“Dun & Bradstreet, or D&B, has made remarkable progress in improving its operations in a very short period of time,” Cannae Chairman Bill Foley said Feb. 21 during the investment company’s quarterly conference call. Cannae led an investment consortium that bought the business data firm for $6.9 billion last year.
Foley said under Cannae’s leadership, Dun & Bradstreet has achieved $208 million in annual cost savings and increased fourth-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by about 18%.
“Dun & Bradstreet’s just another example of the application of the Bill Foley playbook that we’ve been telling the investors about,” Cannae CEO Rick Massey said in the conference call. “In Dun & Bradstreet, Bill found the deal, put the balance sheet together, raised the capital, found the management team, installed them into their spots, found massive operating synergies and now Dun & Bradstreet is achieving growth,” he said.
Cannae last month said Dun & Bradstreet filed a confidential registration statement with the SEC for a potential initial public offering. That wasn’t addressed in the conference call.
Analyst downgrades Black Knight on its valuation
Foley also is chairman of another Fidelity spinoff, Jacksonville-based mortgage technology company Black Knight Inc. Black Knight invested in Dun & Bradstreet along with Cannae and in part because of the value of that investment, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Bose George last week raised his price target for Black Knight’s stock from $72 to $80. But with the stock trading at $76.10 at the time of his report, George downgraded his rating on Black Knight from “outperform” to “market perform.” “While we remain broadly positive on the business, we are downgrading the shares to Market Perform purely on valuation given just 5% upside to our new target,” George said in his report.
Source: Jaxdailyrecord (Scroll down to reach the article)
