(Adds financials detail, comment, background)
July 29 (Reuters) - Russian internet group Mail.ru Group
said on Thursday its second-quarter revenue rose
17.4% to 29.99 billion roubles ($409 million), boosted by a
recovery in the online advertising market and demand for
education technology.
Mail.ru, which owns the popular Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki
social networking websites, expanded its e-commerce services and
games division last year as the pandemic boosted demand for
online purchases and entertainment.
Pandemic-related lockdowns in the same period last year
meant the company was combating highly differing base effects
across its various businesses, CEO Boris Dobrodeev and board
chairman Dmitry Grishin said in a joint comment.
Mail.ru said its net profit from consolidated subsidiaries
declined 33.2% year on year to 2.29 billion roubles and earnings
before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA)
declined by 10.5% to 6.66 billion roubles following investments
in business development.
Net loss, including joint ventures, was 2.13 billion roubles
compared to profit of 1.26 billion roubles a year ago, mainly
because of its loss-making joint venture with Russia's largest
lender Sberbank.
Mail.ru and Sberbank were earlier this year on the verge of
dividing assets in the venture, which encompasses food delivery
app Delivery Club, ride-hailing service Citymobil and other
assets, sources told Reuters.
The company confirmed its guidance for this year. Earlier it
said it expected revenue to grow by 18%-21% to 127 billion to
130 billion roubles in 2021 and its EBITDA margin to increase
compared to last year.
BCS Global Markets analysts described the results as mixed,
putting the growth deceleration and EBITDA drop down to the
tough comparison base and investments in smaller units, such as
edtech, which saw an 87.8% revenue jump to 2.17 billion roubles.
Mail.ru rival Yandex on Wednesday lifted its
guidance after strong second-quarter results, saying revenue
this year should now be between 330 and 340 billion roubles.
($1 = 73.2905 roubles)
(Reporting by Anna Rzhevkina and Alexander Marrow; Editing by
Edmund Blair and Barbara Lewis)