The Dun & Bradstreet (DNB) Gains From Partnerships & Buyouts

The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (NYSE:DNB) continues to hold a dominant position in risk management, credit ratings, sales and marketing, e-business as well as supply-management solutions. Moreover, the company’s focus on improving delivery of its solutions is anticipated to be a significant growth driver going ahead.

In the fourth quarter of 2017, The Dun & Bradstreet posted mixed results with earnings beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate while revenues missed the same. Adjusted earnings of $3.22 per share surpassed the consensus mark by 3.3% and increased 7.7% on year-over-year basis.

On a GAAP basis, revenues of $527 million missed the consensus mark by 1.7% and were up 1.9% year over year. On an adjusted basis and after including forex effect, total revenues came in at $528.3 million, up 2.2% year over year.

Also, the company’s surprise history has been impressive having surpassed the consensus mark in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering a positive average earnings surprise of 11.8%. For the first quarter, the Zacks Consensus Estimate moved up 6.1% over the past 60 days.

In a year’s time, shares of Dun & Bradstreet have gained 9.9%, significantly underperforming the industry’s 27.1% rally.

Partnerships Bringing in More Customers

The Dun & Bradstreet relies on partnerships as key players have helped it bring many more customers into the fold. Of late, the company also spruced up its own data-as-a-service (DaaS) capabilities to attract larger partners. This, in turn, resulted in new agreements with many industry stalwarts that have high analytics demand including Sugar CRM, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Cloud for Business, the Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Wave analytics platform, Lattice Engines and KPMG (for risk management).

The company also has partnerships with local providers in more than 136 countries, including Japan and Italy among others, which have helped it to penetrate regional markets within a relatively short span of time. Moreover, in July 2017, the company deployed Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) cloud service to provide customers easy access to data.

Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (The) Revenue (TTM)

Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (The) Revenue (TTM) | Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (The) Quote

Acquisitions Expanding Global Presence

Acquisition of NetProspex and MicroMarketing in China, Bisnode in the U.K. as well as the Irish operations (ICC), Indicee, Fliptop and Avention (2017) buyout have expanded its customer base, global presence and product portfolio. We believe that the company will continue to pursue strategic acquisitions particularly in the emerging economies of the Asia-Pacific, which should eventually drive its overall results in the long haul.

Zacks Rank

The Dun & Bradstreet has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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