After Impressive IPO, Mail.ru Becomes Europe's Biggest Listed Internet Company

The Mail.ru Group seems to have been a runaway success indicating that investors are very confident in the company's management team and its portfolio. Mail.ru shares are now trading at over $35, up from the initial price of $27.70. The company was valued at $5.71 billion based on the initial price.

Even with the initial valuation, this makes it Europe's biggest publicly traded internet-related business. Mail.ru offered 32.93 million shares for sale, 17 percent of the company, which were oversubscribed 20 times.

The company raised a lot of interest from investors, especially from the US and the UK. The Russian internet market is growing at a rapid pace and Mail.ru has a very strong position locally.

Shares hit a high of $39 and are now valued at a bit over $35. At this price, the company would be worth over $7 billion.

Mail.ru Group is mostly made up of the former Digital Sky Technologies. The Russian investment group focuses on the local market as well as late stage investments in fast growing internet companies.

In Russia, it owns Mail.ru, one of the largest web portals in the country, the Odnoklassniki social network, ICQ, the instant messenger service it bought from AOL which is particularly popular in Russia, and other properties.

It also has a 24.99 percent stake in Vkontakte, the largest social network in Russian speaking countries, and a further 25.09 percent in the Qiwi payments system.

Mail.ru plans to spend some of the money from the IPO, $112.5 million to buy another 7.5 percent of Vkontakte. The transaction would value the social network at $1.5 billion.

Finally, the Russian group also has small stakes in Facebook, 2.38 percent, Zynga, 1.47 percent, and Groupon, 5.13 percent, arguably the three hottest companies on the internet right now.

Some of DST's international assets have been diverted to a new company, DST Global, and are not part of Mail.ru Group or part of the IPO.