R. H. Donnelley files for bankruptcy to get out of debt load.
Yellow pages directory publisher and Business.com owner R.H. Donnelly has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
R.H. Donnelley is a yellow pages publisher that saw the writing on the wall a couple years ago. It decided to grab a bigger piece of the online directory pie by plunking down $345 million for Business.com.
In a press release, the company cited the weakening economy for necessitating bankruptcy:
Our growth-through-acquisition strategy never anticipated the cataclysmic collapse of the U.S. economy and the local advertising market. As a result of these developments, earlier this year we began negotiating with our lenders to restructure our debt and provide the company with a more sustainable capital structure that reflects the current economic realities,” said David C. Swanson, chairman and CEO of R.H. Donnelley.
Marc Ostrofsky’s sale of Business.com in 1999 catapulted the domain name aftermarket to the center stage. The press widely reported the sale as $7.5M. But according to the buyer, the stock it paid for the domain ended up being redeemed for $2.0M.
[Hat dip twitter.com/richarddouglas]
bernard says
A 345M$ acquisition with a 15M$ yearly profit, that is a great .com business! 4% income financed by 2% short term money, wow I am really impressed by such a great investment.
Some foolish people buy first class real estate with absolutely no risk for these figures.
Steve M says
…and they aren’t alone.
Earlier this year, Idearc; the company that purchased the Verizon YP biz a few years ago; also filed BK.
Given the long lead time for advertising in such pring media, however (usually a year or more), these filings are more systematic of their business models than the slowed economy (though it would be interesting to find out what % of their advertisers have themselves filed BK to get out of their ad contracts).
Steve M says
Rather: symptomatic, not systematic.
Chris says
Having been in the advertising industry for years and owning several marketing businesses I can say without a doubt that any business that does not save businesses and consumers money better have a good plan. I was forced to reinvent what we were doing and the products that we carry because the bucks stopped coming in over night.
It would actually be more accurate to say that people had stopped paying for their advertising overnight…
I just don’t understand where all of these people are saying that they could not predict what was going to happen. The have been talking about the housing bubble for almost 10 years now.
Anyway, enough said on that topic. I am just glad to see this country getting back to it’s entrepreneurial and competitive roots. What we are experiencing is the death of mega corporations and the resurgence of our macro entrepreneurial economy.
There are more opportunities out there right now than there have been in 25 years. I just wish that I could take advantage of more of them…
lebo Kambule says
Unbelieveable… this is what I love about the domain industry.