Feasible warehouse: Wildberries froze the investment program in order to support sellers

Wildberries has frozen its investment program to help sellers affected by UAV attacks, Izvestia has learned. Over the past weeks, several warehouses of the company have been damaged, and now it intends to focus on supporting sellers and ensuring security at the facilities. Over the past year, the group has become the most active player in the mergers and acquisitions market, having bought assets worth at least 40 billion rubles. Izvestia investigated how the change in the RWB strategy would affect its ecosystem, sellers and the e-commerce market.

Why did the largest marketplace refuse new investments

The united Wildberries & Russ (RWB) suspended the investment program indefinitely and put on hold negotiations on the acquisition of new assets, an investment banker working with the company and a source close to it told Izvestia. According to one of the interlocutors, the management informed the partners about this decision at a meeting held this week. According to him, in the near future, RWB intends to complete "a couple of major topics," after which it will focus on its core business.

Photo: IZVESTIA/Tatiana Ulemskaya

RWB is currently focusing on restructuring business processes, maintaining the turnover of sellers' goods and helping sellers whose goods were damaged as a result of attacks on the group's facilities, its representative told Izvestia. According to him, the resources of the marketplace are aimed at supporting the seriously injured and the families of the victims. He called the safety of the infrastructure and the support of the affected sellers an absolute priority of the company, but did not comment on investment plans.

The pause will primarily affect new M&A deals ("mergers and acquisitions"), Izvestia's interlocutors say. At the same time, it is still unclear whether the decision applies to the construction of logistics centers that have already begun, the development of IT infrastructure, and projects for which legally binding investment decisions have been made. A third Izvestia source cooperating with the company noted that Anton Gazizov, head of the RWB M&A department, has stopped responding to letters from partners over the past two weeks. Gazizov himself declined to comment.

Back in the spring, RWB continued to actively expand its business. Since 2025, more than 310 billion rubles have been invested in logistics, IT, new directions and the acquisition of assets for the development of the ecosystem, Wildberries founder and RWB CEO Tatiana Kim said in an interview with Vedomosti in April this year. In particular, the company bought Magasa Airport in Ingushetia, the Rive Gauche perfume store chain, and earlier this year it bought Citymobil, Taxovichkof and Gruzovichkof, as well as Eapteka. In addition, the group acquired the tour operator Fun&Sun, sources told Izvestia, although RWB itself did not confirm this deal. According to media reports, RWB also participated in the privatization of 29.4% of Uzbekistan's postal operator UzPost. According to Izvestia's calculations, the total public valuation of these transactions could amount to about 43 billion rubles.

Photo: IZVESTIA/Dmitry Korotaev

In addition, according to several editorial sources, the group was interested in buying the April pharmacy chain, an unnamed sportswear store chain, the Azur Air airline and the Ivi online cinema. The company also negotiated the purchase of the insurer Rosgosstrakh, Kommersant reported. At the same time, the RWB representative denied all these plans.

What influenced the company's plans

Over the past two years, the company has become a leader among retailers in terms of the number and amount of transactions, said Alexey Fedorov, Chairman of the Council for the Development of Electronic Commerce at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI). At the same time, the decision to freeze the investment program is related to a change in the business economy, he believes. After a series of large-scale acquisitions, the company faced the need to reallocate resources to support sellers after UAV attacks, restore infrastructure, rebuild logistics processes and integrate previously acquired assets, agrees Mikhail Zhiganov, Director of Corporate Finance Practice at Strategy Partners.

The revision of investment plans was influenced by the difficult situation with warehouses, according to an investment banker working with RWB. UAV attacks on logistics centers have increased the company's unforeseen operating costs, Ekaterina Kosareva, managing partner of VMT Consult, agrees. This, in turn, will require additional expenses that could previously have been used to acquire new assets, Alexey Fedorov added.

Photo: IZVESTIA/Polina Violet

The first and most serious series of attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the company's facilities occurred on July 18, when Wildberries logistics complexes in Kotovsk, Tambov Region, and Elektrostal, Moscow Region, were damaged. The warehouse area in the city near Moscow was about 250,000 square meters, and the complex in Kotovsk was about 108,000 square meters. Subsequently, fires and damage were recorded at several other company facilities, including Krasnodar, Nevinnomyssk, St. Petersburg, the Leningrad Region, Simferopol and Ryazan.

The total direct damage from the attacks could amount to about 75 billion rubles, Alexey Fedorov estimated. About 50 billion rubles of this amount is accounted for goods, 20 billion for warehouses and another 5 billion for equipment. The indirect damage for the year, he believes, may amount to another 20-30 billion rubles due to downtime, the outflow of some sellers, rising insurance premiums and security costs. Thus, the total losses may reach 95-105 billion rubles.

Attacks on civilian infrastructure: Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked Kotovsk and Elektrostal

Seven warehouse employees were killed in the Tambov region, 24 people were injured in the Moscow region.

After the attacks, Wildberries expanded its support measures for sellers. WB Bank and MKK "WB Finance" provided the affected sellers from the SME segment with a three-month deferral on loans and borrowings with a freeze on principal and interest payments. WB Bank has also abolished account maintenance fees and fees for ruble transfers for sellers. For large businesses, the possibility of similar support is being considered individually, the RWB representative said.

Photo: IZVESTIA/Sergey Lantyukhov

The freezing of RWB's investment plans will cool the market for e-commerce and retail transactions, Alexey Fedorov believes. This, in his opinion, may lead to a decrease in the volume of this market by 20-30%. At the same time, a complete cessation of M&A will not happen, he is sure. According to the expert, X5, Magnit, Yandex and large banks remain active. Freezing the plans of a major player will not lead to a new downturn in the Russian M&A market, Mikhail Zhiganov believes. Today, according to him, investment activity is much more strongly influenced by macroeconomic conditions.: the cost of capital, the availability of financing, business expectations regarding monetary policy, and companies' overall confidence in the economic outlook.

RWB is unlikely to completely stop the transactions, but it will make them point-by-point by the end of the year, Ekaterina Kosareva believes. According to Alexey Fedorov, the group will be able to return to an active investment strategy no earlier than the second quarter of 2027. To do this, in his opinion, it is necessary to stop attacks on infrastructure, state support measures for sellers and provide Wildberries with tax benefits due to force majeure. Mikhail Zhiganov of Strategy Partners considers the current pause to be a temporary adjustment of investment priorities, rather than a refusal by RWB to expand further.