MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian internet giant Yandex on Wednesday reported 2022 revenue up 46% to 521.7 billion roubles ($7.05 billion), increasing its dominance in online advertising as major competitor Google pulled out of the market.
Yandex, often referred to as “Russia’s Google”, said investments in ad technologies drove a similar revenue jump in the fourth quarter, but adjusted net income slid 72% to 747 million roubles.
Alphabet’s Google stopped selling online advertising in Russia last March but has kept some free services available, opening the door for Yandex to enhance its market share.
“While solid trends in advertising revenue continued in January 2023, we expect growth rates to gradually normalise in the coming months once the effect of last year’s changes in the ad market competitive landscape annualises,” Yandex said.
Nasdaq-listed Yandex has sought to find a balance between its Western investors on one side and the Kremlin on the other. It sold its news feed and homepage to state-controlled rival VK last year, in part to try to depoliticise its business, a source close to Yandex said.
As part of that deal, Yandex acquired VK’s food delivery service Delivery Club, helping the gross merchandise volume (GMV) of its e-commerce division to almost double to 308 billion roubles in 2022, it said.
($1 = 74.0500 roubles)
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow and Gleb Stolyarov; editing by Jason Neely)
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