Yandex 2Q2026 call: revenue, EBITDA, RUB 110 dividend, 33% ROIC and the bet on AI

On 29 July 2026 Yandex held an investor call on its second-quarter results. Management (Alexey, investor relations; Alexander, strategy and finance) presented the results and then answered questions from analysts at Veles Capital, Alfa-Bank, Sber, D8, Euler and Long-term investments. In short: against a cooling economy growth slowed, but EBITDA is growing faster than revenue, management proposed a 1H2026 dividend of RUB 110 per share, the buyback has offset dilution from share issuance, and return on invested capital (ROIC) reached 33%. Below is a detailed summary with key figures and answers to the questions.

This review was prepared by Usilennye Investitsii (t.me/eninv) from the recording of the call.

Key figures for the second quarter

The annual guidance is unchanged, and management insists it is not understated

The company confirmed its full-year guidance: revenue growth of about 20%, EBITDA of about RUB 350bn, and capex at 10–12% of revenue. Some acceleration is expected in 2H2026, primarily in personal services and, towards year-end, in B2B technology; for advertising, growth rates comparable to the second quarter are assumed. Management does not assume any improvement in the macroeconomic situation.

Analysts (Artem Mikhailin, Veles; Anna Kurbatova, Alfa-Bank) directly challenged the EBITDA guidance: in 1H2026 the company has already earned about 60% of the annual target, and traditionally it earns most of its EBITDA in the second half, so is the guidance not conservative? Management's answer: many product launches are planned for 2H2026 (above all in AI), which will require support costs; the macro environment is not getting easier, with government bond yields rising noticeably over the past six weeks, reflecting inflation expectations and weighing on consumer demand. One can discuss "black swans" at length, but "we have not been seeing white ones lately", and competition is intensifying.

Search and AI: the segment accelerated and advertising is growing faster than the market

Revenue of the Search and AI segment grew 9% year on year to RUB 137.4bn, and quarter on quarter growth accelerated by 10%. Advertising revenue added 10.3%, faster than the Russian digital advertising market. The segment's adjusted EBITDA was RUB 63.7bn at a margin of 46.3%. Management separately highlighted that advertising investment by foreign companies on Yandex grew 55% year on year.

To a question from Yana Oskolkova (Sber) on the search margin, management explained: the cost of an AI query is still higher than that of a traditional one (which has been optimised for 27 years), but it is falling quickly thanks to adapting models to frequent query types and shifting resources from mature businesses into AI.

Agentic commerce: the YCP protocol and purchases directly in the chat with Alice

Yandex is developing transactional AI, meaning purchases inside a dialogue with Alice. The number of companies connected to its own agentic commerce protocol, YCP, tripled over the quarter and exceeded 6 thousand (including Hoff, M.Video and Technopark). In June a new display advertising format, PrimeBanner, was launched, combining prominent placements across 20 Yandex properties.

Responding to Sofia Ostrelina (Euler), management candidly acknowledged that the financial effect of transactional AI is still small and "hard to find in the reporting": for now it is more important to find scalable use cases. The company's advantage is synergy with Yandex Pay and a base of hundreds of thousands of Market merchants; partner demand is assessed as high.

City services: operating leverage and e-commerce turning profitable for the first time

EBITDA of the city services group grew more than 2.5 times over the year and exceeded RUB 34bn. Taxi turnover added 9.4% despite external pressure, and the share of turnover outside taxi rose to 46.8%. For the first time the e-commerce segment turned positive on adjusted EBITDA, at about RUB 400mn.

Personal services: subscription, fintech and bonds at 17%

Personal services revenue grew 32%, and the business has established itself in positive EBITDA territory. The margin of financial services came out of negative territory to 6.5%, and that of entertainment rose to 7.8% (versus 3.3% a quarter earlier).

B2B technology: the cloud is growing and AI token consumption has doubled

B2B tech revenue grew 29%, and adjusted EBITDA grew even faster, by 43%; the segment's margin rose by 2.3 pp to 24.4%. Despite corporate caution on IT investment, the client base is growing and existing clients are increasing consumption.

Autonomous transport: 1,000 rovers today, robotaxi in Moscow by year-end

The number of delivery rovers exceeded 1,000; over the quarter they made more than 260 thousand deliveries, three times more than in the first quarter, and now operate in ten cities. The plan is 5,000 rovers by year-end and further scaling in 2027. For robotaxi, a launch of 200 vehicles is planned, 100 of them on a fully commercial line; commercial launch in Moscow is expected at the end of 2026.

To a question from Ilya Vorobyov (Long-term investments) on the peak of the segment's losses, management declined to disclose a specific trajectory: it depends heavily on the fleet ownership model (own fleet or partner model). Testing on the new Chinese platforms (the previous one, based on Hyundai, "was old") requires adaptation costs, but this is part of the normal production cycle.

Capital: the buyback has offset dilution, dividend of RUB 110 per share

In May 2026 the board of directors approved a share buyback programme of up to RUB 50bn over two years, aimed at the long-term employee incentive programme. From the start to 27 July, 3.3 million shares were repurchased for almost RUB 12.5bn (about 3.3% of the free float and slightly less than 1% of share capital).

Strategy: return on capital as the main criterion and a bet on time-to-market

The key principle management returns to every quarter is efficient use of capital: invest where the expected return is clearly above its cost, keep fixed costs tight, and buy back shares. ROIC of 33% against a cost of equity of 23–25% leaves a margin of safety, but management also sees room for growth here.

Responding to Kirill Panarin (D8), management named the shortening of time-to-market, the speed of bringing products to market, as the main practical effect of AI adoption. Under the 75/75/75 programme, 73% of developers already use AI regularly, more than half of new code is created with its help, and 17% of engineers use AI in preparing at least 70% of code changes. Examples: the Eda team halved the development time of AI call handling, and the browser team built a new video translation architecture in two days instead of two to three weeks.

Management described the loss spike in the "Other services and initiatives" block (education, corporate brand, general and administrative expenses) as inflated, at about RUB 9bn; a similar picture is likely in the third quarter, with normalisation closer to the fourth. The move to the new office (about 260 thousand sq. m above and below ground) is planned for early 2028.

Bottom line

Yandex's growth slowed under macroeconomic pressure, but the "efficiency plus capital discipline" model continues to deliver EBITDA growth ahead of revenue, real adjusted profit and, for the first time in a long while, a dividend proposal. The long-term bets are unchanged: AI as a driver of both monetisation (search, advertising, agentic commerce) and efficiency (time-to-market), plus autonomous transport. At the same time, management is deliberately conservative on guidance, citing inflation expectations, weak demand and rising competition.