Yandex: The Biggest IPO of 2008 Is Coming Out of Russia

The Google of Russia is Yandex, and it is preparing for an IPO on Nasdaq in the fall with the hopes of raising $1.5 billion to $2 billion, reports Reuters. That would give the company a $5 billion valuation.

Yandex was founded 15 years ago, and the last funding I can find was only $5.3 million back in 2000, according to Quintura CEO Yakov Sadchikov (Quintura is a smaller search engine also based in Russia). If that is all the company raised, it will be a huge payday for investors ru-Net Holdings, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, and Tiger Technologies.

Yandex has a bigger search market share in Russia than Google (GOOG) (it is the biggest site in Russia overall). And in Europe it is the No. 3 search engine, ahead of Yahoo and Microsoft (YHOO, MSFT). Globally, it is in the top 10.

Its revenues, though, are not that large, considering its ranking. In 2007 it reported only $167 million in revenues, which was a 130 percent increase from 2006. Founders Arkady Volozh [CEO] and Ilya Segalovich [CTO] still run the company.

Original post

Comments

[daniela]

"Yandex has a bigger search market share in Russia than Google (GOOG) (it is the biggest site in Russia overall). And in Europe it is the No. 3 "
I get that Yandex is bigger than Google in Russia, but no.3 in Europe? You are dreaming. Why would European search through russian web site? Unless you double count--since part of Russia is in Europe.
Here are visitors by country:

Russia 66.7% Ukraine 9.8%
United States 6.2% Kazakhstan 4.2%
Belarus 1.7% Germany 1.4%

Please let me know where this search website is going to explode beyond Russia. This web site is not translated like Google. Certainly they can increase their revenues by advertisements --to Russians. But beyond that there is nothing. I would aslo be wary of Russian market transparency. There are little things like corruption.

[User 137633]

The Europe market share info is from this link www.comscore.com/press...

[Alpha Seeker]

If Obama or Hillary win - watch out world, America is back!

[investorslive]

All these things need to sell off anyway they are very top heavy and I'm sick of CNBC saying everything is GREAT then stuff goes down, and everything is bad and stuff goes up..

they are contradictory predictor

www.investorslive.com/.../

[User 82037]

To Alpha Seeker:

If Hillary or Obama (Hussain) win... watch out world... America WILL be Targeted on a large scale!!!! If you call that "Being Back" I agree to the extent that we will be back to tragedies of September 11th, only worse !!!!

[Things ComeUndone]

Yep there will be tragedy because Bush has done nothing to catch Ossama and has instead wasted our time and money in Iraq!
Anyways does anyone think Google will buy them out or is Russia to tricky a market for google. By tricky I mean bribes and government control?