Hibu Inc. (styled hibü), formerly Yellowbook Inc., is a provider of digital marketing and advertising solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses across the US. Hibu’s specialties includes web development and hosting,
digital listings and
reputation
The reputation of a social entity (a person, a social group, an organization, or a place) is an opinion about that entity typically as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance.
Reputation is a ubiquitous ...
management,
search engine and
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
marketing, and
digital advertisements. Hibu is headquartered in
Cedar Rapids, IA
Cedar Rapids () is the second-largest city in Iowa, United States and is the county seat of Linn County. The city lies on both banks of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City and northeast of Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city. ...
.
History
1930–2001
Originating as a yellow pages directory publisher, Hibu got its start as a
Long Island-based company, Merchant Advertising Services Inc. in 1930. In 1949, the company formally changed its name to Yellow Book USA Inc.
In 1966,
Post Office Telecommunications
Post Office Telecommunications was set up as a separate department of the UK Post Office, in October 1969. The Post Office Act 1969 was passed to provide for greater efficiency in post and telephone services; rather than run a range of services, ...
– a division of the UK
General Post Office, launched the first UK Yellow Pages classified directory in
Brighton, Sussex. Yellow Pages were rolled out across the UK by 1973, and became the first information provider on
Prestel
Prestel (abbrev. from press telephone), the brand name for the UK Post Office Telecommunications's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979. It achieved a maxim ...
.
Yellow Pages became a separately identified business within British Telecommunications, now renamed to BT Group after British Telecommunications was privatized in 1984. The red fronted ''Business Pages'' launched in 1985 in
Bristol
Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...
and
South Wales, and the telephone directory enquiries information service ''Talking Pages'' was piloted in
Brighton and
Bristol
Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...
from 1987, which then became known as 118 24 7 after 2003.
British Telecommunications launched
Yell.com, its UK local search engine, in 1996 and acquired YellowBook USA in 1999 for $665 million. Later, Yellow Book USA Inc. was transferred to its Yell Group subsidiary, alongside its UK yellow pages publishing business.
The Group was renamed Yell in 2000 and BT restructured in 2001 and agreed to sell the Yell directory business to private equity firms
Apax Partners
Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...
and
Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst
HM Capital Partners was a private equity firm in the United States that specialized in leveraged buyouts. The firm was previously known as Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst. It was founded in 1989 by Tom Hicks and John Muse as Hicks, Muse & Co. and was c ...
(today operating in Europe as
Lion Capital LLP
Lion Capital LLP is a British private equity firm specialising in investments in the consumer sector. Previous and current consumer brands owned by Lion have included Weetabix, Jimmy Choo, Wagamama, Kettle Foods and AllSaints.
The firm is headq ...
) for £2.14 billion/$3.5 billion, making it then the largest non-corporate
leveraged buyout
A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money ( leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loa ...
in European history.
2001–2011
Yell bought
McLeodUSA, one of the largest independent directory publishers in the US, for about $600 million in 2002 and floated on London's
FTSE in 2003.
In May 2005, Yell announced the acquisition of TransWestern Publishing, US directory publisher. The company announced the purchase of the publisher and its holding company, TransWestern Holdings L.P., from a consortium of private equity firms (
Thomas H. Lee Partners
Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. is an American private equity firm based in Boston investing in middle market growth companies across financial technology and services, healthcare and technology & business solutions.
History
Founded in 1974 by ...
and
CIVC Partners) for $1.575 billion (£829 million). The deal went through later in the year.
With the 2003 merger of McLeodUSA business and TransWestern's presence in 25 states, Yellowbook USA, Yell's subsidiary, became the fifth largest directory publisher in the United States. TransWestern had been acquired by
CIVC Partners in 1993 and was used as a vehicle for additional acquisitions of smaller directories publishers in the western US. In 1997, TransWestern completed a
leveraged recapitalization
In corporate finance, a leveraged recapitalization is a change of the company's capital structure, usually substitution of debt for equity.
Overview
Such recapitalizations are executed via issuing bonds to raise money and using the proceeds to ...
in which
Thomas H. Lee Partners
Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. is an American private equity firm based in Boston investing in middle market growth companies across financial technology and services, healthcare and technology & business solutions.
History
Founded in 1974 by ...
and
Providence Equity Partners acquired a 60% interest in the company, with CIVC retaining a minority interest. In 2001, TransWestern acquired Texas-based WorldPages.com, Inc., a leading print and Internet yellow pages publisher listed on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
for $215 million. At the time, TransWestern was the second largest independent publisher of directories.
In April 2006, Yell agreed to purchase a 59.9% stake in Spanish phone directory firm Telefónica Publicidad e Informacion (TPI) from
Telefónica
Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadba ...
, and launched a bid for the remaining shares which valued TPI at a total of 2.3 billion (€3.3 billion; US$4.1bn). Since then, Yell has bought further capital and in September 2007 reached agreement with the minority shareholders to acquire the remaining 1.28% of what was then named Yell Publicidad (now named Hibu Connect S.A.U., operating under the name Páginas Amarillas España). In July 2006, Yell threatened
Yellowikis
Yellowikis was a MediaWiki website collecting basic information about businesses. This information included basic contact details such as company name, address, websites, and telephone numbers, as well as internal Yellowiki wikilinks to competitors ...
with legal action, claiming that people will confuse the two organisations. In 2008, Yell Group purchased the Pindar Set business and renamed it Yell Adworks.
In May 2009, Yell UK announced an alliance with
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
to provide search marketing services to small businesses, followed by Yell Publicidad in January 2010. In June 2009, Yell Group announced the appointment of
Bob Wigley
Robert (Bob) Wigley, OStJ, BSc, HonDBA, FCA, CCMI, is chairman of UK Finance, Vesta Global Holdings Ltd, Vizolution Ltd and is an investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is author of a book about the effects of technology on Gen Z, ''Born D ...
as Chairman, following the announcement in May 2009, that existing chairman Bob Scott would step down. In September 2009, Yell's US arm, Yellowbook, acquired Texas and Louisiana assets of ypOne Publishing, the 10th largest independent yellow pages publisher in the US. Yell announced the completion of its refinancing in November 2009, as first announced in June 2009 and updated in September the same year.
In February 2010, Yell UK announced the first major redesign in forty years of the traditional
Yellow Pages
The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for ...
directories into a smaller compact size rather than the traditional A4 format.
In May 2010, Yell Group purchased TrustedPlaces, a user-contributed local
review site
A review site is a website on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic ...
, and its US arm Yellowbook, announced the launch of a new
group buying website called Weforia.com in August 2010.
2011–present
Several management changes were made in 2011.
In July 2011, Yell announced the acquisition of Znode, the privately owned multi-store ecommerce company and strategic alliances on digital services for small businesses with both
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
and
Bazaarvoice
Bazaarvoice is a technology company based in Austin, Texas, that provides software that allows brands and retailers to collect and display several types of user-generated content (UGC) on their e-commerce websites. Bazaarvoice's services include� ...
. On 14 July, Yell announced a four-year plan to move away from traditional print and online advertising and focus on providing a broader range of digital services for both small businesses and consumers.
In September 2011, Yell announced an alliance with mobile platform company Netbiscuits.
In 2011 the company reported spending £160 million on interest payments and incurring losses of £1.4 billion.
In May 2012, Yell announced that it was changing its name to Hibu, pronounced "high-boo". The company's shareholders approved the change of name at its annual general meeting held on 27 July 2012, and the new name became effective from 30 July 2012.
The company continued to acquire additional companies, with
Moonfruit
Moonfruit was a UK-based company that offered a website building service.
History
Moonfruit was launched in January 2000 during the dot-com bubble, and was supported entirely by advertisements.
When the bubble burst, it became a subscription-b ...
, a DIY website company, purchased in May 2012 for £18m.
In September 2012, it warned that it is working with a number of capital options that which may attribute little or no value to the group’s ordinary shares, it also warned profits would miss forecasts owing to the ongoing decline of its directory business.
As part of a strategic review of the business, in Spring 2014 Hibu decided to discontinue its US magazine business, having taken similar actions in the UK, Spain, and Latin America.
On 3 March 2014, Hibu announced that the financial restructuring of the group is now effective following consent from lenders, clearance from the UK Pensions Regulator and court sanction. All of Hibu’s operations were transferred to a new group holding company, held privately by lenders.
On 18 August 2014, Hibu UK changed their customer-facing brand back to Yell. They re-launched with an updated range of products including websites,
pay-per-click and display advertising. As of June 2015, Yell has created over 54,000 websites and managed 20,000
PPC campaigns for customers in the UK.
In 2021, private equity investment firm
H.I.G. Capital acquired Hibu Inc. from Hibu Group Limited (now Yell Group Limited).
Operations
The company operates in the digital marketing space within the US, providing digital marketing and advertising solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses. Hibu is headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with another operations hub in
King of Prussia
The monarchs of Prussia were members of the House of Hohenzollern who were the hereditary rulers of the former German state of Prussia from its founding in 1525 as the Duchy of Prussia. The Duchy had evolved out of the Teutonic Order, a Roman C ...
, Pennsylvania.
References
External links
Official Corporate Website
{{Authority control
Apax Partners companies
Companies based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Telecommunications companies established in 2001
Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange
Companies that have entered administration in the United Kingdom
Private equity portfolio companies
Telephone directory publishing companies
Yellow pages
2021 mergers and acquisitions