For the second time in a matter of months, Cary-based Dex One Corporation has received notification from the New York Stock Exchange Monday that it is in danger of being de-listed.

The average closing price of the yellow pages publisher's shares over the last 30 days of trading has fallen below the NYSE's minimum listing standard of $1 per share.

Dex has until its next annual shareholders meeting in May 2012 to meet the requirement.

In August, Dex was notified by the NYSE that its market capitalization - the total value of its outstanding stock - has fallen below the $100 million minimum for 30 consecutive days.

Dex One, the Cary yellow pages publisher that continues to shake up its operations to offset slower sales, today named a new chief financial officer.

Gregory Freiberg, 44, joins the company on Sept. 12. He replaces Steven Blondy, who stepped down as CFO in July. Blondy had been CFO of the company previously known as R.H. Donnelley since March 2002.

Freiberg will report to Alfred Mockett, who took over as CEO nearly a year ago. Since then, Dex One has been remaking itself into a digital business, as customers shift away from traditional print yellow pages. The economic slowdown has also hurt advertising sales, and Dex One is still losing money.

Dex One, the yellow pages publisher that's remaking itself into a digital advertising business, reported another drop in quarterly revenue this morning.

The Cary-based company has seen advertising sales slump as the economic slowdown erodes demand from small businesses.

For the current quarter, the company expects ad sales to drop as much as 15 percent.

But Dex One raised its estimate for 2011 cash flow, a measure of profit for companies with lots of debt, to $375 million to $400 million.

The company's stock, down 89 percent in the past year, fell 24 cents to close at $2.09 today.

Steven M. Blondy, the finance chief of Dex One, plans to resign from the Cary yellow pages publisher.

Blondy, 51, will step down by July 31, and the company has started a search for  a new chief financial officer, Dex One announced this morning.

He will receive a lump-sum separation fee of $2.6 million, plus other benefit payments, Dex One reported in an filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Blondy has been CFO of the company previously known as R.H. Donnelley since March 2002.

Dex One's top executive, hired last year to revive the struggling yellow pages publisher, is trying to boost its stock price by buying more shares.

CEO Alfred Mockett purchased 200,000 shares at an average price of $4.10 each, the Cary company disclosed after the close of regular stock-market trading today. That's an investment of about $820,000.

So-called insider purchases can signal to other investors that top management believes that the stock is undervalued. The company is eager to reverse the stock's sharp slide.

Dex One will pay its new CEO an annual base salary of $975,000, according to filings with the Security and Exchange Commission.

Alfred T. Mockett, who takes over as CEO and president of the Cary yellow pages publisher on Monday, will also have a chance to boost his salary with a $975,000 bonus if he meets various goals established by the company's board.

Earlier this week, the company had announced that Mockett would also receive roughly a million shares of restricted and premium-priced Dex One shares.

Mockett replaces David Swanson who retired as CEO in May after leading the company through bankruptcy. Swanson's base salary in 2009 was $960,247, but his total compensation package was valued at $7.9 million, according to regulatory filings.
 

Dex One has hired a 30-year veteran of the technology and telecommunications industry as its new CEO and president.

Alfred T. Mockett takes charge of the Cary yellow pages publisher on Sept. 13. He will also join the company's board of directors at that time.

He replaces David Swanson who retired from the company in  May.

Mockett's resume includes stints as president of Memorex Telex, a senior manager at BT Group (formerly British Telecom), chairman and CEO of American Management Systems and chairman and CEO of Motive Inc., which provides software management services to communications companies. While at Motive he helped arrange a sale of the company to Alcatel-Lucent.

Salary information is not yet available but Mockett was given 200,000 shares of restricted stock,  options on 200,000 more shares with a strike price of $9.75 and premium-priced options on another 600,000 shares with strike prices of $15, $23 and $32.

Dex One, the Cary-based yellow pages publisher, reported weaker ad sales during the second quarter and warned that the shaky economy will continue to hurt results.

The company changed its name to Dex One from R.H. Donnelley when it emerged from bankruptcy protection earlier this year. The company filed for bankruptcy to clear some of its massive debt as ad sales slumped.

During the second quarter, ad sales fell 13.4 percent. Dex One also noted that it expects ad sales to decline up to 15.5 percent for the full year, more than it previously projected. Still, those figures are an improvement from the steep declines seen during the worst of the recession.

David Swanson, Dex One's departing CEO, is leaving with a golden parachute package that could be worth more than $15 million, even though the Cary yellow pages company filed for bankruptcy last year under his watch.

The separation agreement with Swanson, whose retirement was announced last week and takes effect Friday, was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Dex changed its name from R.H. Donnelley when it emerged from bankruptcy at the end of January.

The filing also suggests Swanson, 55, was pushed – or at least nudged – into retirement by the company’s newly formed board of directors. Dex reported that its separation agreement with Swanson, agreed to last Thursday, calls for him to receive a $6.5 million lump-sum separation payment “in connection with a termination not for cause following a change of control.”

David Swanson, who ran the Cary yellow pages publisher now known as Dex One since 2002, will retire next week after steering the company through its bankruptcy reorganization.

Swanson also orchestrated moving the company's headquarters, when it was called R.H. Donnelley, to Cary from New York in 2003.

Dex One's board will begin a search for a new CEO. For now, an executive oversight committee of three directors will run the company on an interim basis: Jonathan Bulkeley, W. Kirk Liddell and Mark McEachen.

Swanson joined Donnelley in 1985 as an account executive and became CEO in May 2002.

The company was hit hard by as the recession weakened sales of yellow pages advertising, and advertisers shifted to the Internet. The company filed for bankruptcy protection last year and emerged in January as Dex One.

Dex One publishes yellow pages directories in 28 states. The company's shares fell 49 cents to $22.64 this morning.