Financial information for the twelve month period ended 31 March 2013

25 Jul 2013

Financial headlines(1)

  • Group revenue of £1,347m decreased by 16% (three months decreased by 17%)
      - Digital services revenues grew by 34% to £174m (three months grew by 31%)
      - Digital directories revenue fell by 12% to £271m (three months fell by 11%)
      - Print and other directory revenues fell by 22% to £902m (three months fell by 24%)
  • EBITDA(2) of £283m was down by £178m
  • Free cash flow of £217m decreased by £82m
  • Exceptional pre-tax gain of £39m on below par settlement of 2006 debt
  • Loss after tax increased by £629m to a loss after tax of £1,818m
  • Profit after tax and before legacy issues(3) decreased by £296m to a loss of £27m

Operational headlines

  • Total digital revenue has increased from 29% to 33% of revenue
  • Digital services
      - Customers increased by 35%(4) to 443,000
      - Annual digital services revenue per customer declined by 10.4% to £437
      - Live customer websites increased by 41%(4) to 452,000
  • Digital directories
      - Advertisers fell by 11% to 754,000
      - Annual digital directory revenue per advertiser declined by 8.9% to £338
      - Visitors declined 14% to 43.7m in March
  • Yellow Pages
      - Advertisers reduced by 16% to 868,000
      - Revenue per advertiser decreased by 6% to £923

Mike Pocock, Chief Executive Officer, said:

"The market remained difficult for all of our directories businesses. Despite growing or maintaining our market share, industry wide declines have continued to drive significant earnings pressure and further reduction in the value of our print brands.

"The Group made good progress in implementing its transformational strategy. Digital services revenues continued to grow strongly. Major developments included the acquisition of Moonfruit, the launch of new products into pilot, the full US roll out of Community Magazines, the start of a major overhaul of our digital directories and launch of the hibu business store. I remain confident that the new strategy will provide a viable new business for hibu over the medium term.

"We have also worked hard to streamline and improve the Group's supporting infrastructure with cost reduction programmes and foundation IT projects. Costs have now been reduced by more than £300m over the last two years, over and above the reductions due to lower volume.

"After a year of negotiating with our lenders, we have today separately announced the principal terms determined by the Co-ordinating Committee of the Group's lenders for the proposed restructuring of the Group's debt. As part of this process, the listing of hibu's shares and the trading of those shares on the London Stock Exchange have today been suspended. Formal schemes of arrangement to implement the restructuring will be proposed to lenders in due course and the restructuring is expected to complete in the fourth quarter of the current calendar year. On completion of the restructuring, the listing of hibu's shares will be cancelled."

(1) The financial information in this document is for the twelve months to 31 March 2013, is unaudited and is compared with the same period in the prior year. Changes in revenue, revenue per advertiser and EBITDA presented on pages 1 through 6 are stated at constant currency. Revenue percentage changes are also adjusted for rescheduling, changes in bundled revenue allocation in the US and acquisitions.

(2) EBITDA is profit before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and exceptional items.

(3) Profit after tax and before legacy issues excludes non-cash after tax charges of £1,790m (2012 - £1,306m) to write down intangible assets and £nil (2012 - £152m) to write off capitalised directories in development costs.

(4) Customers increased by 13% and websites increased by 18% excluding the 72,000 Moonfruit customers that were acquired during the twelve month period.

Click on the link below to read the full release.

> Financial information for the twelve month period ended 31 March 2013.pdf

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