President’s Message
2011 Stockholders’ Meeting
Directories Philippines Corporation

Mr. Chairman, fellow board members, fellow stockholders, good afternoon.

First of all, let me welcome the 241 DPC employees with the requisite tenure to qualify as the company’s newest stockholders. Your presence here fulfills the first part of my dream for DPC—for it to be co-owned by the people who run it. As a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur, it has been my lifelong belief that a company has the best chances for success if both management and rank-and-file have a direct stake in its future. I want DPC’s success to be everyone’s success.  To borrow a phrase from PNoy, “ngayon Kayo ang BOSS KO!”

That brings us to the obvious first question that tends to be asked in our stockholders meetings in recent years: how far are we from the success that we all so eagerly desire for DPC? And the answer to that question is what I would like to dwell on briefly in my message as your company president.

Of the wealth of data in our 2011Annual Report, I would like to direct your attention to the figures representing income from operations. These reflect, in purest form, the validity—or invalidity—of the strategic moves that we have set in place over the past five years or so. While the indicative figure for Fiscal Year 2010-2011 is at a modest level of 72 million pesos, it is significant in that it marks a turning point in our operations.  After sustaining losses in operations in three of the previous four years, we have achieved a breakthrough. And allow me to outline how DPC got to this promising point.

Again, everything boils down to our collective effort to project the new face of the DPC Yellow Pages—what I have fondly dubbed YP 2.0—in the marketplace. Today, our key publics are beginning to recognize our Yellow Pages not just as a multi-platform phone directory,but as a vital service. A service that allows our core advertisers, the small and medium enterprises (SMEs), to reach their markets cost-efficiently.A service that helps ready buyers find what they’re looking for quickly and conveniently.

The success of our YP 2.0 strategy rests on two legs. The first is ubiquity. We have to be everywhere—or at least in the key touchpoints where a buyer or seller might need us. That’s why we’ve invested in establishing a meaningful presence geographically, as well as in the electronic and mobile spaces.  By deliberately expanding our capacity to enrich our database—through the PLDT 187 service, the APPS in iPhone and Android phones, for example—we are now better able to anticipate the needs of our market. This has spawned a whole slew of value-added services that give SMEs in particular a virtual marketing and support staff which can help them grow their business.

In sum, wherever the market is, the DPC Yellow Pages will be there; whatever the market needs, we’ll be there for them, too.

This brings us to the second leg of our YP 2.0 strategy. We need to develop an honest-to-goodness service culture within DPC. That’s an essential part of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneurial company. We constantly have to know what keeps our advertisers awake at night. Their problems are our problems, and our success hinges on our ability to quickly provide solutions that would bring more customers to their shops and ultimately help them increase sales or market share.

DPC has already planted the seeds of that service culture. Last year, the entire company came together for the M.A.D. campaign, where everyone was exhorted to do his or her share in making a difference in the pursuit of our mission. We need to sustain that mindset and build on it by making a difference in the lives of sellers and buyers. Our relationship with them has to develop to a point where YP 2.0 would become indispensable to their business or to their everyday routine.

When we achieve that, our employee stockholders might just lose interest in negotiating another CBA in record time. Because, by then, you would all be the millionaires that I sincerely hope you’d become.

So, keep the faith. As a popular 1970s’ song goes, we’ve only just begun.

Thank you and good day.