The Yellow Pages Group has recorded a net loss after tax of $338 million for its financial year ended June 30.

The directories company recorded a $61 million net loss after tax in the previous year.

It operating loss was $56.5 million, against a $152 million operating profit for the 2008 financial year.

Speaking to NBR after the privately-held, overseas-owned group’s result was filed with the Companies Office today, Yellow chief executive Bruce Cotterill said he was “pretty pleased about the result in the context of the market.”

Mr Cotterill, a former ACP Media MD and chairman of Noel Lemming who became Yellow CEO in February, said the group had been hit by a number of one-off costs.

These included a $195 million goodwill impairment. The chief executive said the write-down had been necessitated by the global meltdown, and compared it to similar adjustments made by Infratil and MediaWorks.

The group, which inherited a $1.7 billion debt when spun-off from Telecom in 2007, also had to pay $191 million in interest.

And it also took a hit on interest rate swaps after year-end rates ended ahead of where the group had estimated them to be. CFO David Stewart told NBR that $155.4 million in losses related to this financial instrument in FY 2009 would be reversed as interest rates rose, as they had begun to in the current financial year.

There were also continued costs associated with extracting IT systems from Telecom, and creating new admin systems for Yellow, including HR. Mr Stewart said the 2009 financial year was the last year the group would bear such transition costs.

Putting the one off items to the side, and adding full-year results from Yellow’s Finda division (bought from APN in February for an undisclosed sum), Mr Cotterill puts forward a sunnier “proforma” ebitda profit of $166 million - up 0.6% on the previous year by this measure.

The chief executive also points out that despite the recession, reported revenue edged up by $4 million to $297 million.

Revenue of the print edition was down 1.6%, but online revenue (including both yellow.co.nz and finda.co.nz ) rose 43.9%.

However, online operations as a whole still form a relatively most 9.5% of the group's total revenue.

The 2010 financial year is shaping up to be as tough as 2009 financial year, Mr Cotterill said. The first three months of the new financial year have seen the print edition flat and online growth slow. The chief executive won’t give a figure for web-based advertising, but says it is still “in the double digits.”

While the recession hit TV and newspapers almost immediately, the small-to-medium businesses that dominate Yellow’s listings have been slower to feel the pinch, said Mr Cotterill, with some only now beginning to tighten belts as they juggle expenses.