Wildberries Will Remain Unprofitable For Years To Come
- 5.08.2026, 21:09
It may take more than one trillion Russian rubles to save the marketplace.
The Ukrainian campaign of strikes against Wildberries’ warehouses—which resulted in at least 14 of the company’s logistics hubs being burned down—has brought down the business model of Russia’s largest marketplace, which annually sold goods worth 3% of the country’s GDP.
To prevent Wildberries from suffering financial collapse and bankruptcy, the government will most likely step in to rescue the company, according to The Bell by two sources in the e-commerce market. According to one of them, Wildberries’ direct losses alone—having lost about 20% of its warehouse capacity in just a few weeks—could exceed 100 billion rubles, and in the worst-case scenario, reach 200 billion.
Wildberries’ total cash needs, according to estimates from The Bell’s sources, could reach 1.3 trillion rubles. The company will have to increase its debt by at least that amount to “reinvent itself,” explains one of them.
Due to the departure of sellers—many of whom suddenly lost their businesses and hundreds of billions of rubles’ worth of goods—Wildberries’ revenue, according to The Bell, has already fallen by a quarter. And this, in addition to direct losses, has broken the key financial backbone of Tatiana Kim’s business empire.
The fact is that Wildberries receives payment from the buyer immediately after a purchase but transfers the funds to the seller only after several weeks. All the while, the funds remain in the company’s working capital, which is used to cover operating expenses and discounts.
But this works only as long as revenue is growing, explains a source at The Bell: “If revenue was 100 billion, you spent 50 billion on discounts, but revenue grew to 200 billion.” When revenue falls, the pyramid begins to collapse. Accumulated expenses are no longer covered by the inflow of new money, and the company begins to rack up losses, explains a source speaking to The Bell: if payments to sellers are delayed not by three weeks but by three months, then they, too, will start facing revenue problems.
The marketplace’s revenue is currently falling, and this is only the beginning of a protracted trend—after such a blow, it will remain unprofitable for years, claims another source speaking to The Bell.
It is unclear exactly how Wildberries will recover. According to Bloomberg, the government is currently preparing a support package that will benefit sellers: they may be granted tax breaks and subsidized loans, while the marketplace itself may be allowed to use Russian Post warehouses instead of the burned-down logistics hubs.
Wildberries may also receive preferential loans, sources at The Bell suggest. “But where will the money come from? Turn on the printing press?” one of them asks. According to the Ministry of Finance, the federal budget deficit reached 5.7 trillion rubles in the first half of the year and is 1.5 times higher than the target for the entire year. According to the Central Agency for Macroeconomic Forecasting (TsMAKP), the budget “hole” will grow to 7 trillion rubles by the end of the year, while the Central Bank estimates it could exceed 8 trillion.