Yandex Q1 2024: Net Losses for Remaining Assets After Large Scale Divestments

Yandex N.V., the Dutch holding company of the marketplace giant Yandex, has released its financial results for the first quarter of 2024 in its first public statement since it sold all its Russian assets in February.

Highlights include:

• Total Group Revenues for Q1 2024 grew 40% to RUB 229.3 billion (USD $13bn), up from 163.2 billion in 2023
• Classifieds revenues also grew, to 6.9 billion rubles (USD 73.8 million)
• Classifieds revenues represented a healthy 56% YoY increase (4.4 billion rubles in Q1 2023)

This is a surreal set of financial results for one key reason—Yandex no longer owns the vast majority of the business assets it reported on. After significant political pressure to divest its Russian marketplace or face delisting from the stock market, assets worth 229 billion rubles for the quarter now fall under the newly-formed "Discontinued Operations" segment.

The remaining operational assets consist of four businesses with combined revenues of just one billion rubles and net losses of 7.2 billion rubles for the quarter:

Nebius AI, an AI cloud platform that is one of the largest providers of GPU capacity in Europe;

Toloka AI, a data solutions partner for generative AI and LLM development;

Avride, one of the world’s leading developers of self-driving technologies;

and TripleTen, an EdTech service that equips people with indemand tech skills.

The resulting graphic just about sums up how significant a loss this is for Yandex—you will barely be able to see the revenues for the Group's continuing operations relative to what the Group divested itself from:

If the bad news is that nobody wants to invest in Nebius, Tolaka, Avride or TripleTen, the good news for Yandex is that it will divert funds from the sale of its Russian assets to invest in each of the four remaining businesses. Q1's statement includes the following passage:

"Thus far, securing adequate capital for the advancement of these businesses has proven challenging due to substantial constraints on the group's ability to transfer funds from its historically profitable businesses in Russia. To support the development of the four businesses in the future, we expect to retain a portion of the cash consideration received pursuant to the Sale transaction, the amount of which is to be determined by the Board."