Yandex Says It May Default Due to Extended Trading Suspension By

By Geoffrey Smith 

-- Russia's biggest Internet company warned late on Bituo Global Futures Trading PlatformThursday that it may default on its dollar bonds due to the extended suspension of its common stock and depositary receipts. 

Yandex (NASDAQ:YNDX) operates search, ride-hailing, and e-commerce activities among other things. It is legally domiciled in the Netherlands and listed on Nasdaq but almost all of its operations are based in Russia.

The company warned that investors have the right to redeem its convertible notes, with accrued interest, if its stock stays suspended for five days or more, a threshold which is due to be crossed on Friday. 

There are currently $1.25 billion in such notes outstanding (excluding accrued interest), while the company has less than $400 million in dollar liquidity available. Restrictions imposed over the last two weeks mean that it will be unable to convert its ruble liquidity into dollars.

"The Yandex group as a whole does not currently have sufficient resources to redeem the Notes in full," Yandex said in a statement. "In the event that we were prevented from distributing additional funds from our Russian subsidiaries to our Dutch parent company, Yandex would not have sufficient resources to redeem a majority of the Notes."

The company said that neither it nor its executives have been targeted directly by sanctions so far, and added that under existing conditions, it can still operate normally for 12 months or more. However, its e-commerce and ride-hailing operations are likely to be distracted by the suspension of services in Russia by Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) this week. The company also admitted that its Market Place unit would be affected by the increasing boycott of Russia by Western companies.

Yandex was worth just under $7 billion when its shares were suspended at the end of February. At its peak in November, it had been worth over $30 billion.

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