Yandex N.V. (YNDX) announced solid first-quarter 2019 results on Wednesday. The Russian internet-search leader delivered broad-based growth, thanks to a combination of rising internet use in the country, market-share gains from its search and portal business, and earlier-stage strategic initiatives from ridesharing to streaming music. Yandex also raised its forward guidance, yet again.
But with shares already up around 38% year to date leading up to this report, Yandex stock was little changed on Thursday in response. Let's have a closer look at what the company accomplished over the past few months.
IMAGE SOURCE: YANDEX.
Yandex results: The raw numbers
| Metric |
Q1 2019 |
Q1 2018 |
Year-Over-Year Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Revenue |
37.3 billion rubles ($576 million) |
26.6 billion rubles |
40.2% |
|
Net income attributable to Yandex |
3.5 billion rubles ($54.4 million) |
2.4 billion rubles |
48% |
|
Earnings per share (diluted) |
10.59 rubles ($0.16) |
7.10 rubles |
49.2% |
DATA SOURCE: YANDEX.
What happened with Yandex this quarter?
- Revenue climbed 45% excluding Yandex.Market, which was deconsolidated through a joint venture between Yandex and Sberbank last year.
- Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC) and Yandex.Market climbed 49%, to 31.942 billion rubles.
- Adjusted net income excluding Yandex.Market grew 49%, to 6.161 billion rubles ($95.2 million), or $0.27 per share -- above the $0.23 per share most investors were expecting.
- Adjusted EBITDA excluding Yandex.Market climbed 37%, to 10.8 billion rubles ($166.3 million).
- Yandex's share of the Russian internet-search market including mobile was 57%, up 50 basis points from 56.5%, both last quarter and in the same year-ago period.
- Search share on Android in Russia climbed to 51.2% from 49.5% last quarter and 46.3% in the same year-ago period.
- Search queries in Russia rose 11% year over year.
- Paid clicks grew 11% year over year and rose 20% excluding Yandex.Market. Average cost per click rose 7%, or 4% excluding Yandex.Market.
- Advertising revenue increased 18%, to 27.04 billion rubles, including a 20% increase from Yandex properties to 20.912 billion rubles and 14% growth from Yandex's advertising network, to 6.128 billion rubles.
- Other revenue soared 325%, to 2.62 billion rubles, driven by Yandex.Drive, Yandex.Music, and Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives.
What management had to say
"We had an excellent start to 2019 with strong contributions from all our businesses," stated Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh. "Continued innovations in ad tech and on the product side allowed us to report robust revenue growth in our core business in Q1."
Speaking of the Yandex.Drive segment, COO and CFO Greg Abovsky added, "The ride-sharing business is demonstrating great results and we continue to see huge promise in a number of our new business initiatives, like Geolocation Services and Zen."
Looking forward
Yandex also raised its full-year guidance, calling for 2019 ruble-based revenue (excluding Yandex.Market) to increase 30% to 34%, up from 28% to 32% previously. This assumes a 19% to 21% increase in search and portal revenue, up from its prior target for 18% to 20% growth.
Given Yandex's hefty share-price appreciation so far this year, however, it seems the market isn't particularly interested in celebrating this beat-and-raise performance just yet. But make no mistake: There was little not to like in this report, and Yandex remains well-positioned to sustain its momentum going forward.
