Yandex IPO: forget about 2009, still on track for this year

Written on 4th September 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The day before yesterday, rumors spread around the web about this year’s biggest tech IPO. Russian search engine Yandex wouldn’t want to go to NASDAQ this year, due to the unstable political situation in Russia. During a press conference, Russia’s most important investor sort of canceled the deal. As it turns out, it was a nice piece of wishful thinking. The Yandex IPO plan is still on track.

The Russian Internet insider news site Roem.ru reported that Finam just announced its market expectation. It wasn’t official information from Yandex. I guess things got messed up because of language barriers, and Profy got the wrong information. The high numbers mentioned in the post, an IPO of around 3 to 5 billion dollars aren’t correct either. We’re still talking about a $2 billion IPO on NASDAQ in fall 2008.

Finam, google, ipo, nasdaq, russia, Web search engine, yandex

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Mail.ru buys significant stake in Russian dating platform

Written on 29th August 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Russia’s largest Internet portal Mail.ru has acquired a 30% stake in its online dating partner Mamba, Quintura reports. They had to pay $15 million for a chunk of the enormous dating service – which offers dating platforms to several big Russian Internet parties.

Mamba has an user base of 10 million people. 1.5 to 2 million of them are looking for the love of their life (or a one night stand) on a daily basis. Together with Loveplanet (which is a destination site), Mamba holds 90 percent of the Russian $21 million dating market.

Not surprisingly, Mamba’s financial numbers are also impressive. The company reported revenues of $9.2 million in the first half of 2008, which meant a 68% percent increase from the first half of 2007.

Mail.ru had to pay the 15 million dollars to Finam, a Moscow-based investment and financial services group that acquired a controlling stake in Mamba in October 2005. It’s their third hit this year, as they recently also sold their stakes in Begun (to Google) and computer game publisher Buka.

There’s interesting twist to this deal

The people at Rambler HQ – that other big Russian web portal – won’t be amused by Mail.ru’s move. Rambler’s dating section uses Mamba’s platform, and accounts for 25 percent of Mamba’s usage. How will they feel about a competitor buying a rather large stake in the same service provider?

If Rambler decides to move its dating section to another platform, the revenue of Mamba could decline by 25 percent. Then Mail.ru will temporarily become a victim of its own deal.

Finam, mail.ru, moscow, rambler, russia, yandex

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