KEY POINTS:
Yellow Pages Group has marked the end of its first year under foreign private equity ownership by unveiling what it considers a bold expansion for its online division.
Group chief executive Dudley Enoka yesterday set a timeline for innovations, with the company completing its results for the first full-year since the former Telecom division was sold to a private equity consortium last March.
Enoka declined to specify results and with the decision to drop a debt issue last year, is under no obligation to do so.
He said yesterday there were no plans to resurrect any debt issue and the withdrawal was having no impact on its online expansion.
Setting the company on an ambitious growth target, Enoka said Yellow Pages had met expectations for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
The focus for the group is online and in 12 months the Yellow online staff has grown from six to 60.
Enoka confirmed the launch of a mobile phone service using Yellow Pages content combined with a new, more powerful, platform for the Yellow online site, which starts at the end of this month.
The latter - which involved the Yellow Pages online site moving from a platform delivered by Telecom ICT division Gen-i - would provide a substantial improvement for users of the website.
The future of the Yellow advertising business is being built on a strategy of increasing the number of media that use Yellow Pages content.
Enoka said that use of the content would remain "platform agnostic".
Enoka recently appointed former Yellow Pages marketing boss Blair Glubb to head the Yellow online division.
Glubb described the online plans as "ballsy and ambitious". But print directories still make up 95 per cent of Yellow Pages revenue and New Zealand still led the world in the growth of revenue from print directories.
Advertising revenue figures in 2007 showed the share of advertising revenue for the top three media fell slightly with newspapers taking 31.8 per cent, television 25.2 per cent and radio 10.6 per cent.
Yellow Pages Group maintained its 10 per cent share of advertising revenue, supplanting magazines as the fourth most lucrative advertising medium.
The only other media to increase its share was interactive and that included Yellow Pages online material.
Enoka said that the resilience of print was partly due to New Zealand's relatively slow uptake of broadband, though Aucklanders were using online content more than others.
Glubb said the company was planning improvements to the White Pages online directories which were due to start in October.
He said there was potential for greater revenue potential from White Pages online directories, but it was less immediate than those for Yellow.
He said there was particular potential for the Yellow Pages to be developed from their present role directing people to information, towards "booking and buying".
This was already established for partnerships with businesses in industries such as tourism and was being developed in real estate. The company saw growth potential from small to medium businesses.
Enoka had not made any direct approaches to large retailers - many of which have already developed their online presence.
Yellow Pages Group has appointed David Stewart as its new chief financial officer. Stewart, 38, is currently chief financial officer and deputy CEO for Orange Slovakia.
