The ownership of three major Russian tech companies – the search giant Yandex, the state-owned nanotechnology corporation Rusnano, and the mobile operator Megafon – is being affected by significant changes.
Yandex, which raised $1.3 billion in its IPO back in May 2011, announced yesterday the closing of a secondary public offering of Class A ordinary shares. The final SPO price has reached $22.75 per share, a 1.2% discount compared to the market price.
Yandex itself did not participate in the SPO. The initial 7.38% stake, valued at $551.77 million, was offered by four shareholders. BC&B Holdings B.V., which owns shares on behalf of various funds served by Baring Vostok, sold 5.5% of the stock. An early Yandex shareholder, Baring acquired 35.7% of Yandex in 2000 for $5 million.
Yandex’s co-founder and CEO Arkady Volozh sold shares worth $117 million – through an affiliate Belka Holdings Limited – but will remain the company’s main shareholder with a 10.6% stake. Ilya Segalovich, the company’s other co-founder and CTO, will receive $4.6 million, and Emerald Trust will receive $16.5 million for their respective shares.
On March 14,Yandex announced that the underwriters Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs had exercised in full their option to purchase some additional Class A shares, which means the final stake being sold was valued at $606.96 million.
A ‘nano-IPO’ may be not far off
Rusnano, a state-owned investment corporation focused on developing the Russian nanotechnology industry, is planning to complete a private placement of 10% of its shares in Q2 2013. Once the new shares are issued, the Russian government’s stake in Rusnano will be lowered from 100% to 90%. The transaction could value the corporation at 90 billion rubles, or approximately $2.93 billion, the Russian tech publication ComNews.ru reported last week.
Rusnano’s PR representative has also told ComNews.ru that the company disagrees with this valuation, though he did not mention what price it would deem fair. The publication also quoted Ilya Rachenkov of the analytics company Investcafe as estimating the company’s current market value at somewhere between 80 and 85 billion rubles, i.e. some 10% lower than the assumed valuation implies. According to Rachenkov, the private placement of Rusnano’s stake might be a step towards an IPO.
MegaFon stock sold in London
A privately owned stake of MegaFon, a leading Russian mobile operator and retailer which went public in November 2012, is also going to change hands soon. Credit Suisse Group AG placed last week 1.55 million GDR valued at about $48 million on the London Stock Exchange. This stake represents about 2% of the company.
The placement’s valuation at about $30.9 per share is slightly lower than the market price the day before it was made ($31 per share). According to Bloomberg, the seller is offering its full stake that was purchased during MegaFon’s IPO. The stock then began trading at $20 per share for a total company valuation of $11.1 billion.
