Yandex Has Blockbuster $1.3 Billion IPO

Yandex NV, the parent of the Russian search engine Yandex, had a very successful debut on the Nasdaq market yesterday. The company raised more than $1.3 billion in its IPO. It follows last week’s similarly splashy but much smaller IPO from LinkedIn.

As with the LinkedIn IPO last week many investors turned right around and sold the company’s shares for some quick profit-taking. However, many investors anticipate considerable growth for Yandex, whose home country is Europe’s second largest internet market after Germany. Yandex also operates in several other countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

According to Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh, quoted by Bloomberg, “We still have huge room to grow . . . The Russian advertising market is projected to triple in the next several years, and we also have nearby markets.”

According to data cited by Reuters, Yandex has a 65 percent share of the Russian search market, while Google controls just over 21 percent. Online advertising in Russia was worth just under $1 billion according to various sources.

Yandex has said it wants to expand further into Europe and into English language markets. However it will find much more competition outside of its current markets from Google. In most global markets but the following five Google is dominant:

• Russia (Yandex)
• Japan (Yahoo)
• China (Baidu)
• Taiwan (Yahoo)
• South Korea (Naver)