According to a local report, Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, has now scheduled the much anticipated IPO till next year (2009). Earlier in 2008, there were a few reports regarding Yandex’s plan about US IPO and an intention to raise $1.5 billion to $2 billion with a complete valuation of $5 billion.
In 2007, the search engine’s revenue saw a huge increment as compared to the previous year. The revenue increased from $73 million to $167 million, sighting a 130% increase. In the first quarter of the current year, the search engine maintained 54% of the overall search traffic followed by Google which was almost thrice lower with 19%. This shows the popularity of Yandex in Russia.
Yandex with getting huge success, had some plans of expansion which included an office in San Francisco and the recruitment of Yahoo’s former Senior Vice President and General Manager, Vish Makhijani.
The expected timeline for the IPO was fall this year but now with the current political situation, there are some question marks, and I think it would be a complete disaster to go for it now or any time in the near future. Yandex is yet to have an official announcement on the IPO.
