Yandex intends to float shares worth $1.5-2 billion at the New York trading floor, with the company's worth estimated at $5 billion, Vedomosti said, referring to information released by the news agency Reuters on Tuesday.
A source close to the company's IPO preparations told Vedomosti that the estimate was realistic while another source said a preliminary valuation of Yandex would appear no early than September and would depend on the Web search provider's financial performance in the first half of 2008 and the market situation, particularly, the share prices of the U.S.-based Internet search provider Google and China's Web search vehicle Baidu.
Yandex has mandated Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital to organize the share offering, Vedomosti said.
Yandex founder and CEO Arkady Volozh declined on Tuesday to comment on this information, Vedomosti said.
According to Vedomosti, Yandex is the world's second most popular non-English-language search vehicle after China's Baidu.
