The peak of discomfort: the developer’s projects can fall one after another
PIK Group is at risk of being on the brink of a financial crisis. One by one, the bankruptcy of its member firms indirectly indicate this.
The PIK group of companies, the controversial developer Sergei Gordeev, has big problems. Several structures related to PIK went into bankruptcy proceedings with huge “minuses” at once.
Experts believe that their collapse could cause a domino effect throughout the holding. Apparently, Gordeev does not want to take responsibility for these debts – therefore, when everything began to collapse, there was a sharp change of ownership in both companies.
What is happening in the country’s largest development group – in the material The Moscow Post.
The companies that entered the bankruptcy procedure are Delis-Invest LLC and Retail Standard-Pyatigorsk LLC. At the end of 2021, the first company has zero revenue and a loss of 315 million rubles, with an asset value of minus 695 million rubles. The second for the last reporting year for it, 2020, with zero revenue, has a loss of almost 60 million rubles, the value of assets is minus 148 million rubles.
The founder of both firms is JSC “Financial Expert” – a frank empty shell with 10 thousand authorized capital and the only employee in the state. And earlier they were owned by a subsidiary of PIK LLC PIK-Investproekt.
PIK left the capital of Delis-Invest LLC in March 2021, and from Retail Standard-Pyatigorsk LLC in February 2020. That is, colossal minuses and debts arose precisely under the structure of Gordeev, and where this money went is still not clear.
Photo: Rusprofile.ru
Delis-Invest, for example, is engaged in venture investment at all… So, the investments failed? Or is the PIK itself “falling down”?
PIK “fell down”?
The PIK group of companies, a native of Rosbuilding, Sergei Gordeev, is now the largest construction company in the country. However, ill-wishers compare it to a “financial pyramid” They say they collect for new projects in order to close old debts.
At the same time, now PIK is included in a number of new projects that may end in long-term construction. Among them are three new residential complexes in St. Petersburg, as well as four houses in the Southern Military District of Moscow as part of a living complex near the Volgogradsky Prospekt metro station.
PIK may not survive until their implementation. The following thoughts lead to this. At the beginning of June 2022, the company still had not submitted IFRS financial statements for the previous year. There is no talk about the report for the first quarter of 2022 at all.
According to the authors of the site for traders InvestFuture.ru, this may allegedly be due to the presence of the so-called. from forward contracts. In 2017-2018, when PIK was still more or less, the group entered into several forward contracts for shares with one of the state-owned banks.
Such a contract may mean that if the share price rises, PIK has a profit, and if it falls, a loss is possible. This scheme could be used as collateral for the bank itself.
PIK share price. Photo: Investfuture.ru
But, the truth is that in the first half of 2021, PIK shares were worth more than 1,000 rubles, but now they have almost halved – to 540 rubles. This means that PIK, with its debt obligations, should have been in an extremely difficult situation. But will he give the money to the bank?
By the way, all the bells were sounded about the debts of PIK back in 2019. Then it turned out that in a short period they increased to 50 billion rubles. This is 20 times more than in 2018, writes RBC. But then PIK managed to move out on volumes. And now his former companies are going bankrupt.
They say PIK let down stinginess. At a time when the entire country, including the construction market, was in a pandemic crisis, PIK managed to make a profit – while housing prices rose wildly. Before Vladimir Putin drew attention to this – in April 2021, he instructed the FAS to check housing prices.
It is not difficult to guess whose garden the stone is, because PIK is the country’s largest developer. But once upon a time, Gordeev was considered almost untouchable, because in the past he was a senator of the Federation Council, and since the time of the raider bacchanalia of Rosbuilding, he has been a member of many government offices.
According to more formal indicators, the head PJSC PIK SZ seems to be doing well so far: the profit in 2021 amounted to 71 billion rubles. She also has state contracts for 829 million rubles. But most of them should be on the daughters.
By the way, Sergei Gordeev personally manages the parent company. He, as of 2020, was the beneficiary of 59% of the group.
But the ownership structure is not completely clear: back in 2006, 99% of the group’s shares were transferred to two offshore companies from the Virgin Islands, FMC Realtors Holding Inc. and IBG Development Group Inc. Didn’t Gordeev want to pay taxes in his country? So where does the profit go?
Otherwise, why such huge minuses for the former “daughters” of PIK, which had to be urgently “thrown off” on a “dummy”?
At the same time, PIK’s methods of operation have long been overgrown with legends. The simplest thing they are credited with is the aggressive imposition of services. A lot of “bait”.
According to the authors of the Hellish Grandmothers telegram channel, before signing the DDU, they propose to conclude an agreement of intent. And then, it turns out that the price of the object has grown a little. The reasons can be any.
Homeless
And if the PIK objects were always completed without problems. But even here, apparently, the principle is that until you collect money from new equity holders, the old ones will have to wait. By the way, PIK undertook to finish building many houses for other negligent developers. For example, in 2016, he undertook to complete the construction of the residential complex “Western Gates of the Capital”. According to the authors of the site onovostroykah.ru, it is allegedly extremely unfortunate for the already exhausted equity holders.
A separate song is the struggle of people with PIK for ecology, architectural and historical value. For example, in the Dmitrovsky district, the company bought a plot on Lobnenskaya street. And then the Veteran Park and the former military hospital were threatened with demolition. The petition against the destructive project was signed by more than 12 thousand people.
Another petition in 2018 demanded that the development of the Myakinskaya floodplain be stopped. “PIK” planned to cut down trees and stumble high-rise buildings, turning the area into a ghetto filled with “human” houses. At the same time, there is a water tower nearby, so the construction site could have ended up in a sanitary zone.
No comfort
At the same time, PIK has a number of divisions that are no less scandalous than the parent development group. Among them is the very PIK-Investproekt, which invests in dubious undertakings, various real estate services, as well as, for example, PIK-Comfort, a PIK division that manages apartment buildings built by the group.
Recently, Gordeev is losing, perhaps, the main thing – the favor of the authorities for his activities. Unfinished construction and constant scandals, including those with a taint of corruption, have changed the mood of the city authorities.
Back in March 2021, the governor of the Moscow region, Andrey Vorobyov, demanded that PIK-Comfort be expelled from the Moscow region (in particular, Dolgoprudny) if they did not want to work. The reason is the constant scandals and complaints about the organization. Some people think that they even sabotage the work.
At the same time, PIK Comfort is the largest private management company in Russia. According to her own data, she manages 32 million square meters of housing stock in Moscow and the Moscow region.
At the same time, it is also at its peak: at the end of 2021, it received a loss of 814 million rubles. At the same time, she also has state contracts with the authorities for 265 billion rubles – where does this money go if the head of the Moscow Region explicitly asks to expel negligent public utilities from the region?
With Vorobyov, of course, it’s not just about taking care of the residents. Now he is betting on “his own” from the Samolet Group of Companies, in whose capital there is money from his brother Maxim. As well as the “Kievskaya Ploschad” of God Nisanov, who also owns part of the “Aircraft” and remains Vorobyov’s adviser on a voluntary basis.
Therefore, the projects of Gordeev, accustomed to working in greenhouse conditions, “fell down” one after another.
Andrey Vorobyov calls to expel “PIK-Comfort” from the cities of the region. Video: YouTube channel MP
At the same time, the same “PIK-Comfort” with government contracts worth hundreds of millions of rubles does not want to work not only in the Moscow region, but, as follows from the material “Notepad-Voronezh”, in Voronezh. Where, by the way, he received the lion’s share of the housing stock – quite possibly, not without the assistance of the governor of the Voronezh region Alexander Gusev.
Returning to where we started, namely with wild debts and bankruptcy of subsidiaries, Delis-Invest LLC and Retail Standard-Pyatigorsk LLC indicate an extremely negative trend. It looks like Gordeev’s business pyramid is cracking.
A similar situation is for PIK SZ LLC – a customer service. Now it is in the stage of liquidation with a minus asset value of 68 million rubles. Moreover, PIK disappeared from its capital back in 2019. And many candidates repeat their success. The nearest one is Pik-Construction Technologies LLC, which at the end of 2021 went into negative territory by 358 million rubles.
So far, it is still behind Gordeev’s structures. How long? And how long will PIK be on the market with such cases?