Yandex.Classifieds Sees Soaring Revenues in Q4 Despite War

The Russian search giant and online classifieds operator Yandex has released its results for Q4 of the financial year. Highlights of the group's report include:

• Company-wide revenue was up 46% on the comparison period for Q4 (₽164,778 million) and up 46% on a yearly basis (₽521,699 million) compared to FY21.
• Company-wide Adjusted EBITDA was up 77% on the comparison period for Q4 (₽17,173 million) and up 100% on a yearly basis (₽64,110 million) compared to FY21.
• The classifieds business saw revenue grow 54% on the comparison period for Q4 (₽3,938 million) and 33% for the year (₽12,287 million).

Despite what it euphemistically terms "geopolitical developments" and an embarrassing cybersecurity breach in Q4, the search giant had a pretty good year with revenue and Adjusted EBITDA up significantly and a return to profit on a Net income basis.

The company also operates Yandex.Classifieds which includes real estate portal Yandex Realty and Yandex Rent as well as autos portal Auto.ru. The segment's performance broadly mirrored the success of the company in general over the period although Adjusted EBITDA and margins dropped slightly.

Commenting on the segment's performance, the company said:

"Classifieds revenues increased by 54% in Q4 2022 compared with Q4 2021. The revenue growth was supported by the solid performance of Yandex Travel and Yandex Realty as a result of increased demand for our services and a changing competitive landscape on the domestic market since Q2 2022.

However, solid growth was offset by the adverse impact in service revenue on our auto classifieds business due to the ongoing contraction of supply of new cars in the market. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to RUB 0.2 billion in Q4 2022 compared with RUB 0.4 billion in Q4 2021 as a result of the growth of advertising and marketing expenses, investments in our new businesses such as Yandex Rent as well as personnel costs to support the services development."

Yandex Realty competes domestically in Russia with Cian which is strong in major urban areas as well as the real estate offering of former Prosus asset Avito which is typically strong in rural areas.