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Comment by cyounkins | Hacker News Reader

If I'm reading this correctly, if the NASDAQ suspends trading of Yandex on Monday it will be the 6th such day of trading suspension. Their "0.75% Convertible Notes" will be eligible for redemption and holders could demand $1.25 billion + interest when they only have $615 million + RUB 47 billion ($437 million) = ~$1.05 billion. And RUB is falling...

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Posted a longer version of this which I deleted because I prefer yours. Yeah, it sounds like they're in trouble. And they're Russian Google with 70 products, so this is a big deal.

I believe they’re the Russian Google + Amazon + Uber (joint venture).

Yandex has stuff... Everywhere

They do payments and payment processing (think paypal and square and more combined)

They do cloud services (think a mix of GCP and AWS) for business.

They do personal storage (think dropbox/gdrive) and email, and more.

among more.

Not really such a big deal - there’s no function for yandex to fulfil if there’s no economy, no internet - I give it a week until Putin cuts all international routing.

Edit: see I’m being downvoted, probably because “that would never happen” - I think it’s very realistic that they will either shut down the internet domestically or they’ll cut all non-domestic routing - they want/need information control, and the internet is porous. If dissent continues in Russia, they will do it.

To be fair they have quite openly experimented with shutting themselves off from the internet, presumably for situations like now.

Ref: https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-globa...

Hard to keep secret the fact you are practicing shutting off the internet...

Wouldn’t this simply be voided by Russian law (or whatever it is called)? The same laws that currently prevents foreigners from selling stock in russian companies.

The Dutch part of Yandex may be bankrupted but the Russian part (with most of the assets) surely can continue.

The company itself is surely worth many billions of dollars, so can’t they just borrow from a national bank if they need additional cash for paying out bonds?

Who wants to give money to a Russian entity nowadays?

Not sure to be honest, you might argue that their headquarter is in Netherlands but remain pretty known to anyone that they operate in Russia.

Not so easy to see. Their CEO must have a big headache these days

Imagine "Yandex stops operating in Russia" as tomorrow's headline. Keep being Dutch, compete with Google.

would that be even possible? I thought pretty much anyone working for them is physically located in Russia. Who would want to (or be allowed to) continue working for them if they suddenly were 100% a remote workforce based in RU?

A friend who works for Yandex was relocated to Netherlands a few years back.

That is unlikely because Yandex has a "Public Interest Fund" (which consists mostly of government-appointed people) that has significant power, including a right to temporarily replace the general director [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-yandex-governance-idU...

Seems unreasonable is the market where they make all the money. Would be equivalent to declare bankruptcy

Chinese or Indian banks?

Buy when it's low, sell high.

It's bizarre that they even got into this situation. Betting your entire company on the fact that your stock will never get suspended from NASDAQ seems...unwise.

It's now the creditors' problem.

It's also your own problem considering your company doesn't exist anymore..

Company still exists, it would simply change hands -- the new owners of the assets would be the creditors or some benefit corporation for the creditors. Only if the creditors thought running the service was unprofitable would the company cease to exist.

That does not seem clear to me, surely it could continue existing within Russia only? They mention a rumor that business ownership may transfer due to sanctions, I think this is an instance where it would apply. Instead of liquidating the main IT business in the country the government may force it to fail to meet its international obligations.

Ok but I hope they are not relying too much on assets outside of Russia as they are all going to get seized or service suspended.

How about computers? I don’t think Russia has a modern semiconductor industry. They are going to need one soon. Smart phones?

I don’t think people realize how hard these sanctions will hit over the next months. There is not going to be a modern Russia left.

Yes because all companies out there have a plan in case they'd get suspended from NASDAQ. Like it happens daily

True that there were lots of discussion for Chinese business getting suspended but was not the case for Russian till the start of this war (also their headquarter seems to be in the Netherlands)

They could demand it but can’t get it because it doesn’t exist. I don’t know if it is in the holders interest to do so; they’d destroy this company but pay for it themselves.

Correction..$1.025bn..the RUB is weakening...hold on a sec, let's call it $1bn.

They had ₽47B on March 3. On March 3, at the time of writing that equaled ~$457M.

The Ruble has lost ~10% of it's value since then = ~$379M today.

So they've "only" lost $78M - not $250M.

The OP was joking about a 25m decline: 1.025 -> 1.000

Daddy, daddy, can I have 20 RUB for some ice cream?

- Son, why do you need 25 RUB for some ice cream? 30 RUB is a lot of money! Before you ask me for 35 RUB, think about how long I have to work for 40 RUB!

Heh, I remember a variation on that joke from the Polish hyperinflation days.

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