“Stock investors can’t invest in Uber, but they can invest in Nasdaq-listed Yandex, owner of Russia’s top ride-hailing platform,” writes WSJ reporter Stephen Wilmot, referring to the Yandex.Taxi platform.
The Russian search engine recently agreed with Uber to merge their respective taxi-hailing and food delivery services in Russia and neighboring countries – a move that has provided Yandex with the prospect of becoming the undisputed leader in the region.
Another victory for Yandex last year was an antitrust ruling against Google. The latter was threatening the Russian search engine’s position on the Russian market, especially in the mobile segment.
However, the Yandex shares are not cheap – their price grew 63% last year, notes Wilmot. “On 32 times expected earnings, according to FactSet, Yandex shares are more expensive than Google-owner Alphabet’s on 27 times.”
Yandex and Alphabet stock price evolution since 2013
Source: FactSet via WSJ
Another question is how fast Yandex.Taxi can recover from its “extreme losses.” Last year, its Q3 revenue, at around $20 million, was dwarfed by a negative EBITDA of around $56 million, WSJ notes.
These losses, which were generated by the fierce competition on the taxi-hailing market, might decrease this year as a result of the truce with Uber, believes WSJ — perhaps a bit optimistically, since Uber was not the only strong competitor of Yandex on the Russian taxi-hailing market.
