Yell shares drop 25% as digital fails to stem its paper losses

Debt stricken Yell Group disappointed the market yet again as it reveals figures well short of analysts' expectations.

Yell, once the darling of printed media with its famous yellow directories, made just £16.6 million after tax on turnover of £382.8 million: it's massive debt remains £2.57 billion.

Weakness in its digital and print directory services saw numbers fall way short of what the market was expecting leading Yell to fall over 25% on stock markets.

Reuters reports: "(Yell) is primarily exposed to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in markets like Spain, UK and U.S., where the SME environment has been pretty tough for a while now," analyst Alex DeGroote of Panmure Gordon told Reuters.

The company's good digital business is too small to make any real difference at the topline level because the legacy business is so large, DeGroote added.

The company derived 8 percent of its total revenue from digital services as of its half-year ended September.

"We remain concerned that an accelerated decline in the group's predominantly print revenues could undermine required investment in digital," brokerage Numis Securities said.

Read Yell's full interim management statement for the quarter ended 31 December 2011 – 14 February 2012