Yandex Rides Non-Core Business Growth to a Mixed Quarter

Yandex N.V. (NASDAQ: YNDX) released second-quarter 2019 results on Friday morning, highlighting continued heady growth from its core search and portal business. It announced even more impressive gains from non-core segments such as its budding taxi, ridesharing, and media subscription offerings.

Shares of the Russian internet-search specialist initially climbed more than 10% in Friday's early trading but ultimately gave up those gains to close down around 3.6%. Let's dig deeper to see if there was anything that might have merited today's whiplash.

Yandex logo behind a colorful front desk.
Yandex logo behind a colorful front desk.

Image source: Yandex.

Yandex results: The raw numbers

Metric

Q2 2019

Q2 2018

Year-Over-Year Growth

Revenue

41.397 billion rubles ($656.3 million)

29.672 billion rubles

39.5%

Net income attributable to Yandex

3.705 billion rubles ($58.7 million)

33.29 billion rubles

(88.9%)

Earnings per share (diluted)

11.03 rubles ($0.17)

99.00 rubles

(88.9%)

DATA SOURCE: YANDEX.

What happened with Yandex this quarter?

  • We don't usually pay close attention to Wall Street's predictions, but revenue arrived well above consensus estimates for $642 million.

  • Note that last year's second quarter included a 28.2 billion ruble benefit to net income related to the deconsolidation of Yandex.Market to a joint venture formed between Yandex and Sberbank.

  • Adjusted for one-time items and excluding Yandex.Market, net income grew 31%, to 6.862 billion rubles. That equates to roughly $108.3 million, or $0.32 per share, technically below the $0.36 per share most analysts were expecting.

  • Revenue excluding Yandex.Market grew 41% year over year, to 41.4 billion rubles.

  • Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC) and Yandex.Market increased 45%, to 35.8 billion rubles.

  • Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) excluding Yandex.Market increased 48%, to 13.1 billion rubles, or $207.6 million.

  • Yandex's share of the Russian internet-search market (including mobile) fell 10 basis points from last quarter, to 56.9%, but also increased from 56.2% a year ago.

  • Search share on Android in Russia was 52.3%, up from 51.2% last quarter and 47.8% a year ago.

  • Search queries in Russia increased 9% year over year.

  • Paid clicks grew 17% (or 20% excluding Yandex.Market), and cost-per-click climbed 2% year over year (or 1% excluding Yandex.Market).

  • Advertising revenue grew 19%, to 29.141 billion rubles, including 20% growth from Yandex properties (to 22.854 billion rubles) and 12% growth from network members' sites (to 6.287 billion rubles).

  • Yandex's taxi segment saw its number of rides grow 49% year over year, and resulting revenue climbed 116%, to 8.798 billion rubles, representing 21% of total consolidated revenue this quarter.

  • Other segment revenue jumped 249%, to 3.458 billion rubles, led by Yandex.Drive and subscriptions of Media Services.