Partner Article

hibu feel the advertising pinch

Profits at hibu plc, the company formerly known as Yell, have crashed from £69.2m to £7m.

The directories business said it had worked hard to sustain itself in the face of “very difficult market trends.”

Advertisers in the Yellow Pages reduced by 12% to 474,000 ; revenue per advertiser decreased by 7% to £827, and print and directory revenues fell by 22%.

Despite an increase across digital directories usage, particularly a further 5 million users on mobile devices, revenue in this area declined 15.4% over the first six months.

The company has struggled with debts since making a number of acquisitions throughout the late 90s, and these results stated net debt was reduced by 5% to £2,090m.

Mike Pocock, Chief Executive Officer, said: “During the first half, the Group has continued to make significant progress on its four year strategy to build a material new digital business. In June we acquired Moonfruit, an innovative digital company, in order to provide new web site products early next year.

“Following successful pilots in the US, we began to expand our community magazine (formerly Newsletter) initiative, which is now delivering new orders in excess of £500k per week and rising.

“We signed partnership agreements with Vantiv in the US and Global Payments in the UK, to support our new Payments product which went to pilot in both markets in early September. We also moved into pilot with our new online channel, which will provide a modern, lower cost alternative route to market for our products from early 2013 and we began the first pilots of eMarketplace in Oxford and Chicago.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .