Yota will live against the negative value of assets / Geektimes

Today, a number of media published the news that in early April, Skartel (the owner of the brand Yota) filed statements with a negative value of net assets. Negative assets for Scartel already 2 years in a row. If to follow the letter of the law, this means the existence of the question of the inevitable liquidation of this operator, once a pioneer of cheap mass unlimited Internet, and now performing the functions of a virtual operator under Megafon.

And done. However, the representatives of Megafon have already stated that this is nonsense.

Literally: “This is complete nonsense. Yota works successfully, develops business and increases revenue. There is no question of liquidation “. Not so long ago in December 2016 “Megafon” and Mail.ru Group, when they announced the expansion of partnership, they also announced the speedy launch of VKmobile service, including the Scartela network.

The company’s representatives explained negative assets by investing in infrastructure for new regions and high development costs. Indeed, Yota has always invested in infrastructure development a lot more than earned. I used to build LTE, now 5G. Together with Megafon. Less than a year ago, the general director of Megafon said that the purchase of Scartel was justified, because a unique frequency spectrum was bought. In the future this spectrum will enable the company to provide high-speed traffic. And he expects results in 5-7 years. That is, approximately in 2023, not earlier. Stripes “Scartel” and the truth is greater than the frequencies of all other operators. It was assumed that he would build a federal LTE network using the funds of the Big Three operators and then hand it over to those who wished.

Megafon has already expressed that Yota will live and everything is fine with it. Now the operator’s management needs only to determine the way to increase net assets and choose the optimal one. The question is why they were allowed to fall under formal requirements, which in practice are not implemented in practice either by the tax authorities or by the courts in the liquidation procedure for working firms. Usually, the tax service simply invites the head of the company to a commission at the Tax Inspectorate, where he is offered to raise net assets to the required level. If the company has no debts on wages and taxes, then Scartel has a minimum of 3 to 6 months to bring the indicators in order.

The main shareholder may make additional contributions to the authorized capital (issue), increase additional capital by revaluing fixed assets and intangible assets, or by direct formation of additional capital, and finally replenish the reserve capital. Scartel itself can write off overdue accounts payable if its term has exceeded 3 years and it has not been presented for payment by creditors, for example, by shareholders.

In recent years, since 2014, short-term debts of the company have been fluctuating From 1 to 4 billion rubles. If a billion from 2014 is the same, then writing off such a sum is the fastest way, although it will lead to an increase in the profit tax. However, we will have to add another 1 billion rubles from above. Or reassess intangible assets. “MegaFon” paid more than a billion dollars for Yota. And this amount was introduced just for the frequencies.

The reasons why “Scartel” allowed such a situation a lot. Megafon recently bought Mail.ru and now they are busy with reorganization procedures and they are not up to Ckartel, everyone is used to its permanent losses, and it is not excluded that shareholders really waited 3 years and now they will write off extra loans.