Dex One and SuperMedia have each entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a pre-packaged deal as the two companies moved toward merging by mid 2013. The prepackaged route was necessary because the companies were not able to convince all of the senior debt holders to go along with the credit amendments necessary for the …

The London Evening Standard is reporting that an attempt to engineer a buyout of Hibu’s U.S. operation (Yellowbook) is behind the recent dismissal of two senior Hibu U.S. executives.
In an internal memo last week, Hibu CEO Mike Pocock announced the termination of Yellowbook President Jim McCusker and Chief Publishing Officer Mark Cairns, citing conduct “that …

Two global directory companies at different stages of transformation reported their 2012 earnings this week. Eniro and Yellow Media both reported deep print declines, as well as progress in repairing balance sheets burdened by debt. Mobile development was a high point for both companies with strong customer and usage growth. Both companies similarly experienced their …

Seat Pagine Gialle, Italy’s leading directory publisher, has announced it is insolvent and unable to meet its debt obligations. Specifically, the company was not able to meet its 2013 debt obligations totaling 200 million euros.
Seat will now seek protections from Italian courts while it tries to restructure its debt. The company went through a debt …

On today’s Q3 earnings call, DexOne CEO Alfred Mockett made it clear that bundles are central to Dex’s hopes of arresting its revenue declines.
The company grew its digital bookings by 26 percent in Q3 and expects to end 2012 with a 30 percent increased in online bookings, a feat that Mockett attributes to bundles.
The company …

Facebook investor and press events have become spectacles unto themselves, where distilling signal from noise is a tricky task. But that’s what we’ll flesh out here in the aftermath of the company’s first earnings call post-IPO…a call that featured an appearance from Mark Zuckerberg, nothing overly substantive from Facebook execs and persistent questions about the …

via CNN
If anybody wonders whether the considerable “legs” of Facebook justify a valuation now set for $83 billion, have a listen to a terrific BIA/Kelsey webinar on Facebook’s IPO, featuring Trada CEO Niel Robertson Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom and Plink Cofounder Peter Vogel (and BIA/Kelsey analysts Jed Williams, Matt Booth and Jeanne Dattilo).
People have to …

Among the myriad questions swirling around Facebook’s imminent IPO (other than “when will it actually happen?”), the two most pressing are: 1) Can the social network actually support an assumed $100 billion valuation? and 2) How?
BIA/Kelsey sought to answer both by pairing financial modeling and strategic analysis. We recently published a comprehensive report exploring the …

LivingSocial, in a battle with Groupon and other deal providers to gain (and keep) market share, lost an eye popping $558 million beyond its $245 million in net earnings, according to a regulatory filing by Amazon.com, which owns 31 percent of the company. The filing was written about in today’s Washington Post.
The Post article notes …

The European directory and local search operator Truvo has taken major steps toward consolidating around its flagship Belgian operation. On Dec. 22, Truvo “divested” its operation in Ireland, selling it to Contact Holdings, which operates Yellow Pages companies in the Baltic States. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Truvo has also dramatically curtailed its senior …

Yelp’s S-1, which was issued last week as a run-up to a $100 million IPO, reveals a lot of new data about the reviews leader. The big question about Yelp has been whether it can grow against increased pressure from Google, and also begin to take market share away from traditional media players such as …

Last week several of the leading listed directory companies saw sizable spikes in their stock prices following their Q3 earnings announcements, though the surge seems to have died off today.
For example, Dex One announced its earnings on Nov. 3. On the call, CEO Alfred Mockett revealed that Dex will not achieve its previously stated goal of …

Image Source: Mashable
Groupon’s greatly reduced IPO is apparently set to take place on Friday, Nov. 4, in an environment much less friendly than originally envisioned last spring.
The bloom has come off for a number of reasons. Groupon has almost no barriers to entry and has had to contend with dozens and dozens of copy cats …

TargusInfo, a major direct marketing tools provider and the parent company of Localeze, a “Big 3″ provider of business listings, will be acquired by NeuStar for $650 million in cash. The deal enhances NeuStar’s positioning as a leader in authentication services across the Internet and voice networks, whether fixed-line, cable or mobile. Authentication is expected …

Yell Group announced its full-year 2011 results this week (its year ends March 31), with digital media revenues growing by 9.4 percent from last year. CEO Mike Pocock projected during the full-year earnings call that by 2015, 75 percent of Yell’s products will be digital, with the remaining 25 percent in print. However, Pocock emphasized that …

 
2010 was a dismal year for the New Zealand branch of Deutsche Bank after exposure to the Yellow Pages Group restructuring. The KPMG Financial Institutions Performance Survey issued last week shows that Deutsche ranked at the bottom out of 10 New Zealand branch banks on key measures, including a $53 million loss for the financial year, …

First-quarter 2011 earnings reports are trickling in across the global Yellow Pages industry, and while the results are still largely negative, there are some signs that the rate of revenue decline is leveling off. This is consistent with what BIA/Kelsey has forecast for the Yellow Pages industry — a leveling off of print declines leading …

Following a discussion of its 2010 full-year results, Dex One’s leadership team outlined a new strategy today that it says will restore the company to positive revenue growth by the second half of 2012, with print stabilizing to single-digit declines.
One of the key elements will be the Dex Guaranteed Actions, a performance-based model tested beginning …

Listened to the replay of Yell Group’s Q3 earnings call yesterday, which was my first opportunity to hear the company’s new CEO, Michael Pocock, in action. Pocock joined Yell in November, eventually replacing longtime CEO John Condron, who retired. He inherited a company with a rapidly declining core business and an uncertain future as a …

Thus far, 2011 is revealing some notable announced transactions that could be signs of renewed interest in buying radio and television stations. The BIA/Kelsey monthly transactions report, which details the number of stations sold and their value, shows a marked increase in the month of January. Is it a sign that the station trading marketplace …