Russia's Mail.Ru boosted by Yandex deal, games
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian internet group Mail.Ru reported a 33 percent rise in third-quarter revenue, helped by its search-based advertising deal with rival Yandex and booming games and social network business.
Mail.Ru, part-owned by Russia's richest man Alisher Usmanov, said on Friday its revenue totalled 6.6 billion roubles (128 million pounds) in July through September, up from 5 billion a year ago.
The company benefited from increased number of advertisers at Yandex which, under a deal reached earlier this year, shares advertising profits with Mail.Ru in exchange for giving Yandex's advertisers access to Mail.Ru's users.
Yandex, Russia's biggest search engine with a 62 percent market share, said on Thursday the agreement helped it to grow revenue by 40 percent in the third quarter.
Mail.Ru is Russia's third-biggest search site behind Yandex and Google.
Mail.Ru also said on Friday it expects its revenue to rise by between 27 and 29 percent in 2013, compared with last year's growth of 39 percent, driven by contextual advertising and games.
In the third quarter, revenue from contextual advertising jumped 61 percent year-on-year. Revenue from games and paid services for its social network users were up by 33 percent and 39 percent respectively.
Mail.Ru operates two of the three largest Russian language social networks, Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir. It also holds minority stakes in Russia's top social network VKontakte and payment transfer company QIWI.
Last month, Mail.ru sold its remaining shares in social network group Facebook Inc for $525 million, making a hefty profit on its original investment and paving the way for a possible one-off payout to shareholders.
The company had a net cash position of 26 billion roubles as of September 30.
(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by David Holmes)
