Yandex boosts revenue 43% to 12.5 bln rubles in 2010
MOSCOW. Jan 19 (Interfax) - Yandex boosted sales revenue to US GAAP 43% to 12.5 billion rubles in 2010, the Russian internet search engine and portal said in a statement.
Revenue rose 14% to 8.7 billion rubles.
Contextual advertising accounted for 88% of revenue in 2010, up from 45% in 2009.
The number of advertisers increased 40% to 180,000.
Yandex had a 64.1% share of the Russian search market in December 2010, up from 58.9% a year earlier, the company said, citing data from LiveInternet. In Ukraine its share was 27% (up from 20.8%) and in Kazakhstan - 24.4% (19.8%).
Yandex's monthly audience rose 64% to 54 million in November 2010 compared with November 2009, according to comScore.
CEO Arkady Volozh commented: "The highlight of 2010, as we see it, is that by constantly improving our product quality we managed to increase our share in the search market. The considerable revenue increase we report this year reflects two important trends - a post-crisis revival of the small and medium-sized businesses and a shift in advertising expenditures from other channels towards online advertising."
Yandex LLC is the lead company in the Yandex group. It is 100% owned by Yandex N.V. Company founders and executives own about 30% (including options), investment funds (Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Internet Search Investments, Tiger Technologies, UFG Asset Management) have about 60% and private investors and former employees have the remaining 10%. Yandex may conduct an IPO in 2011.