About the company OZON
Security pageOzon is one of the largest marketplaces in Russia: a platform on which tens of thousands of sellers trade their own goods, while the company provides the storefront, the warehouses, the delivery and the settlements. It began in 1998 as an online bookshop. Its depositary receipts trade on the Moscow Exchange under the ticker OZON.
What the company does
The key to understanding a marketplace is that it earns not on a markup but on a commission. The goods belong to the seller; the platform takes a percentage of the sale, plus fees for warehouse storage, for order picking and for delivery. That is why the platform's turnover and its revenue are two very different numbers, and they must not be confused.
The second pillar, growing faster than the first, is advertising inside the platform: sellers pay to have their goods shown above those of competitors. This income requires almost no costs and is therefore far more profitable than logistics.
The third is financial services: the group's bank serves both buyers and sellers, providing instalment plans and working capital loans. The cost-side peculiarity of the model: warehouses, sorting centres and pickup points are built in advance, for future turnover, and for years they leave the company loss-making on paper while the business keeps growing.
Business lines
Marketplace
Commission on the sales of third-party sellers, plus fees for storage, order picking and delivery.
Advertising
Promotion of goods inside the platform — the most profitable source of income.
Financial services
The group's bank: instalment plans for buyers, working capital loans for sellers, settlement services.
Logistics
Warehouses, sorting centres and a network of order pickup points.
History
- 1998An online bookshop is launched — one of the first on the Russian internet.
- 2018–2020The shift from the company's own retailing to the marketplace model: the bulk of the assortment becomes the goods of third-party sellers.
- 2020Listing of depositary receipts on a US exchange and on the Moscow Exchange.
- 2021–2024Rapid growth in turnover and construction of the logistics network; development of the advertising and financial businesses.
Business review
Strengths and weaknesses describe the business itself. Opportunities and threats describe what may happen around it.
Strengths
- The scale of turnover and a logistics network that is expensive to replicate.
- Advertising and financial services are growing faster than turnover and bring in a disproportionately large share of profit.
- The e-commerce market continues to take share from conventional retail.
Weaknesses
- Many years of losses: growth in turnover took a long time to turn into profit.
- The price war with the main competitor limits the ability to raise the commission.
- A constant need to invest in warehouses and delivery.
Opportunities
- The share of online commerce in Russian retail continues to grow.
- Advertising and financial services are growing faster than the platform itself and are noticeably more profitable.
- The logistics already built is a barrier to entry: replicating its network would be expensive and slow for a new player.
- Expansion into neighbouring countries widens the market without building a business from scratch.
Threats
- Marketplaces compete on price and discounts, and that is a direct deduction from profit.
- Building out logistics requires money long before it pays back — years of negative results in the financial statements.
- Regulation of trading platforms is under discussion and may restrict the terms of working with sellers.
- Spending on couriers and order pickers is rising along with the labour shortage.
Frequently asked questions
What does Ozon do?
It is a marketplace: a platform where third-party sellers offer their goods to buyers. The company provides the storefront, the warehouses, the delivery, the pickup points and the settlements, and also develops advertising and financial services.
How does a marketplace's turnover differ from its revenue?
Turnover is the value of all the goods sold on the platform, including those that belong to others. The company's revenue is only what it keeps for itself: commission, logistics fees, advertising, financial services. That is why revenue is several times smaller than turnover, and the two cannot be compared directly.
Why was the company loss-making for so long while the business was growing?
Because warehouses, sorting centres and pickup points are built in advance, for future volumes, and their cost is charged to expenses straight away. Until the network is fully loaded, the business grows while the financial statements show a loss.
Issuer profile
What the company does
The company is classified under the «Retail & consumer» sector, using the taxonomy we apply when comparing securities with one another.
The same sector holds 26 issuers on the platform, and their figures are computed by one method — so this company's revenue, profit and leverage can be compared with them directly.
The company is registered in Russia and identified in regulatory disclosure by tax number 3900045916. That number locates its statements in state registries regardless of how its name is spelled — and the spelling differs even between official documents.
Listed securities
The issuer has 2 securities listed: 1 share class, 1 bond issue. All are shown on this page, including those trading in different modes and different currencies.
Across Moscow Exchange quotation list levels the securities split as follows: 2 at level 1. The level reflects how strict the disclosure, turnover and track-record requirements the issue meets are — not how attractive the investment is.
Bond issues
The single issue matures on 10 October 2028. On that date the bond stops trading and the face value is returned to the holder's brokerage account.
The largest issue by face value is RU000A10EXZ9, with a face value of 1,000.00 ₽ per bond, maturing on 10 October 2028. Bond prices in the order book are quoted as a percentage of face value, so a quote of 98.4 means 98.4 % of that amount rather than an absolute price.
Financial statements
The most recent annual report we hold is for 2025 under IFRS. The standard is named for a reason: IFRS and RAS compute the same quantities by different rules, disagree by design and are never averaged.
Revenue for 2025 was 998.00B ₽.
That is 62.1 % more than in 2024, when revenue was 615.70B ₽. The comparison stays within one reporting standard — otherwise the growth could turn out to be a change of accounting rules and nothing more.
2025 closed with a loss of −938.00M ₽.
Equity stands at −148.40B ₽ against total assets of 1.43T ₽. The difference between the two is the company's liabilities, and the larger it is relative to equity, the more the business depends on borrowed money.
This section is assembled from our own data on the company's securities, dividends and financial statements. It is a description, not a recommendation.