Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE: DNB) is a public company headquartered in Short Hills, New Jersey, USA that provides information on businesses and corporations for use in credit decisions, B2B marketing and supply chain management. Often referred to as D&B, the company maintains information about more than 150 million companies worldwide.
The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B), incorporated in 2000, is the source of commercial information and insight on businesses, enabling customers to Decide with Confidence. As of December 31, 2010, its global commercial database contained more than 188 million business records. The database is enhanced by its DUNSRight Quality Process. D&B provides solution sets. Customers use D&B Risk Management Solutions, D&B Sales & Marketing Solutions and D&B Internet Solutions. The Company operates in three segments: North America, which consisted of its operations in the United States and Canada; Asia Pacific, which consisted of its operations in Australia, Japan and China, and Europe and other international markets, which primarily consists of its operations in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and Latin America. On August 31, 2010, it acquired a 100% interest in Dun and Bradstreet Australia Holdings Limited (D&B Australia). In July 2010, the Company announced that it acquired the North American Credit-on-Self division, also known as the Self Awareness Solutions (SAS) operating unit, of D&B.
Risk Management Solutions
During the year ended December 31, 2010, Risk Management Solutions was D&B’s customer solution set, which accounted for 62% of its total revenue. Within this customer solution set it offers solutions. Its solutions include DNBi based business offering and reports from its database used primarily for making decisions about new credit applications. Its other solutions support automated decision-making and portfolio management through the use of scoring and integrated software solutions.
DNBi is a customizable online application that offers its customers access to the Company’s global DUNSRight information, monitoring and portfolio analysis. D&B’s Risk Management Solutions also includes various business information reports, such as its Business Information Report, Comprehensive Report and International Report, that are consumed in a transactional manner across multiple platforms, such as DNB.com. eRAM is an enterprise solution for global and domestic customers for automated decisioning and portfolio analytics. Some solutions are available on a subscription pricing basis, such as its Preferred Pricing Agreement with DNBi.
Sales & Marketing Solutions
During 2010, Sales & Marketing Solutions was D&B’s customer solution set accounted for 29% of its total revenue. Within this customer solution set, D&B offers solutions. Its solutions consist of marketing lists, labels and customized data files used by its customers in their direct mail and marketing activities. The Company’s solutions also include decision-making and customer information management solutions. Its solutions for Customer Data Integration include a suite of solutions that cleanse, identify, link and provide customer information with its DUNSRight Quality Process. Its D&B Optimizer solution uses its DUNSRight Quality Process for marketing and billing databases and better enabling a customer to make sales and marketing decisions. D&B’s Direct Marketing Lists benefits from its DUNSRight Quality Process to enable its customers to create a marketing campaign.
Internet Solutions
The Company’s Internet Solutions business provides products that address the online sales and marketing needs of professionals and businesses, including information on companies, industries and executives, integration tools that bring this information into the day-to-day workflow of its customers, and research and advice regarding starting up and managing a business. Internet Solutions represent the results of its Hoover’s business, and includes the AllBusiness.com division. During 2010, Internet Solutions accounted for 7% of the Company’s total revenue. Hoover’s provides information on public and private companies, and on industries and executives, sales, marketing and research professionals worldwide. The database includes industry and company briefs, information on competitors, corporate financials, executive contact information, current news, including social media and research, family trees, and contact information, including biographies. Hoover’s subscribers primarily access the data online through Hoover’s Online and AccessHoover’s, which is a customer relationship management integration solution.
AllBusiness com is an online media and e-commerce company that leverages its publishing platform and a range of content to help users run their small businesses. AllBusiness.com operates one of the business information sites on the Internet. D&B’s principal Internet Solutions include subscription solutions delivered online through Hoover’s Online, such as Researcher, Prospector, Relationship Manager, Executive and its First Research industry data solution, and through electronic data feeds, and its advertising and e-marketing solutions provided through and related Internet sites. Its Internet Solutions also include Licensing of Hoover’s content to third-party content providers.
The Company competes with Equifax, Inc., Experian Information Solutions, Inc. (Experian), Experian and infoGROUP (infoUSA), Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch, Inc, Coface, Sinotrust and Teikoku Data Bank (TDB).
In 1999, the D&B operating company established strategic alliances to integrate D&B information into business systems and processes. Through new partnerships with such enterprise software companies as SAP AG of Germany, SAS Institute, Siebel Systems, and Oracle Corporation, D&B sought opportunities to embed its data into customers' system software and position itself amid the rising current of e-commerce. Also in 1999, D&B launched a new Internet business, eccelerate.com, designed to leverage D&B's worldwide database of 57 million companies for online business-to-business transactions. A subsequent alliance between eccelerate.com and VeriSign, Inc., the preeminent provider of Internet trust services around the world, further strengthened D&B's online position by providing its customers with optimum information security on the Web. D&B's strides into e-commerce paid off, as revenue from Internet-related business reached $100 million in 1999, a 150 percent increase from the preceding year. By comparison with 1998, however, 1999 was a disappointing year for the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. While Moody's continued to produce phenomenal results, boasting a fourth consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth, the D&B operating company underperformed, causing the parent company to fall short of its earnings goals.
In 2000, then, the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation split in two again, spinning off Moody's Investors Service as an independent, publicly traded company. It was then incumbent on the D&B operating company to spearhead improved earnings, particularly through the aggressive expansion of its Internet presence. To transform the company and meet its strategic goals for the coming three years--which included a 10 percent increase in earnings per share--D&B created a "Blueprint for Growth" that focused on five major objectives: leveraging the D&B brand as the most trusted source of business information; creating financial flexibility by improving efficiency at all levels of operation, thereby freeing up $100 million for investment in B2B e-commerce and other ventures; enhancing its current business by creating deeper and broader market penetration among its current base of multinational customers, among small businesses, and on the Web; becoming a key player in B2B e-commerce with the aim of deriving 80 percent of its total revenue from Internet-related business by 2004; building a winning culture by honing company objectives, increasing individual and team accountability; and improving corporate leadership.
During 2001, as the Blueprint for Growth came into full swing, the company acquired Harris InfoSource International, Inc., a privately held company noted for its national database of in-depth manufacturer profiles. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet, Harris InfoSource would significantly strengthen D&B's portfolio of sales and marketing products and services. Also that year, toward the goal of better leveraging the Dun & Bradstreet brand, the company officially changed its name to D&B, the already familiar acronym, launching a new logo along with the tagline, "Decide with Confidence." As a result of these and other initiatives, the company achieved earnings per share (EPS) growth of 16.7 percent for the year, well above its stated goal. Further, its revenue from Internet business reached 33 percent, up from 17 percent in 2000.
D&B's performance only improved in 2002, as the company continued to expand the range of its value-added products, investing in signature tools and services including "Global DecisionMaker," "Portfolio Management Solutions," and "Data Integration Toolkit." In 2002, D&B delivered EPS growth of 26 percent, while the company's revenue from Internet business soared to 65 percent. In February 2003, the company further strengthened its complement of products with the $119 million acquisition of Hoover's, a prominent provider of information on private and publicly traded companies through its website, Hoovers.com. Having increased its worldwide database from 60 to 79 million companies in the course of just two years, D&B's Blueprint for Growth promised to yield gratifying results for the company and its shareholders for the foreseeable future.
Principal Subsidiaries: Hoover's, Inc.; Harris InfoSource International, Inc.
Principal Competitors: Acxiom Corporation; Equifax Inc.; infoUSA Inc.
OVERALL
Beta: 0.54
Market Cap (Mil.): $4,107.66
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 49.58
Annual Dividend: 1.44
Yield (%): 1.74
FINANCIALS
DNB Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 16.35 28.23 23.16
EPS (TTM): 1.76 -- --
ROI: -- 9.65 4.64
ROE: -- 11.41 9.30
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1933 as R.G. Dun-Bradstreet Corporation
Employees: 6,600
Sales: $1.3 billion (2002)
Stock Exchanges: New York London Tokyo Geneva Zurich Basel
Ticker Symbol: DNB
NAIC: 511140 Database and Directory Publishers; 523999 Miscellaneous Financial Investment Activities; 561450 Credit Bureaus
Key Dates:
1841: Lewis Tappan founds a credit information bureau called the Mercantile Agency.
1849: Another credit information bureau, the Bradstreet Company, is founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, by John Bradstreet, a lawyer and merchant.
1855: Bradstreet moves to New York, placing itself in direct competition with the Mercantile Agency.
1859: The Mercantile Agency is sold to Robert Graham Dun, who changes the company's name to R.G. Dun & Company; the company publishes its first reference book of credit information, the Dun Book.
1876: The Bradstreet Company incorporates under the leadership of Henry Bradstreet, the founder's son.
1931: The firm reorganizes into a holding company called R.G. Dun Corporation, controlling the assets of its newly acquired credit-reporting service, National Credit Office (NCO), and the original R.G. Dun & Company.
1933: R.G. Dun & Company merges with the Bradstreet Company, becoming R.G. Dun-Bradstreet Corporation.
1939: The merged company changes its name to Dun and Bradstreet, Inc.
1942: The company acquires Credit Clearing House, a credit-reporting agency that specializes in the clothing industry.
1958: The company begins operating its own private wire network, linking 79 of its major offices and allowing credit information to be handled more expeditiously.
1961: Dun & Bradstreet acquires R.H. Donnelley Corporation, a company founded in Chicago in 1874 and best known for publishing the Yellow Pages telephone directories.
1962: The company acquires Moody's Investors Service, a provider of financial data for investors on publicly owned corporations through its series of Moody's manuals.
1973: Having acquired some 40 businesses since the launch of its expansion program in 1960, the company changes its name to the Dun & Bradstreet Companies Inc.; the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation is formed to serve as the parent company.
1996: Dun & Bradstreet divides itself into three new publicly traded corporations: Cognizant Corporation, The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, and A.C Nielsen.
1998: Dun & Bradstreet restructures again, spinning off the R.H. Donnelley Corporation.
2000: The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation splits into two companies, spinning off Moody's Investors Service.
2001: Dun & Bradstreet changes its name to D&B as part of a new corporate branding effort.
2003: D&B acquires Hoover's, Inc.
Name Age Since Current Position
Mathew, Sara 55 2010 Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Konidaris, Anastasios 44 2007 Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President
Vielehr, Byron 47 2009 President - Global Risk & Analytics
Stoeckert, George 62 2009 President, North America and Internet Solutions
Hauck, Walter 51 2008 Senior Vice President - Technology, Chief Information Officer
Hurwitz, Jeffrey 50 2007 Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary
Conti, Emanuele 43 2010 Chief Administrative Officer
Peirez, Joshua 40 2010 Chief Marketing Officer, President - Innovation
Coughlin, Christopher 58 2010 Lead Independent Director
Quinlan, Michael 66 1989 Independent Director
Seligman, Naomi 72 1999 Independent Director
Peterson, Sandra 52 2002 Independent Director
Alden, John 69 2002 Independent Director
Fernandez, James 55 2004 Independent Director
Winkler, Michael 66 2005 Independent Director
Adams, Austin 67 2007 Independent Director
Address:
103 JFK Parkway
Short Hills, New Jersey 07078
U.S.A.
The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B), incorporated in 2000, is the source of commercial information and insight on businesses, enabling customers to Decide with Confidence. As of December 31, 2010, its global commercial database contained more than 188 million business records. The database is enhanced by its DUNSRight Quality Process. D&B provides solution sets. Customers use D&B Risk Management Solutions, D&B Sales & Marketing Solutions and D&B Internet Solutions. The Company operates in three segments: North America, which consisted of its operations in the United States and Canada; Asia Pacific, which consisted of its operations in Australia, Japan and China, and Europe and other international markets, which primarily consists of its operations in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and Latin America. On August 31, 2010, it acquired a 100% interest in Dun and Bradstreet Australia Holdings Limited (D&B Australia). In July 2010, the Company announced that it acquired the North American Credit-on-Self division, also known as the Self Awareness Solutions (SAS) operating unit, of D&B.
Risk Management Solutions
During the year ended December 31, 2010, Risk Management Solutions was D&B’s customer solution set, which accounted for 62% of its total revenue. Within this customer solution set it offers solutions. Its solutions include DNBi based business offering and reports from its database used primarily for making decisions about new credit applications. Its other solutions support automated decision-making and portfolio management through the use of scoring and integrated software solutions.
DNBi is a customizable online application that offers its customers access to the Company’s global DUNSRight information, monitoring and portfolio analysis. D&B’s Risk Management Solutions also includes various business information reports, such as its Business Information Report, Comprehensive Report and International Report, that are consumed in a transactional manner across multiple platforms, such as DNB.com. eRAM is an enterprise solution for global and domestic customers for automated decisioning and portfolio analytics. Some solutions are available on a subscription pricing basis, such as its Preferred Pricing Agreement with DNBi.
Sales & Marketing Solutions
During 2010, Sales & Marketing Solutions was D&B’s customer solution set accounted for 29% of its total revenue. Within this customer solution set, D&B offers solutions. Its solutions consist of marketing lists, labels and customized data files used by its customers in their direct mail and marketing activities. The Company’s solutions also include decision-making and customer information management solutions. Its solutions for Customer Data Integration include a suite of solutions that cleanse, identify, link and provide customer information with its DUNSRight Quality Process. Its D&B Optimizer solution uses its DUNSRight Quality Process for marketing and billing databases and better enabling a customer to make sales and marketing decisions. D&B’s Direct Marketing Lists benefits from its DUNSRight Quality Process to enable its customers to create a marketing campaign.
Internet Solutions
The Company’s Internet Solutions business provides products that address the online sales and marketing needs of professionals and businesses, including information on companies, industries and executives, integration tools that bring this information into the day-to-day workflow of its customers, and research and advice regarding starting up and managing a business. Internet Solutions represent the results of its Hoover’s business, and includes the AllBusiness.com division. During 2010, Internet Solutions accounted for 7% of the Company’s total revenue. Hoover’s provides information on public and private companies, and on industries and executives, sales, marketing and research professionals worldwide. The database includes industry and company briefs, information on competitors, corporate financials, executive contact information, current news, including social media and research, family trees, and contact information, including biographies. Hoover’s subscribers primarily access the data online through Hoover’s Online and AccessHoover’s, which is a customer relationship management integration solution.
AllBusiness com is an online media and e-commerce company that leverages its publishing platform and a range of content to help users run their small businesses. AllBusiness.com operates one of the business information sites on the Internet. D&B’s principal Internet Solutions include subscription solutions delivered online through Hoover’s Online, such as Researcher, Prospector, Relationship Manager, Executive and its First Research industry data solution, and through electronic data feeds, and its advertising and e-marketing solutions provided through and related Internet sites. Its Internet Solutions also include Licensing of Hoover’s content to third-party content providers.
The Company competes with Equifax, Inc., Experian Information Solutions, Inc. (Experian), Experian and infoGROUP (infoUSA), Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch, Inc, Coface, Sinotrust and Teikoku Data Bank (TDB).
In 1999, the D&B operating company established strategic alliances to integrate D&B information into business systems and processes. Through new partnerships with such enterprise software companies as SAP AG of Germany, SAS Institute, Siebel Systems, and Oracle Corporation, D&B sought opportunities to embed its data into customers' system software and position itself amid the rising current of e-commerce. Also in 1999, D&B launched a new Internet business, eccelerate.com, designed to leverage D&B's worldwide database of 57 million companies for online business-to-business transactions. A subsequent alliance between eccelerate.com and VeriSign, Inc., the preeminent provider of Internet trust services around the world, further strengthened D&B's online position by providing its customers with optimum information security on the Web. D&B's strides into e-commerce paid off, as revenue from Internet-related business reached $100 million in 1999, a 150 percent increase from the preceding year. By comparison with 1998, however, 1999 was a disappointing year for the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. While Moody's continued to produce phenomenal results, boasting a fourth consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth, the D&B operating company underperformed, causing the parent company to fall short of its earnings goals.
In 2000, then, the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation split in two again, spinning off Moody's Investors Service as an independent, publicly traded company. It was then incumbent on the D&B operating company to spearhead improved earnings, particularly through the aggressive expansion of its Internet presence. To transform the company and meet its strategic goals for the coming three years--which included a 10 percent increase in earnings per share--D&B created a "Blueprint for Growth" that focused on five major objectives: leveraging the D&B brand as the most trusted source of business information; creating financial flexibility by improving efficiency at all levels of operation, thereby freeing up $100 million for investment in B2B e-commerce and other ventures; enhancing its current business by creating deeper and broader market penetration among its current base of multinational customers, among small businesses, and on the Web; becoming a key player in B2B e-commerce with the aim of deriving 80 percent of its total revenue from Internet-related business by 2004; building a winning culture by honing company objectives, increasing individual and team accountability; and improving corporate leadership.
During 2001, as the Blueprint for Growth came into full swing, the company acquired Harris InfoSource International, Inc., a privately held company noted for its national database of in-depth manufacturer profiles. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet, Harris InfoSource would significantly strengthen D&B's portfolio of sales and marketing products and services. Also that year, toward the goal of better leveraging the Dun & Bradstreet brand, the company officially changed its name to D&B, the already familiar acronym, launching a new logo along with the tagline, "Decide with Confidence." As a result of these and other initiatives, the company achieved earnings per share (EPS) growth of 16.7 percent for the year, well above its stated goal. Further, its revenue from Internet business reached 33 percent, up from 17 percent in 2000.
D&B's performance only improved in 2002, as the company continued to expand the range of its value-added products, investing in signature tools and services including "Global DecisionMaker," "Portfolio Management Solutions," and "Data Integration Toolkit." In 2002, D&B delivered EPS growth of 26 percent, while the company's revenue from Internet business soared to 65 percent. In February 2003, the company further strengthened its complement of products with the $119 million acquisition of Hoover's, a prominent provider of information on private and publicly traded companies through its website, Hoovers.com. Having increased its worldwide database from 60 to 79 million companies in the course of just two years, D&B's Blueprint for Growth promised to yield gratifying results for the company and its shareholders for the foreseeable future.
Principal Subsidiaries: Hoover's, Inc.; Harris InfoSource International, Inc.
Principal Competitors: Acxiom Corporation; Equifax Inc.; infoUSA Inc.
OVERALL
Beta: 0.54
Market Cap (Mil.): $4,107.66
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 49.58
Annual Dividend: 1.44
Yield (%): 1.74
FINANCIALS
DNB Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 16.35 28.23 23.16
EPS (TTM): 1.76 -- --
ROI: -- 9.65 4.64
ROE: -- 11.41 9.30
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1933 as R.G. Dun-Bradstreet Corporation
Employees: 6,600
Sales: $1.3 billion (2002)
Stock Exchanges: New York London Tokyo Geneva Zurich Basel
Ticker Symbol: DNB
NAIC: 511140 Database and Directory Publishers; 523999 Miscellaneous Financial Investment Activities; 561450 Credit Bureaus
Key Dates:
1841: Lewis Tappan founds a credit information bureau called the Mercantile Agency.
1849: Another credit information bureau, the Bradstreet Company, is founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, by John Bradstreet, a lawyer and merchant.
1855: Bradstreet moves to New York, placing itself in direct competition with the Mercantile Agency.
1859: The Mercantile Agency is sold to Robert Graham Dun, who changes the company's name to R.G. Dun & Company; the company publishes its first reference book of credit information, the Dun Book.
1876: The Bradstreet Company incorporates under the leadership of Henry Bradstreet, the founder's son.
1931: The firm reorganizes into a holding company called R.G. Dun Corporation, controlling the assets of its newly acquired credit-reporting service, National Credit Office (NCO), and the original R.G. Dun & Company.
1933: R.G. Dun & Company merges with the Bradstreet Company, becoming R.G. Dun-Bradstreet Corporation.
1939: The merged company changes its name to Dun and Bradstreet, Inc.
1942: The company acquires Credit Clearing House, a credit-reporting agency that specializes in the clothing industry.
1958: The company begins operating its own private wire network, linking 79 of its major offices and allowing credit information to be handled more expeditiously.
1961: Dun & Bradstreet acquires R.H. Donnelley Corporation, a company founded in Chicago in 1874 and best known for publishing the Yellow Pages telephone directories.
1962: The company acquires Moody's Investors Service, a provider of financial data for investors on publicly owned corporations through its series of Moody's manuals.
1973: Having acquired some 40 businesses since the launch of its expansion program in 1960, the company changes its name to the Dun & Bradstreet Companies Inc.; the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation is formed to serve as the parent company.
1996: Dun & Bradstreet divides itself into three new publicly traded corporations: Cognizant Corporation, The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, and A.C Nielsen.
1998: Dun & Bradstreet restructures again, spinning off the R.H. Donnelley Corporation.
2000: The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation splits into two companies, spinning off Moody's Investors Service.
2001: Dun & Bradstreet changes its name to D&B as part of a new corporate branding effort.
2003: D&B acquires Hoover's, Inc.
Name Age Since Current Position
Mathew, Sara 55 2010 Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
Konidaris, Anastasios 44 2007 Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President
Vielehr, Byron 47 2009 President - Global Risk & Analytics
Stoeckert, George 62 2009 President, North America and Internet Solutions
Hauck, Walter 51 2008 Senior Vice President - Technology, Chief Information Officer
Hurwitz, Jeffrey 50 2007 Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary
Conti, Emanuele 43 2010 Chief Administrative Officer
Peirez, Joshua 40 2010 Chief Marketing Officer, President - Innovation
Coughlin, Christopher 58 2010 Lead Independent Director
Quinlan, Michael 66 1989 Independent Director
Seligman, Naomi 72 1999 Independent Director
Peterson, Sandra 52 2002 Independent Director
Alden, John 69 2002 Independent Director
Fernandez, James 55 2004 Independent Director
Winkler, Michael 66 2005 Independent Director
Adams, Austin 67 2007 Independent Director
Address:
103 JFK Parkway
Short Hills, New Jersey 07078
U.S.A.