Grocery selection: Lenta may absorb Siberia's largest retailer
Another major deal is being prepared in the grocery retail market — Lenta is negotiating the purchase of the largest Siberian retail chain Maria-Ra, Izvestia has learned. It has 1.3 thousand stores in five regions, and revenue in 2025 reached 127.5 billion rubles. A possible takeover will allow Lenta to enter the top 3 market leaders next year and move closer to X5 and Magneto. In addition, the company will be able to quickly increase its presence in the region where it is still inferior to its main competitors. The deal will also continue the trend of retail consolidation. Independent regional networks are finding it increasingly difficult to develop businesses due to expensive financing and rising staff costs, and experts predict that most of them may change owners in the next two to three years. Moreover, by the beginning of 2026, the share of the 10 largest sellers of consumer goods had already exceeded 45%.
What is known about Lenta's plans to buy Maria-Ra
The Lenta Group, owned by Alexey Mordashov's Severgroup, is negotiating the purchase of Maria-Ra, the largest Siberian retailer. A top manager of a large retail chain and an interlocutor close to Severgroup told Izvestia about this. The investment banker who collaborated with the regional retailer is also aware that the regional retailer is for sale. A representative of Lenta declined to comment. Maria-Ra did not respond to a request from Izvestia.
Maria-Ra is the largest retail chain in Siberia. As of July 1, 2026, according to Infoline, it had 1,303 convenience stores in 280 localities in the Altai Territory, the Altai Republic, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo and Tomsk regions. The operating company, Retail K—1 LLC, belongs to Retail LLC, which is equally owned by the founder of the chain, Alexander Rakshin, his wife Galina and their children Alla and Evgeny, follows from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
By the end of 2025, Retail K-1's revenue under RAS amounted to 127.5 billion rubles, which is 5% more than a year earlier. Net profit for the same period decreased by 8%, to 2.6 billion rubles, according to the financial statements. In the ranking of the largest grocery retailers in 2025, the company took the 18th place, according to Infoline data.
The value of Maria-Ra's retail business ranges from 40 billion to 60 billion rubles, Vyacheslav Berdnikov, head of Sovcombank's public equity analysis department, estimated. The estimated EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation) of the company for 2025 amounted to about 7.56 billion rubles, which, with a multiplier of 5, gives an estimate of 38 billion rubles, including debt, estimated by Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of Infoline Analytics.
How will the purchase strengthen Lenta's position in the retail market
Lenta's interest in the Siberian chain is linked to the federal retailer's plans to grow its business, Vyacheslav Berdnikov believes. By 2028, the company intends to reach 2.2 trillion rubles in revenue, according to its strategy. Currently, this figure, according to the analyst, is about 1.3–1.4 trillion rubles. It is difficult to close such a gap only through organic development, which is why Lenta actively uses M&A transactions, he noted.
In 2021, the company acquired 161 Billa supermarkets in Russia and the Perm Family chain of 75 stores. In October 2023, she bought Monetka, and at the end of 2024, she joined the Rainbow Smile drogeri chain of 1,663 stores. In the summer of 2025, Lenta agreed to purchase Chelyabinsk-based Molniya, which operated 72 stores, and in December it received 67% of the Remy Far Eastern chain. In 2026, the group also acquired the OK hypermarkets.
A possible takeover will give the retailer the opportunity to enter the top 3 leaders of the FMCG market (trade in consumer goods) next year, Vyacheslav Berdnikov admitted. In January – March 2026, X5 became the largest player in terms of revenue with 1.2 trillion rubles, Magnit was in second place with 910 billion rubles, and Mercury Retail Holding (Red and White and Bristol) closed the top three with 409 billion rubles, according to Infoline data. Lenta is still in fourth place in this rating, with revenue estimated by analysts at 306.9 billion rubles.
Siberia is actually the only major macroregion where Lenta's position is weaker than that of X5 and Magnit, despite the fact that Monetka is already operating there, Vyacheslav Berdnikov drew attention. At the same time, more than 1.3 thousand Maria-Ra stores form a large cluster in Western Siberia, complementing the presence of Monetka and Lenta itself, adds Mikhail Burmistrov. According to him, the potential deal allows Lenta to get a ready-made logistics system, purchase volume and presence in cities, which would have to be organically built for several years.
According to Infoline, by the end of 2025, Maria-Ra's share in the Altai Territory was 18.8%, in the Altai Republic – 11.7%, in the Kemerovo Region – almost 11%, in the Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions - 5.2% and 4.1%, respectively. In the Siberian Federal District (SFD) as a whole, the retailer's share reached almost 5%, Mikhail Burmistrov noted.
In this case, the transaction may need to be coordinated with the antimonopoly authorities, and its parameters may be adjusted due to restrictions on the share of the retail network in individual municipalities, Vyacheslav Berdnikov warned. The fact is that the law on trade prohibits each particular network from exceeding 25% within the boundaries of a municipality.
At the same time, if the business is acquired, the federal retailer will have access to the largest distribution centers in these regions, Vyacheslav Berdnikov noted. In 2012, Maria-Ra opened an RC in Novoaltaysk with an area of more than 40 thousand square meters, and in 2021 it launched a center in Kemerovo with an area of 28 thousand square meters.
At the same time, in the fall of 2025, Alexander Rakshin withdrew from the capital of the real estate management company Maria-Ra, transferring assets to the family, Kommersant reported. And in the spring of 2026, the group began reorganizing with 15 legal entities. This may indicate the pre-sale preparation of the asset, suggested Vyacheslav Berdnikov.
This deal, if it takes place, will be another example of the consolidation of grocery retail and is likely to be the largest in the segment in recent years, according to a top manager of a large chain. The share of the ten largest players in food retail revenue increased from 44.4% at the end of 2025 to 45.9% in the first quarter of 2026, according to Infoline data.
Today, the consolidation of the segment is already at the final stage, Vyacheslav Berdnikov draws attention. One of the largest transactions was Magnit's acquisition of the Dixy network in 2021 for 87.6 billion rubles. Its perimeter includes 2,438 Dixie stores and 39 Megamart hypermarkets. And in April 2025, Magnit closed a deal to purchase the ABC of Taste for 29.6 billion rubles.
In the next two to three years, most independent networks with revenues of more than 100 billion rubles may change owners, Vyacheslav Berdnikov predicts. Among these he names the networks "Victory", "Commander", "Brighter!" and "Anix". It is becoming more difficult to develop a regional business due to expensive financing, rising personnel costs and strengthening the purchasing advantages of federal networks, the expert concludes.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
