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

Comments

[Fineturf]

Can't say I'm surprised at this the book has been flagging for a number of years. It's just not cost effective for small business to go in there anymore. I'm sure the online offer is much better. Don't people just use google now to find a business rather than google to find yellow pages to then find the business.

[stuart@ Eco Garden Maintenance]

I used to use the yellow pages quite a lot but for the last few years i have not even taken it out of its wrapper! In view of this it is no suprise to me that they are doing so badly. However, i have signed up for a free business listing on yell.com for SEO more than anything. If it brings any work in then that is a bonus. I am just waiting for the phone to ring now, with them hassling me to take out paid listings and a website.

[Artificial hedge]

This is horrible for me I use the yellow pages

[Austin Powell-Allen]

Why do they keep offering me a first page ranking website when i have that already!!! All built myself after doing a short course in website design at a local college. Think they might be starting to loose there focus. How can they justify £300 for a years advert in a single entry book? at least with the local paper it is printed one a week for every year.