Alexander Shulgin
Analyst · Deutsch Bank
Thank you, Arkady, and thank you, all, for joining us today. In the first quarter of 2014, Yandex consolidated revenues increased 36% year-on-year to RUB 10.9 billion. Excluding the impact of Yandex.Money from Q1 2013, our total revenues grew 39%. Text-based advertising accounted for 92% of total revenues in Q1 and demonstrated a healthy growth of 41% year-on-year. The Yandex owned and operated websites consisted 68% of total revenues and grew 26% year-on-year, driven by changes made to core advertising technologies. Our text-based advertising network grew 104% year-on-year. This growth was driven by our partnership with Mail.ru that started on July 1, 2013. As a result, contribution of ad network revenues to total revenues grew from 16% in Q1 2013 to 24% in Q1 2014 and 100 [ph] basis points sequentially. Display advertising accounted for 7% of total revenues. Starting from Q1 2014, we separated display advertising into revenues generated from Yandex's websites and from the ad network. In Q1, owned and operated display grew 4%. Display ad network revenues grew RUB 76 million from RUB 3 million a year ago. All in all, display revenue grew 16% year-on-year. Other revenues tripled but still comprise less than 1% of the total revenues. Growth was primarily driven by revenues received from Yandex.Taxi. Traffic acquisition costs as it relates to the partner advertising network grew 118% at nearly similar rates as our network revenues overall. Partner TAC as percent of partner revenue was 67% in Q1 2014. That is over 430 basis points reduction compared to 71% in Q4 2013. The reduction of TAC as a percent of revenue compared to Q4 2013 is due to the efforts of our sales team's target of decreasing revenue share in percentage. Important to note that partner TAC represents revenue shared for both display and text-based partner revenues. Distribution TAC grew 61%, faster than our revenues from owned and operated websites. The increase in distribution TAC as a percentage of O&O revenue was about 220 basis points year-on-year and 50 basis points sequentially. Growth of distribution TAC in Q1 is explained by increased activity of all the existing distributor partners as well as by addition of the new partners. While distribution TAC again increased significantly as percentage of O&O revenue, we have taken a number of steps to address the amount of TAC we'll pay out and these actions will begin to bear fruit late in 2014. Total TAC increased 97% year-on-year. Text-based revenue was driven by the growth in paid clicks, which increased 49% year-over-year. And once again, considerable growth was demonstrated both on owned and operated and on the ad network. Growth in the number of paid clicks on the owned websites was driven by CTR improvements and by changes in ad layouts. Growth in the number of paid clicks on the network front was in large part driven by Mail.ru. Cost per click decreased 5% year-on-year. Now turning to our cost structure. Our total operating cost and expenses, excluding traffic acquisition costs and depreciation and amortization expense, grew 55% in Q1. If [indiscernible] expense, our cost grew 53%. I would like to note that from Q4 2011 to Q4 2013, we were paying transition computations related to the acquisition of SPB Software. This expense was fully paid out in Q4 2013. Starting from Q2 2014, we'll be paying transition computations related to our position of [indiscernible] in March 2013. Personnel cost has been our largest cost item. In this past quarter, we added 234 employees to our headcount. Greater growth has substantially decreased, given that in Q4 2013, we added 493 employees. Employees were added mainly to product development to support our key services and initiatives. As a result, our personnel cost increased 49% year-over-year in Q1 and was 22% of total revenues. To remind you, personnel cost as percent of revenues have a well-pronounced seasonality. It is explained with revenue-to-cost ratio that is typically high in Q1 as well as with the greater social tax scale, which provides for a reduced tax rate when cumulative annual sell rate of an employee exceeds RUB 624,000. And this provides for a disproportionally high social tax rate and personnel cost in Q1, a gradual decrease throughout the next quarters. Overall, we confirm our intention to keep personnel cost within 20% of revenues on an annual basis. Our depreciation and amortization expense for the quarter increased 22%. And our adjusted EBITDA grew 15% year-on-year and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 37%. The decline in margin on a year-over-year basis was a result of an increase in partner and distribution TAC as well as growth of our personnel costs. This growth of the impact from foreign exchange effect was RUB 647 million gain related to ruble-denominated assets and liabilities on our balance sheet as the ruble weakened from RUB 32.7 as of December 31, 2013, to RUB 35.7 on March 31, 2014. Our effective income tax rate was 24.7% from Q1 on U.S. GAAP basis. This is significantly higher than the effective tax rate of previous quarters because of deferred tax accrual on 50% of unremitted earnings that may be transferred to Yandex N.V. from Yandex LLC. The company plans to gradually accumulate [indiscernible] balance in the Netherlands to support [indiscernible] and repayment of the convertible loan that's due in 2018. Adjusted net income grew 6% and adjusted net income margin was 23.4%. Our Q1 CapEx was RUB 2.1 billion or 19% of Q1 revenue, as expected. As we warned previously, CapEx is not spread evenly across quarters. And some capital expenditures ship it from Q4 last year to Q1 this year. As of March 31, 2014, we repurchased 11.6 million shares within our share repurchase program, authorized for up to 15 million shares, and ending the quarter with $1.4 billion in cash and equivalents. And now turning into the full year revenue guidance. On a like-for-like basis, excluding Yandex.Money revenues from 2014 and based on the current trends we see in our business, we reaffirm our previous announced guidance and expect revenues to grow from 25% to 30%. Now I will turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session.