Japanese firm PFU Limited, a subsidiary of Fujitsu, has bought out a minority stock in ABBYY, David Yang’s Russian IT-company developing electronic dictionaries and text recognizing software, RBC Daily reports.

According to the news source, the deal is a part of the strategic partnership, and the Japanese company does not intend to grow its share in the Russian business. The purchased stake is less than 5% shares, and experts estimate its cost at about $100m.

RBC Daily received information on the change of shareholder structure in ABBYY from a source in the software developers market. The information was then confirmed by Sergey Andreyev, the director general of ABBYY. According to him, the Japanese company PSU Limited bought out less than 5% shares in the Russian firm ABBYY. The shares were bought from one of the shareholders. Details on the deal price and counter-agent have yet to be disclosed. Market experts estimate the deal price at $100m, and total cost of the company – at $2bn.

As a result of the deal, the ABBYY shareholder structure includes the majority shareholder and the founder David Yang, private equity fund Mint Capital with less than 10% shares, minority shareholder Fujitsu PFU limited with less than 5%, as well as the company’s employees that own options.

According to Sergey Andreyev, the director general of ABBYY, his company has been working with Fujitsu PFU limited for a long time and partners have a number of joint projects. “Specifically, we supply our software for their multi-functional industrial scanners, as well as we service a joint “cloud” project. That’s why a purchase of a minority stake by PSU Limited shows only their interest in our success. There is no intention of further increase of their share in our company,” Mr. Andreyev commented on the deal.

Andrey Kazakov, the partner of the Foresight Ventures Fund believes that the situation might repeat Visma’s recent purchase of a share in Acumatica. “That is, when a strategic partner is added to a company’s structure, who has a potential capacity to buy out a larger stake of shares. However, in this case, we are probably speaking of the situation when one of shareholders sold part of his share in the company,” he added.