Search engine Yandex up 55 percent on debut (Reuters)

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 4:01 PM

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Shares of Yandex NV, known as "Russia's Google," chromatic 55 proportionality in their trading debut, grounds for whatever investors that cyberspace companies hit brawny prospects and a confirmation for others that the mart has gotten ahead of itself.

Demand for Yandex was brawny -- a maker said that investors sought to buy 17 nowadays as some shares as Yandex and its owners prefabricated available. However, there is whatever investor anxiety that commercialism valuations for cyberspace companies are higher than their earnings prospects warrant.

Beyond that, it could prompt a festinate of inferior able companies seeking to touch the aforementioned category of investor obligation that oxyacetylene the dot-com godsend of the New 1990s.

Shares of Yandex, the super cyberspace commercialism in the United States since Google Inc nearly heptad eld ago, were up 55 proportionality at $38.84 at the near of trading on the Nasdaq.

"Google is a enthusiastic company, but we are better," co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Ilya Segalovich, 46 told Reuters after the company's debut, with a smile. "We ... are rattling focused on what we are doing and the pore is profession and search."

The commercialism comes a week after professional ethnic networking consort LinkedIn went public. Investors more than multiple that company's hit toll on its prototypal day of trade.

It also comes as Wall Street speculates most when ethnic networks Facebook and Twitter module go public. Yandex's commercialism provided more grounds that cyberspace companies are blistering again.

"I certainly conceive that investors hit place warn on the backwards burner," said IPOfinancial.com President king Menlow. "Now there's a representation that we are in a newborn bull mart as it relates to profession stocks," adding that there is a specially brawny appetite for ethnic networking companies.

"Yes I do conceive we are moving toward a bubble mentality in this sector," said Menlow. However he additional that investors would be "somewhat discerning with what they place their money behindhand and not every profession hit that files is feat to obtain this sort of reception."

Yandex upraised $1.3 1000000000 in its IPO, commerce 52.2 meg shares for $25 each. It valued the consort at most $8 billion. moneyman Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities and Goldman Sachs & Co led the underwriters on the offering.

"Yandex has good ontogeny to date, and I conceive they module in the future," said IPOdesktop.com President Francis Gaskins. "Investors are famished for ontogeny wherever they crapper intend it, whether it is country or elsewhere."

Trip Chowdhry, an shrink at Global Equities Research, said, however, that he thinks Yandex's fundamentals are brawny but that the appraisal is not.

"It is rattling obvious the investors are feat disturbed over the names because they are intellection it's a newborn Google. That is wrong thinking. Yandex is not feat to be global. They haven't shown anything that convinces me they hit accomplish beyond Slavonic geographical boundaries," Chowdhry said.

Yandex has not definite how to ingest the money it prefabricated in the IPO, but it is essential to hit super change balances, just same the company's rivals, said Segalovich. "All our competitors hit piles of change -- Brobdingnagian piles -- and we staleness be prepared for (all) kinds of things," said Segalovich.

Yandex's playing model is unvoluntary by online advertising. In 2010, acquire chromatic 90 proportionality to 3.8 1000000000 rubles ($134 million) on sales that grew by 43 proportionality to 12.5 1000000000 rubles ($441.3 million).

Analysts say that the see engine devised by Segalovich and co-founder Arkady Volozh, 47, has a combative advantage over Google because it is meliorate armored to appendage the grammatical complexities of the Slavonic language.

For the consort to grow, it staleness indorse its mart deal in Slavonic search, today at 65 proportionality against Google's 22 percent.

GOLDEN SHARE

The assets is a godsend for Yandex's clannish equity investors. Baring Vostok Capital Partners bought into Yandex in 2000, when it had income of just $72,000 and forfeited $2 million.

The fund's original assets valued Yandex at $15 million, message that the float values the playing at more than 500 nowadays that level.

Investors purchase into Yandex's commercialism module obtain Class A shares, which exclusive hit one-tenth of the voting power of the Class B shares, which insiders in the deal module retain.

Also, a golden deal held by Sberbank, the state-controlled Slavonic bank, could be utilised to prevent any azygos investor from purchase a voting wager in Yandex of more than 25 percent.

Segalovich and Volozh, who met as schoolchildren, said the commercialism would support place country on the map as the birthplace of a orbicular profession company.

"Russia is famous for its resources," Volozh said in an interview. "But country also has a aggregation of talent ... So far, there aren't some profession companies ... that would impact for the entire world. We believe that the scientific society of country is so brawny that rather or after much a consort module appear."

Segalovich said he and Volozh would fete the commercialism by flying backwards to country from New York after a punishing digit and a half weeks of investor meetings.

"(We've been) gathering investors ... to explain what Yandex (is) ... is it actual or not, is it fake?," said Segalovich. "No, it's not fake, it's actual grouping ... You crapper touch them."

(Additional news by Alina Selyukh and Jennifer Saba; Editing by Robert MacMillan, Derek Caney and Steve Orlofsky)


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