Dun & Bradstreet (DNB) Banks On Acquisitions & Partnerships

The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (NYSE:DNB) holds a strong position in risk management, credit ratings, sales and marketing, e-business as well as supply-management solutions.

The company reported impressive first-quarter 2018 results, wherein earnings and revenues surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

Adjusted earnings of $1.24 per share outpaced the consensus mark by 20 cents and increased 30.5% year over year. Total revenues came in at $418.2 million, which exceeded the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $387.4 million and was up 9.6% year over year. Adjusted revenues of $384.7 million were up 0.2% from the year-ago quarter.

Also, the company’s surprise history has been impressive, having surpassed the consensus mark in each of the trailing four quarters, with an average positive surprise of 14.9%. For the second quarter, the Zacks Consensus Estimate has remained unchanged at $1.51 over the past 60 days.

So far this year, shares of Dun & Bradstreet have increased 2.7%, significantly outperforming the S&P 500’s gain of 1.9%.

Strategic Acquisitions Driving Growth

Acquisition of NetProspex and MicroMarketing in China, Bisnode in the U.K., the Irish operations (ICC), Indicee, Fliptop and Avention have expanded the company’s customer base, global presence and product portfolio. We believe that Dun & Bradstreet 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.

The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation Revenue (TTM)

Innovative Product Pipeline is a Major Positive

Dun & Bradstreet has been launching new solutions, which leverage the benefits of its data and analytics capabilities. Also, applications like Visitor Intelligence, D&B Credit and new D&B Optimizer solutions for both Microsoft and Salesforce has gained significant traction. The company has invested in security and back-end software system upgrades as well.

Partnerships Winning More Customers

Dun & Bradstreet relies on partnerships as key players have helped it bring many more customers into the fold. 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 like Sugar CRM, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Cloud for Business, the Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Wave analytics platform, Lattice Engines and KPMG (for risk management), which have high analytics demand.

Furthermore, the company has partnerships with local providers in many 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 lend customers an easy access to data.

Zacks Rank

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

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