Majority of DST’s Stakes in Facebook, Zynga Remain Private, Despite Mail.ru IPO
Investors hoping to get some exposure to Facebook through Mail.ru Group’s forthcoming initial public offering are getting access to just a share of Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies Ltd.’s holdings in the social network.
“We just renamed the Russian operations of DST into Mail.ru Group and that is the business that is now going public. It has some small stakes in international for legacy reasons,” said DST partner Alexander Tamas. “DST Global will not go public and continue to make investments into global Internet companies going forward.”
While Mail.ru says it has a 2.38 interest in Facebook, DST-Global is the entity that owns the remaining part of the firm’s estimated 10 percent stake in the social network.
DST is an investment firm run out of Moscow and London that has bought stakes in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon over the past two years often without demanding many of the trappings late-stage investors traditionally ask for like board seats or liquidation preferences.
VTB Capital, one of the firms running the books on Mail.ru’s IPO, says the company’s holdings in Facebook make up about $720 million of the company’s $5 to $5.4 billion valuation, according to a report in Moscow-based business newspaper Kommersant. The Zynga stake is valued at $74 million. That would imply a valuation of $30.3 billion for Facebook and $5 billion for Zynga. VTB based its valuations on trades earlier this year in the over-the-counter market.
Most of Mail.ru’s value comes from its Russian Internet properties, including the country’s two biggest Russian language social networks, Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir, along with its IM clients, ICQ and Agent. It also has minority holdings in Qiwi and vKontakte, which it is using the initial public offering to buy an extra 7.5 percent stake in.
Bloomberg reported earlier today that Mail.ru received bids for all of the shares it offered. The final price for the stock should be set during the first week of November. Shares are currently being offered at between $23.70 to $27.70 each.














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