Yellow Media Ltd., publisher of the Yellow Pages directories, has reported a lower first-quarter profit of $39.2 million as it continues its transformation to a digital company.
Revenues were down 12% to $223.2 million, compared with $253.3 in the same period last year.
During the first quarter of 2014, consolidated digital revenues represented 46.6% of total revenues, up from 39.1% during the same period in 2013.
Print revenues decreased in the quarter almost 23% year-over-year to reach $119.3 million.
Yellow Media competes with big search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing as well as small digital companies to attract consumers who are the Internet to search for businesses and services.
“Supported by a healthier capital structure, the first phase of our transformation established a solid digital foundation for us to build upon,” CEO and president Julien Billot said in a news release on Thursday.
Yellow Media has said it will hire about 200 more employees this year and try to increase advertisers as the directories publisher continues to transform itself into a digital company.
The company has said its goal is to increase digital revenues to 50% but not at the expense of getting rid of its print directories.
Yellow Media has already expanded from business listings to digital services, including producing videos, building websites and Facebook pages for small- and medium-sized companies. That’s a long way from its beginnings in 1908 when it printed its first directory and was still part of Bell Canada.
The transition to a digital company has been difficult at times for Yellow Media. The company had a major financial restructuring in recent years, cancelled its dividend and sold some of its assets. The company also cut about 10 per cent of its workforce, mainly in jobs related to print directories.
