Dun & Bradstreet Buys Fliptop - Analyst Blog

Acquisitions continue to play pivotal role in Dun & Bradstreet Corp. DNB growth trajectory. Recently, the company acquired the social data matching business of Fliptop. However, the financial details of the deal were not revealed.

Based in San Francisco, Fliptop mainly aggregates social data. It then makes use of data science to extract information.

DNB believes that with this acquisition it would be able to associate the most up-to-date social profiles with businesses in its database. This will enable customers to have a more comprehensive view of people and businesses, which in turn would help them in differentiating between leads and targets and devise a business strategy accordingly.

We believe DNB will continue to pursue strategic acquisitions and partnerships, particularly in the emerging economies that will boost its overall growth. The company has entered into partnerships with local providers in 136 countries including countries such as Japan and Italy, which have helped it to penetrate the regional market within a short span of time.

Moreover, the company has also partnered with Salesforce.com CRM to embed its solution in a customer's CRM application. Also, its alliance with SugarCRM will help SugarCRM to enlarge its data offering. It also entered into an alliance with FirstRain recently, a maker of data analytics software, DNB intends to combine Fliptop's software with that of FirstRain to create the social profiles of businesses in its database.

We believe these partnerships will help the company to expand its data-as-a-service model, which in turn will boost top-line growth going forward.

DNB's high-margin business model, strong international growth potential, emerging market growth opportunities, strategic investments, incremental cost savings and new product pipeline will drive growth over the long term.

However, increasing competition from companies including Equifax Inc. EFX, Factset Research FDS and Moody's Corp. MCO will hurt profitability going forward. Also, the company's high debt level remains a major concern in the near term.