Russian company tries to distance itself from the state, profiteers on sanctions

Russian internet giant Yandex on Wednesday reported a 46% increase in revenue in 2022 to 521.7 billion rubles ($7.05 billion), increasing its dominance in online advertising as major competitor Google withdrew from the market.

Yandex, often referred to as “the Google of Russia”, said that investments in advertising technologies provided a similar increase in revenue in the fourth quarter, but adjusted net profit fell by 72% to 747 million rubles.

Alphabet’s Google stopped selling online ads in Russia last March, but has kept a number of free services available, allowing Yandex to increase its market share.

“Although the solid trends in advertising revenue continue in January 2023, we expect growth rates to gradually normalize in the coming months once the effect of last year’s changes in the competitive landscape of the advertising market has been worked out on an annual basis,” Yandex said.

Nasdaq-listed Yandex has tried to strike a balance between its Western investors on the one hand and the Kremlin on the other. It sold its Yandex,News Feed and homepage to state-controlled rival VK last year, partly to try to depoliticize its business, according to a source close to Yandex.

As part of that deal, Yandex acquired VK’s food delivery service delivery Club, which would almost double the gross goods volume (GMV) of its e-commerce division to 308 billion rubles in 2022, the source said.