Yandex sets IPO share placement price range at $20-$22
MOSCOW. May 10 (Interfax) - Yandex N.V., Russia's biggest Internet search portal, has set a price range for shares to be placed on the NASDAQ at $20-$22 each, company materials say.
All told, 52,174,088 class-A shares worth $1.04-$1.14 billion will be offered. Existing shareholders will sell 36,774,088 shares worth $735.5 million-$809 million. The company itself could get $308 million-$338.8 million from sale of 15,400,000 additional class-A shares. These shares convey one vote (class-B shares - 10 votes). Post-IPO the free float will be 16.2%.
Not counting the over-allotment option for organizers, Yandex's capitalization will be $6.4-$7 billion. Interfax financial-market sources have said that the organizing banks have tentatively appraised the company's value at $6-$7 billion.
After the IPO, holders of class-A shares will command 6.3% of the votes in Yandex share capital, holders of class-B shares - 93.7%. There are 321,247,458 shares in the company: 129,200,543 class-A and 192,046,915 class-B shares.
The placement organizers - Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs - will receive the option to acquire 5,217,405 of the additional shares. If this over-allotment option is exercised, IPO volume could come to $1.1-$1.26 billion in all and the free float would be 17.6%.
The U.S. investment fund Tiger Global, which is looking to place 7,484,720 shares for $150-$165 million, will be the shareholder selling the most stock.
The fund Baring Vostok wants to sell 6,242,095 shares for $125 million-$137 million, Yandex founder and General Director Arkady Volozh - 4,052,027 shares for $81 million-$89 million, and the company's technical director Ilya Segalovich - 818,182 shares for $16.4 million-$18 million.
The lock-up period following the IPO will be 180 days. Volozh faces an exception: he will be able to sell one-half of his holdings after one year and the other half after two years. For Segalovich the lock-up is one year.
Baring Vostok is the biggest shareholder with 23.89% of shares in total. Volozh and Segalovich have 19.77% and 4.14% of voting shares, Roth Advisors - 6.42% of voting shares and the World Bank's IFC - 6.12%.
Sberbank has a special share giving it rights to veto any deal that would give a single shareholder control of 25% or more Yandex shares.
Yandex owns the most popular search engine and Internet portal in Russia. It accounted for 65% of the Russian portion of the Internet in the first quarter (compared with 64% in 2009).
Yandex posted a net profit of $134 million in 2010 and $28.8 million in the first quarter of 2011, on revenue of $439.7 million and $137 million respectively.
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