargsyan Armen Meruzhanovich.

Aktivs

S8 Capital's portfolio for February 2023 includes:

• METEOR Lift (formerly OTIS Russia) is a Russian manufacturer of vertical transport
• the largest distributor of all-Russian state lotteries "Stoloto"
• developer of digital solutions "Synchro"
• sports media Sport24
• price aggregator Price.ru
• virtual mobile operator NextMobile

History

2023

Purchase of Russian Bridgestone assets

Investment group S8 bought the Bridgestone plant in Ulyanovsk. The deal was officially announced on December 20, 2023, but its financial component was not disclosed. Read more here.

Kone's Russian business buyout

S8 Capital investment group Armen Sargsyan bought the Russian business of the Finnish elevator manufacturer Kone. This deal was announced on October 24, 2023, while its financial terms were not disclosed. Read more here.

Buyout of Cordiant

On May 30, 2023, S8 Capital holding announced the purchase of tire manufacturer Cordiant. The company did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement. Read more here.

Continental's Russian assets transferred to S8 Capital

On May 22, 2023, it became known about the sale of Continental's Russian business to the S8 Capital holding. The financial parameters of the agreement between the companies are not disclosed. Read more here.

Bosch's Russian assets transferred to S8 Capital holding

At the end of April 2023, the holding S8 Capital announced the closure of the transaction for the purchase of Russian assets Bosch in the city of Engels. As part of this transaction, the holding received 100% control over plants for the production of spark plugs, power tools and a site for the production of heating boilers. More. here

2022: Otis sells Russian business to S8 Capital holding

Otis, one of the largest manufacturers of elevators and lifting equipment in the world, announced the sale of Russian business in July 2022. The buyer will be the Russian holding S8 Capital Armen Sargsyan, reported in the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation.

2021

Aktivs

As of September 2021, S8 Capital's assets included:

• the largest distributor of lotteries in the Russian Federation "Stoloto,"
• online aggregator "Страховка.ру,"
• service Price.ru,
• publication of Sport24, etc.

Developed during the development of the Stoloto brand, the national distributor of state lotteries, formed the basis of the diversification strategy and the holding created an IT platform that allows integrating and servicing new services, products and businesses.

Closing the bookie 888.ru

In September 2021, the bookmaker 888.ru, part of S8 Capital Armen Sargsyan, announced its closure. This is the third bookmaker to leave the market after the adoption of new rules leading to an increase in deductions from market participants to the state.

888. ru announced on its website the termination of work on October 1. Since September 20, she has stopped betting and registering new players and urged customers to withdraw funds.

888. ru was founded in 2015. The bookmaker is managed by BC Favorit LLC (it also has a license to conduct gambling), it is controlled by LLC Legal Agency KB Egida, co-owners of which are Olga Zhuk and Aleksei Konovalov.

The latest cases of betting companies leaving the market have been linked to regulatory reform. So, on February 16, bwin, which worked under a franchise of a large international brand, stopped working; from January 1, VulkanBet left the Russian jurisdiction for the same reason.

The new legislation came into force in September and involves the payment of deductions by bookmakers not to leagues and federations, but to a single regulator, as well as a significant increase in these deductions. The President of the First SRO Nikolai Oganezov predicted that the targeted deductions of bookmakers will grow by the end of this year almost five times, to 10 billion rubles, and due to the fall in business margins against this background, the number of operating bookmakers will decrease by 15%.

However, the closure of the 888.ru "is not related to a change in the regulation of the betting market," S8 stressed: "S8 Capital intends to focus on investing in the development of entertainment technologies in the lottery industry." Experts believe that the main impact on 888.ru was the COVID-19 pandemic. In the spring of 2020, due to the cancellation of sporting events, 888.ru suspended betting, but resumed work in December of the same year. The suspension always has a significant effect on the betting business, said the general director of Parimatch in the CIS Dmitry Sergeyev: "After such cases, many customers are already distrustful of the bookmaker."

Although the return of sporting events, as Kommersant reported on September 22, contributes to market growth in 2021 by 25%, 888.ru was never able to reach the pre-crisis revenue level. There was not enough income even to pay taxes, and taking into account additional costs, the business would become unprofitable at all, Dmitry Sergeyev believes. According to Kartoteka.ru, in 2020, the revenue of BC Favorit amounted to 241 million rubles. against 1.17 billion rubles. in 2019, net profit increased from 20.9 million to 52 million rubles.

Not all offices had cash reserves to survive the pandemic, said Alexey Oldin, executive director of the American Football Federation.

"In addition, the market actually peaked back in 2019, when the audience stopped growing," the expert says. According to him, audience growth became possible only by luring customers of other offices, the cost of attracting a client became unattractive, and the sports sponsorship market, a traditionally reliable channel for attracting an audience, is already "divided between majors^[1]

Notes