Mail.ru Group began to earn good money on "Vkontakte"

Buying the social network Vkontakte began to bring Mail.ru Group money. For example, in the first half of 2015, about half of the total revenue of the group accounted for the social network. For six months, the revenue of the entire Mail.ru Group increased compared to the same period last year by 6.9%, writes Vedomosti. But the revenue "Vkontakte" for the same period of time increased by 34%. In addition, in the II quarter, the growth of social network revenues was even more active, and amounted to 41.4%. Unfortunately, the quarterly dynamics of income group Mail.ru not provided.

According to Aleksandr Vengranovich, an analyst at Otkritie Capital, if not for the social network, the growth in Mail.ru Group’s total revenue in the first half of the year would not have exceeded 3%. In fact, the advertising revenue of the group showed the most active growth among all other companies. So, only in the second quarter of this year, revenue grew by 15%, reaching 3.4 billion rubles. And the general market expenses for Internet advertising in the domestic market grew only by 11% (to 23.7 billion rubles). For comparison, it is worthwhile to show the Yandex advertising revenue, which increased by only 13%.


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Analysts at VTB Capital show that the social network has also increased its EBITDA margin, and not just income. Now this figure is 47.3% now, whereas in the first half of the year it was equal to 34.4%. Approximately 50% of the increase was secured by the purchase of a data center from ITSVA LLC, with a consequent reduction in costs — the company had previously paid a rather high rent. Recall that the data center was purchased from Pavel Durov for 919 million rubles.

Vengranovich believes that Vkontakte’s revenue growth will continue, as previously this social network was monetized not too actively. The main source of company revenue is advertising and user payments.

According to Mail.ru Group, the total amount of the acquisition of Vkontakte was about $ 2 billion.