NEW YORK — AT&T Inc. on Monday said it agreed to sell a majority stake in its Yellow Pages business to the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital for $950 million.
The sale is part of AT&T’s strategy to jettison shrinking parts of its business so it can focus on segments that are growing, particularly its wireless business.
Revenue from the Yellow Pages unit has shrunk 30 percent in two years, as consumers continue to shun phone books in favor of the Web.
“It is a sensible step,” Craig Moffett, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst in New York, wrote in a report. “Unfortunately for AT&T, however, the transaction is barely material, either in the proceeds it returns or in the change it portends to AT&T’s overall growth rate.”
Phone books were once a cash cow, generating reliable profits as businesses paid for ads that were right under consumer’s fingertips as they were looking for local stores and services. Even with the steep revenue decline, AT&T’s Yellow Pages unit has been profitable before impairment charges for the last three years.
Profitable but shrinking businesses generally sit poorly with public companies who want to show shareholders that they’re growing. Private-equity firms don’t have to please public shareholders and are happy to make money from dwindling assets.
AT&T, the country’s largest phone company, is following in the footsteps of Verizon Communications Inc., the second-largest, in cutting its exposure in the phone-book business. Verizon spun off its directory business to shareholders in 2006, only to see it file for bankruptcy three years later.
Cerberus is paying AT&T $750 million in cash and a $200 million note, plus a 47percent stake in YP Holdings LLC which will oversee the business.
Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said the sale price was low relative to Yellow Pages’ earnings, but the deal is still a sensible one for AT&T, in terms of its strategy.
The sale affects 8,400 employees, and is expected to close midyear. AT&T said it expects it to have a minimal effect on this year’s earnings.
Shares of Dallas-based AT&T Inc. fell 30 cents, or 1 percent, to close at $30.64, in line with a decline in the broader market. In the past year, shares have traded between $27.29 and $31.97.
The assets being sold include 1,200 printed Yellow Pages editions in 22 states, plus websites like yellowpages.com and a mobile app. Together, they generated revenue of $3.3 billion last year, about 3 percent of AT&T’s overall revenue.
The sale excludes the recently formed AT&T Ad-Works, which sells advertising offerings across online,mobile and TV.
Information for this article was contributed by Scott Moritz of Bloomberg News.
Business, Pages 21 on 04/10/2012