09:18 AM EST, 02/13/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Yellow Pages (Y.TO), a Canadian digital media and marketing company, on Thursday reported a drop in net income for the fourth quarter, not helped by revenue pressures.

Net income for the three-month period ended December 31 fell to $2.7 million from $12.2 million for the same period last year. The decrease is linked principally to the decrease in adjusted EBITDA and higher taxes.

Diluted income per share of $0.20 was down from $0.71 a year earlier, and basic income per share of $0.20 was down from $0.72.

Total revenues in the quarter decreased 8.1% to $51.4 million as compared to $55.9 million for the same period the previous year. The company attributed the decrease in revenue mainly to the decline of higher margin digital media and print products and to a lesser extent to lower margin digital services products, thereby creating pressure on its gross profit margins.

Total digital revenues decreased 7.2% and amounted to $42.0 million during the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to $45.3 million for the same period last year. The revenue decline is mainly attributable to a decrease in digital customer count and to a lesser extent, a decrease in the average spend per customer.

Total print revenues decreased 11.5% to $9.4 million during the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to $10.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. The revenue decline was mostly attributable to decreases in the number of print customers while the spend per customer has improved year-over-year driven by price increases.

But the decline rate for total revenues, digital revenues and print revenues all improved during the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to the same period last year. The improvements were partly due to the deceleration of the customer count decline rate fueled by an increase in new customer acquisitions partially offset by an increase in churn. In addition, 2023 decline rates were negatively impacted by customer claim rates remaining stable in 2023, while 2022 benefited from a substantial improvement in customer claims.

Among other highlights, Adjusted EBITDA decreased to $8.2 million or 16.0% of revenues in Q4 2024, relative to $16.2 million or 29.1% of revenues for the same period last year. It said the decrease in Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin was the result of revenue pressures, the ongoing investments in its tele-sales force capacity, higher bad debt expense, the impact of the company's share price on cash settled stock-based compensation expense and the nature of Information Technology spend, whereby more of the expense was classified as operating rather than capital, partially offset by price increases, the efficiencies from optimization in cost of sales and reductions in other operating costs including reductions in its workforce and associated employee expenses

Shares in Yellow Pages edged up $0.04 at $11.20 yesterday.