Yandex sets SPO price at $22.75 per share
2013-03-13 16:09:31
Russia's most popular Internet search engine, Yandex, will offer 7.4 percent of its stock in a secondary public offering (SPO) at a price of $22.75 per common share, the company said in a statement early on Wednesday.
The price is unexpectedly lower than estimates of at least $25 per share offered by market experts as the company announced on Tuesday the commencement of an underwritten public offering of an aggregate of 24,253,987 Class A shares by existing shareholders BC&B Holdings B.V., Belka Holdings Limited, Ilya Segalovich and Emerald Trust.
Yandex held an initial public offering (IPO) on the US Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the spring of 2011, selling shares at the top of the price range of $25 per share and raising $1.3 billion in a deal that valued the company at $8.03 billion.
Many of Yandex’s investors have sold the search engine’s stock recently. In the fourth quarter of 2012, the Tiger Global Management hedge fund sold 8.2 million shares or about a third of its Yandex holdings. By December 31, 2012, Tiger Global Management held only 15.3 million Yandex shares or 4.7 percent of the company's stock.
Experts polled by Prime news agency in late January said investors were withdrawing funds from Yandex as they planned to invest in other quickly-growing companies at an early stage, which could yield higher returns.