Notwithstanding the fact that historically speaking D&B’s fourth quarter results were usually the strongest quarter of the year D&B reported disappointing Q4 revenue of U$528.3 million, up 2%.   Full year revenue was US$1,750.5 million, up 3%, prompting questions from the analysts concerning strategy and competition.

One day earlier the company announced the departure of Robert Carrigan and the appointment of Thomas Manning, a director of the Company since 2013 and Lead Director since 2016, has been appointed Chairman of the Board and interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.

During the earning call Thomas Manning stated the following:  “As for next steps, the Board is commencing a search for a permanent CEO right away. We expect to engage a leading executive search firm in the very near-term to assist in this process. The Board strongly believes that now is the right time to bring in a new CEO, and I can assure you that we are acting with urgency on this matter. We are looking for a candidate with extensive skills and experience in accelerating top and bottom line growth.

Over the last four years, we have made progress transforming this company. We’ve improved our data and analytics, developed solutions and capabilities to serve new customer use cases, and modernized our products and platforms. The Board is confident in the strategic direction of the company, and fully believes that this business can deliver sustainable mid-single-digit revenue growth and expanding margins. Our number one priority is accelerating value creation for shareholders.

We believe we should be growing revenue and profit faster. To help accelerate our progress, we engaged management consulting firm McKinsey & Company to undertake a strategic and operational review of our business to help us find ways to speed up the time to realize value. The first phase of their work validated our strategy and identified barriers to growth and cost opportunities. The next phase of their work will include a full portfolio and business assessment and we are open to considering all options for value creation that may be identified.

To further this initiative, I’m pleased to announce that we have hired David Godfrey, who previously ran Global Sales at Gartner, to advise us as we transform our go-to-market strategy and execution. Many of you may be familiar with David’s impressive work at Gartner and I look forward to working with him.

Let me summarize. We believe in the strategy. We also believe we should be growing faster. We are putting the right resources in place to speed up our success. The Board and management team are operating with urgency to enhance value for all shareholders. As I hope you can appreciate, in light of the CEO transition, as well as the 137 ongoing strategic and operational review, we will not be providing 2018 guidance today.”

Source:  D&B Earnings Release and Seeking Alpha Earnings Call Transcript