Yellow Pages’ revenue drops by more than 30%

The print and digital advertising company's asset sales have prompted lower revenue, but its core product is also seeing reductions.

Yellow Pages pulled in $106.8 million in revenues this past quarter – a 34% drop from its revenue during the same period in 2018.

The business’ falling revenue has been consistent over the last few years; for the last seven out of eight quarters, it has seen its year-over-year (YoY) reductions in revenue rise exponentially. In 2017, it was recording YoY revenue reductions of about 10%. Today, those reductions are upward of 30%.

That’s driven partially by lower revenues associated with the sale of some of its assets; in late 2018 the company officially exited the “agency” segment with the sale of its subsidiary Juice Mobile and the liquidation of Mediative.

Other sales in recent quarters include: digital restaurant discovery and booking system YP Dine (sold April 30); online transaction platform Bookenda (sold April 30); deal and coupon platform RedFlagDeals (sold last August to VerticalScope); home buying and renting information platform Yellow pages NextHome (sold last July); Quebec-based real estate digital destination ComFree/DuProprio (sold last July); and magazine group Western Media Group (sold last May).

With those sales come lower operating costs; this past quarter Yellow Pages spent $63.4 million on operating expenses a reduction of 40.2%, meaning the company is reducing expenses at a faster rate than its revenue is declining.

Still, within its core business – the YP segment, which operates the well-known print and digital listing operations – revenue is declining. This quarter, the YP segment brought in $30 million in print revenues (down 20.4%) and $76.5 million in digital (down 16.4%).

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