By Alexander Marrow
(Reuters) -Russian technology company Yandex on Tuesday said it may start paying dividends for the first time, as it reported a sharp rise in core earnings after completing a lengthy and complex split from its Nasdaq-listed, Dutch parent company.
A Russian consortium of buyers this month finalised a $5.4 billion cash and shares deal to acquire Yandex’s Russia-based assets, which had been held through Dutch parent Yandex NV.
The deal marked the largest corporate exit since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, albeit at a hefty discount.
Yandex, since its foundation in the late 1990s dotcom boom, has always prioritised growth over dividends, preferring to reinvest profits in the company’s varied tech services, from search and advertising, to ride-hailing, e-commerce and cloud.
Yandex said its management had recommended that the board consider a dividend of 80 roubles ($0.9302) per share, to be paid by the end of October, subject to shareholder approval. Yandex said it believed the company should pay dividends twice a year going forward.
“The (dividend) decision was a surprise to us,” Veles Capital analyst Artem Mykhailin told Reuters, saying that Yandex had always argued investors received a return through share price growth.
“All the money went into development and growth,” he said. “It seems the new shareholders have a slightly different view.”
Yandex is due to hold an earnings call at 1000 GMT.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 56% in the second quarter to 47.6 billion roubles. Revenue grew 37% to 249.3 billion roubles, Yandex said.
The company said it expected revenue to grow 38-40% this year, accelerating in the second half of the year, and adjusted EBITDA to reach 170-175 billion roubles.
YNV, the Dutch former parent, is renaming itself Nebius Group and hopes to become a key player in building the infrastructure underpinning artificial intelligence, with Yandex co-founder and former CEO Arkady Volozh back at the helm.
($1 = 86.0000 roubles)
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow; editing by Shri Navaratnam and Jason Neely)
