Ozon is preparing to start trading on the Moscow Exchange.

Ozon marketplace shares will open for purchase on Tuesday, November 11. At the same time, Ozon is launching a share buyback program to provide long-term employee incentives and has also announced dividend plans. Importantly, a completely new Ozon company has been established in the Russian region; the previous NASDAQ shares, as well as the previous legal entity, have ceased to exist.

Ozon's plan to enter the Moscow Exchange was quite complex and multi-stage: it included delisting, redomiciliation, an additional share issue, a share buyback program, and, finally, a dividend payment. The timeline was as follows: there was a company called Ozon, registered in Cyprus, and traded on the NASDAQ. Only depositary receipts were listed on the Moscow Exchange.

Following the well-known events of February, trading was suspended . In October 2023, Ozon began delisting from the NASDAQ exchange and, at the end of September of this year, completed its redomiciliation from Cyprus—in simple terms, it completed a legal relocation, and the new legal entity is now registered in the Kaliningrad region. Trading in these Russian shares will resume on November 11.

An important point: a completely new company, Ozon, has been established in the Russian region and issued 7.5 million new shares. The previous NASDAQ shares, as well as the previous legal entity, have ceased to exist, and now, according to the additional share issue plan, those shareholders who can confirm ownership of those shares by a certain date will receive the same amount of shares in the new company.

At the time of the trading halt, one share was worth 4,135 rubles. In an ideal world, these shares would have been priced the same, and investors would have received every penny of their assets. But in the real world, Ozon is hedging its bets, explains Alexander Timofeev, Director of Financial Markets and Macroeconomic Analysis at F-Broker:

Alexander Timofeev, Director of Financial Markets and Macroeconomics Analysis at F-Broker

According to the buyback plan, on the day of the trading start, Ozon begins buying back its own shares at the price at which trading on the NASDAQ ceased. Although the company claims this is being done for long-term employee incentives, investors see it primarily as an attempt to avoid a share price collapse, as has happened with some other companies that have undergone redomiciliation. Ozon was one of the last to undergo the move and learned from the mistakes of others.

In addition to the buyback program, the marketplace is preparing to pay its first-ever dividend: the board of directors recommended a dividend of 143.5 rubles per share to the shareholders' meeting. This brings the total payout to 30 billion rubles. The same dividend amount is planned for 2026. The decision will be made on December 10. Ozon also reported its third-quarter results: revenue increased by 69% year-on-year to 259 billion rubles, with a profit of almost 3 billion rubles, compared to a loss of 0.7 billion rubles the year before.

Are all these measures effective? Oleg Abelev, head of the analytical department at the investment company Rikom-Trust, comments:

Oleg Abelev, Head of the Analytical Department of the investment company Rikom-Trust, PhD in Economics

When discussing the attractiveness of marketplace stocks, investors use the following analogy: if you buy shares of, say, Nvidia, you're betting on the rapid development of AI, while if you buy shares of a service company, you're tapping into the cash flow from those who use those services.

Ozon has likely passed the point where it transformed from an innovative big tech company into a service company. The limits of growth in Russia are close, competition is fierce, and prospects for expanding into international markets are essentially limited to the CIS countries. Investors are now looking not at the marketplace's innovations but at its efficiency, and Ozon's numbers are comparable to, but not superior to, its competitors. The company's share buyback program and dividend payments are intended to be strong arguments in its favor.