MOSCOW, March 12 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's most popular search engine, Yandex, will offer 7.4 percent of its stock in a secondary public offering (SPO) on Tuesday to be followed by a buy-back program, the company said on Tuesday.
“Yandex N.V. today announced the commencement of an underwritten public offering of an aggregate of 24,253,987 Class A shares by existing shareholders BC&B Holdings B.V., Belka Holdings Limited, Ilya Segalovich and Emerald Trust,” Yandex said in a statement.
Yandex’s stock closed 0.44 percent higher on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Monday at $25.03 per share, valuing the SPO at $607 million.
Yandex will not receive any proceeds from the offering, the statement said.
Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. are acting as joint bookrunners for the offering. Morgan Stanley is acting as stabilization manager for the SPO.
Yandex held an initial public offering (IPO) on the US Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the spring of 2011, selling shares at the top of the price range of $25 per share and raising $1.3 billion in a deal that valued the company at $8.03 billion.
Many of Yandex’s investors have sold the search engine’s stock recently. In the fourth quarter of 2012, the Tiger Global Management hedge fund sold 8.2 million shares or about a third of its Yandex holdings. By December 31, 2012, Tiger Global Management held only 15.3 million Yandex shares or 4.7 percent of the company's stock.
In December 2012, BC&B Holdings B.V. and Kameson Management Limited offered 4.85 million and 3 million Yandex shares for sale respectively.
Experts polled by Prime news agency in late January said investors were withdrawing funds from Yandex as they planned to invest in other quickly-growing companies at an early stage, which could yield higher returns.
The price of Yandex shares depends to a large extent on other major IT players like Facebook or Groupon rather than on Yandex’s successful financial results, Finam brokerage analyst Leonid Delitsyn said, adding it was a good time for Yandex's early investors to exit the company.
Yandex, which accounts for 62 percent of Russian Internet search engine traffic, posted a US GAAP net profit of 8.22 billion rubles ($270 million) last year, up 42 percent from 2011.
Yandex also announced on Tuesday its board of directors had authorized the repurchase of up to 12 million Class A shares or about 3.65 percent of its stock, in a move likely to push up Yandex shares and make them more attractive for investors.
The program will start after the company’s SPO and will run through November 14, 2013.
