Yellow Pages Q1 2024 Earnings Report

Yellow Pages EPS Results

• Actual EPS: C$0.61
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Yellow Pages Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $54.97 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Yellow Pages Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2024
• Date: 5/9/2024
• Time: N/A
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 9, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

Yellow Pages (TSE:Y) Ltd is a media and marketing solutions company in Canada, offering small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) services to help them connect with local consumers. The company has two reportable segments namely Yellow Pages and Other. It generates maximum revenue from the Yellow Pages segment.

Yellow Pages Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Q1 revenue decreased 12.3% year-over-year to $55 M, an improvement from the 13.4% decline in Q4 2023, indicating the bending of the revenue curve toward stability.
• Adjusted EBITDA fell 26.3% to $15.3 M with the EBITDA margin compressing to 27.8% from 33.1% due to revenue pressures and product mix shifts.
• Cash on hand reached approximately $27 M at end-April after seasonal disbursements, and the Board declared a $0.25 per share dividend payable June 17, 2024.
• New account wins were 20% higher year-over-year, driven by continued expansion of the sales force, while customer churn rates improved.
• Small-business insolvencies in Canada rose 87% year-over-year in Q1, highlighting persistent macroeconomic headwinds in the SMB market.

Presentation

[Operator]

Morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Yellow Pages' first quarter 2024 earnings release call. Today's conference call contains forward-looking information about Yellow Pages' outlook, objectives, and strategy. The statements are based on assumptions and are subject to important risks and uncertainties. Yellow Pages' actual results could differ materially from expectations discussed. The details of Yellow Pages' caution regarding forward-looking information, including key assumptions and risks, can be found in Yellow Pages' Management's Discussion and Analysis for the first quarter of 2024. This call is being recorded and webcast, and all of the disclosure documents are available on the company's website and on SEDAR+. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. David Eckert, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on our quarter one analyst call. As usual, today I am joined by Sherilyn King, our Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service, and by Franco Sciannamblo, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'll make a few comments, and then Frank will provide some additional detail on our results for the quarter, and then we'll be happy to take any questions you might have. First, I'm actually very pleased with our results of the quarter. We resumed this quarter. We resumed our march toward stability of revenue as our rate of change in revenue was better than the rate of change reported for the previous quarter, fourth quarter 2023. This is despite continued headwinds in the Canadian economy. Also pleased with our strong earnings. As usual, we produced a good result there.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Our Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was 27.8% of revenue, even with our continued significant investments in various revenue initiatives, including the steady further expansion of our sales force, which we think is key and we know is key to our long-term success. As a result, we finished the quarter and actually finished the month of April with a healthy cash balance, even after some typical seasonal quarterly cash disbursements. During the first quarter, cash on hand at the end of April was about CAD 27 million. I also continue to be pleased with our progress on our revenue initiatives and a lot of underlying metrics there. We have a good result in the rate of gaining new accounts, size of our sales force, our rate of customer churn.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

In particular, the first of those gaining new accounts was 20% higher than what we had in the previous year, and that is the result of our continued investments toward reaching and then going beyond stability of revenue. Also, as usual, our pension plan funding remains on track, consistent with our deficit reduction plan that we announced three years ago. In the first quarter of 2024, we made a CAD 1.5 million voluntary set of incremental payments toward our defined benefit pension plans' wind-up deficit. Finally, as we have consistently, yesterday our board of directors declared a dividend of CAD 0.25 per common share to be paid on June 17th, 2024.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

One reason I'm particularly pleased and gratified this quarter is because we've been able to return to our favorable, what we call favorable, bending of the revenue curve despite the magnitude of the headwinds in the Canadian economy in the sector that we sell into, small and medium-sized businesses. It is noteworthy, I think, that as reported in the Globe and Mail just a few days ago, business insolvencies in Canada have risen to levels, I'm quoting them now, "not seen since the Great Recession," and that Globe and Mail reported they have surged over 87% year-over-year in the first quarter. This is something that may be unique to Canada, and we certainly are seeing the effects of that. The good news from my point of view is this is obviously something that's not going to continue forever, and we think we're doing a good job working through it.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

All in all, a good quarter, and let me pass the baton here to Franco to provide some additional details for you. Thank you.

[Franco Sciannamblo, SVP and CFO at Yellow Pages]

Thanks, David, and good morning, everyone. Let me take you through our financial results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2024. Let me start with revenues. They decreased by CAD 7.7 million or 12.3% year-over-year and amounted to CAD 55 million for the quarter, an improvement from the decrease of 13.4% reported last quarter, as David just mentioned. The 12% year-over-year decrease in revenues is mainly due to the decline of our higher margin digital media and print products and to a lesser extent to our lower margin digital services products, thereby creating pressure on our gross profit margins. Digital revenues decreased 11.9% year-over-year and amounted to CAD 43.7 million for the three-month period ended March 31st, 2024, an improvement from the decrease of 12.1% reported last quarter.

[Franco Sciannamblo, SVP and CFO at Yellow Pages]

The year-over-year decline was mainly attributable to a decrease in digital customer count and to a lesser extent the decrease in spend per customer. Print revenues decreased 13.9% year-over-year and amounted to CAD 11.3 million for the quarter. The decline in revenue was mainly attributable to the decrease in the number of print customers, while the spend per customer has improved year-over-year driven by price increases. The decline rate of total revenues increased year-over-year. The higher decline rate is attributable in part to the headwinds in the global economy, as David alluded to, whereby customer renewal rates decreased slightly but remained strong, while the average spend per customer slowed as customers looked to optimize their spend. In addition, customer claims rate remained stable in the first quarter of 2024, while the first quarter of 2023 benefited from a substantial improvement.

[Franco Sciannamblo, SVP and CFO at Yellow Pages]

These factors were partially offset by an increase in the number of accounts and increases in pricing. On Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, it was impacted by the pressures from lower revenue, change in product mix, and continued investments in our telesales capacity, partially offset by price increases, efficiencies from optimizations of cost of sales, and reductions in other operating costs, including reductions in our workforce and associated employee expenses. As a result, Adjusted EBITDA decreased year-over-year by CAD 5.5 million or 26.3% to CAD 15.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased to 27.8% compared to 33.1% for the same period last year. Revenue pressures, partially offset by continued optimization, will continue to cause pressure on margins in upcoming quarters. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter decreased by CAD 5.5 million year-over-year to CAD 14.3 million, mainly due to the decrease in Adjusted EBITDA.

[Franco Sciannamblo, SVP and CFO at Yellow Pages]

On net income, it decreased to CAD 8.4 million for the first quarter of 2024 compared to CAD 12.4 million for the same period last year due to lower Adjusted EBITDA. Our workforce as of March 31st stood at 613 employees compared to 656 at the same date last year. Consistent with our deficit reduction plan announced in May 2021, during the first quarter of 2024, the company made CAD 1.5 million involuntary incremental cash contribution to the pension plans wind-up deficit. As David mentioned, even after certain seasonal cash disbursements during the first quarter, our cash on hand at the end of April stood at approximately CAD 27 million. The board has declared a cash dividend of CAD 0.25 per common share payable on June 17th to shareholders of record as of May 28th, 2024. This concludes our formal remarks.

[Franco Sciannamblo, SVP and CFO at Yellow Pages]

Thank you for taking the time to join us this morning. We will now take your questions. Back to you, Giselle.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now take questions from the telephone lines. If you have a question, please press star one on your device's keypad. You may answer your question at any time by pressing star two. Please press star one at this time if you have a question. There will be a brief pause while participants register for questions. Thank you for your patience. We'll take the first question from Tom Zhang, private investor. Please go ahead. Mr. Zhang, your line is open. I'm sorry, but we cannot hear you. Mr. Tom Zhang from private investor, please open your microphone.

Yes. Thank you. Can you hear me now?

[Operator]

Yes. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you for taking my call. Under the current pension deficit reduction plan, after making the CAD 1.5 million payments, which I think will be made in Q2, Q3, and Q4 this year, can you confirm that there would be no more payments that would be required under the plan? And otherwise, do you expect that there would be further pension contributions that would have to be made under a new plan, or could the plan actually be in a surplus position? And if there should be no requirement to make further contributions, that would free up a lot of cash compared to how much you were paying in 2022 and 2023. Could you speak a little bit about what your plans for that cash would be?

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Yeah. First, we're already complying with the relevant rules, regulations, and laws, and the health of our defined benefit plan already does not require us to be making any contributions to the plan. We have been making the contributions, though, that you refer to, a large amount of contributions in recent years on a voluntary basis and consistent with the deficit reduction plan that we put in place and announced three years ago. So even the CAD 1.5 million that you refer to and a lot of other contributions we made have been voluntarily put into the plan to strengthen the health of the plan.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

It is true that once we wrap up this year's contributions, all of the contributions that we had planned to make as a part of that voluntary program will have been put in either on time or, in many cases, many years sooner than we had said we would. I don't know of any reason now why that won't continue to be the case. We believe the plan to be in significantly stronger territory by a large margin than it ever has been in the reviewable past. The monies that have been going in there then obviously will stay in the treasury and be available for whatever other uses we have. Our strategy for using cash remains unchanged, and I don't see or foresee any change in our strategy.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Our strategy has always been that our first priority, well, our first priority obviously is to meet whatever legal obligations there are, and we've always done that. Our second priority is to invest whatever we think is reasonably needed to move ourselves forward on our strategy of making the company strong and well-situated for the future. We've been doing that completely to the full extent that we think reasonable. Then beyond that, we always keep an eye out for what should be to the extent we have additional funds where those can best be deployed. I remind you that in each of the last two calendar years, we have had, under a court-supervised plan of arrangement, very large distributions of cash to our shareholders through those plans of arrangement.

Okay. And just to clarify, should, after the next actual review, there is a surplus in the plan, you would be able to access that surplus of cash?

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

So let me be very clear. I did not mean to say, and I don't think I did say, that there is a surplus. And we, of course, can make no prediction about what the status of the plan will be, but it is undeniably right now in much better condition than it was in the past. My understanding of the, I'm not the expert on the relevant laws, but we're not looking to any scenarios where we, the company, take money back out of the defined benefit pension plan. That's not something that we're looking at. I'm not going to state what I think the law is, but just say that's not something that we have even contemplated nor do I anticipate that we'll be discussing.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

What probably will change is that in every recent year, we have made contributions into the defined benefit pension plan, cash contributions from the company, from our spare cash into that plan. It looks like we will be finished making those, both required ones and voluntary ones. It looks like we'll be finished making those by the end of this current calendar year.

Okay. Thanks for clarifying that. Just one more question. I noticed your Q1 revenues were almost essentially flat versus Q4 2023. Could you speak to what would be the cause of that? Is it due to the revenue initiatives, the new accounts, higher pricing? And is that something we could look forward to throughout the year? Because that would certainly look very good when it comes to what you call bending of the revenue curve decline.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Yeah. I'm not sure I understood the first part of the question. Let me see if I caught it. As we mentioned, the rate of change of our revenue in this quarter that we're reporting, the first quarter, is still a decline, but it's a better rate of change than what we had in the previous quarter. And frankly, for four quarters in a row, we had had what I call the revenue curve bending in the wrong direction as we faced the headwinds. We are very pleased. And previous to that, we had had, I think, 16 quarters in a row with only two quarters of exception right when COVID hit, when what I call the revenue curve had been bending in the right direction.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

In other words, each quarter, the rate of change of revenue had been better than that same measure the quarter before. What we see now is that this quarter we're reporting on right now, the first quarter of 2024, we have resumed the march in the proper direction, in the good direction toward stability of revenue. We make no firm predictions about the future, but we feel like we've resumed our march with the revenue curve going in the proper direction, in the good direction, and toward stability of revenue in spite of still really strong headwinds, as I alluded to in talking about the business insolvencies. I believe that the reason that we've been able to resume that upward march is because we see strong results in the underlying metrics, some of which I referred to in my earlier comments.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

We see strong results in the underlying metrics, not just kind of one-time any kind of one-time thing. So does that help answer your question?

Yeah. Thank you for your answers. I'll turn it back.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Thank you. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Once again, please press star one on your device keypad if you have a question. The next question is from Simon Tye, private investor. Please go ahead.

Hi there. My question on the pension plan was asked by the prior investor. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

There are no further questions registered at this time. I would now like to turn everything back over to you, Mr. David Eckert.

[David Eckert, President and CEO at Yellow Pages]

Okay. We thank you all for joining us this quarter. We appreciate your continued interest and support, and we look forward to talking with you again in approximately 90 days. Take care, and we'll see you soon. Bye now.

[Operator]

Thank you. The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.

Participants

Executives

• David Eckert, President and CEO
• Franco Sciannamblo, SVP and CFO

Analysts