By Olga Razumovskaya
MOSCOW--Russia's most popular search engine Yandex NV (YNDX)
said on Wednesday its profit more than doubled, while reporting
Google Inc. (GOOGL) to local authorities for alleged antitrust
practices.
The companies fourth-quarter profit jumped to 7.6 billion rubles
($134.6 million) mainly due to foreign exchange gains, while
adjusted net profit saw a 13% increase to $4 billion.
The country's biggest Internet company said revenue rose 21% to
14.7 billion rubles. And its adjusted earnings before interest,
taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, increased 18% to
6.1 billion rubles.
Yandex said it could only provide revenue guidance for the first
quarter of 2015 "due to high level of macroeconomic uncertainty."
It estimates this revenue growth at approximately 15%.
Arkady Volozh, the company's chief executive, said in a
statement that the results reflected "challenging economic
headwinds." The ruble has lost almost half of its value since
January and the domestic economy is expected to contract this year
by 3%, according to government estimates.
Paid clicks on Yandex and its partner websites increased 18% in
total in the fourth quarter. And its share of the search market
averaged 59.7%, down from the previous quarter when it stood at
60.3% and also down from 61.9% in the fourth quarter of 2013,
according to market research firm LiveInternet.
In a separate statement on Wednesday, Yandex said that it had
submitted a request to the state anti-monopoly body to investigate
Google Inc. for possibly violating Russian antitrust law.
Several Yandex vendors had notified the company in 2014 that
they are "no longer able to pre-install Yandex services" on
Google's Android devices, Yandex said in the statement.
"[The] chances are high that Google will continue this
practice," Yandex also said. This has put Yandex "under threat,"
the company said, hurting its search share on mobile devices in
favor of Google.
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service usually reviews such requests
within 30 days. The authority confirmed to local business daily
Vedomosti that it had received the 200-page request and would look
into it soon.
A Google spokeswoman in Russia said the company couldn't comment
on a request it had not yet seen, but added that "users always have
a choice of what applications and services to use on Android
devices."
Google is presently under an anti-trust investigation by the
European Commission.
Nikolai Nikiforov, the communications minister, said in a tweet
in early February that Android is "an increasingly closed-off
operating system, monopolized by Google."
Mr. Nikiforov said in a statement on Wednesday that the country
will be looking into using free software to ensure "Russia's
technological independence."
The ministry has already had several sessions with South Korean
technology company Samsung to use Tizen, and Finnish Jolla to use
their Selfish operating system in Russia. Russia has increased its
scrutiny of the IT industry since the onset of the Ukraine
conflict.
-Write to Olga Razumovskaya at olga.razumovskaya@wsj.com
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