In what have been a rocky first four months of this year, leading Russian Internet companies saw interest in their stocks ebb and flow.
Yandex, Russia’s NASDAQ-listed search giant, was heavily in play. Tiger Global Management, one of the largest pre-2011 IPO Yandex owners, is now completely divested of its Yandex stock, NASDAQ reports.
A major U.S. hedge fund that as of late 2013 held a modest, but tangible 0.2% stake in Yandex, Tiger made an estimated $19.4 million from the 631,000 shares sold before March 31. At that time, Yandex traded at $30.19 per share.
Unlike Tiger, OppenheimerFunds, Inc., a sizable portfolio investor in Yandex, bought further into the search company in the first quarter. With its additional 11,680,000 shares the fund now controls a hefty 13.9% of the Russian player.
Another major shareholder, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, went short on its Yandex holdings earlier this year. As stated in its 1Q 2014 report, the U.S. firm shed most of the 5.8 million Class A shares it possessed in late 2013, making an estimated $390 million in a deal that trimmed its Yandex ownership from 4.9% to 0.75%.
Reiffeisen Bank analysts approached by the Russian business daily RBC, believe taking profits on high-liquidity tech stocks is par for the course for these major investors, rather than being a result of the recent market commotion affecting Yandex. In a public statement last month, President Putin of Russia presented Yandex as being under Western influence. The Russian Internet stock took a short-lived, but substantial 10.6% nosedive after the remark.
Yandex shares were also weakened by the Ukraine crisis, and the threat of broad-based Western economic sanctions against Russia. The stock shrank in price from more than $43 per share on December 31, 2013, to a low of $24 in late April.
However, the stock has been gradually picking up steam since then, trading at $30.82 per share on May 20.
President Putin’s opinion that the Internet is a “tool used by the CIA” also hurt Yandex’s prime rival in Russia, Mail.ru Group. The Internet stock plummeted by a reported 10.07% on April 28, to close below its 2010 London Stock Exchange IPO price of $27.7 per GDR. Another tech company, the NASDAQ-listed Qiwi, was down 6.1% to $27.55. Both have since reversed their fall, bouncing back to $32.20 and $35 per share respectively by May 20.
Sources: RBC, Vedomosti, ITAR-TASS, NASDAQ, LSE
