The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-01-29 10:37:17.0

Tags: Dun & Bradstreet Software, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Financials, Call Transcript, Earnings, Sales Strategy, Operational Accounting, Marketing Research, Sales, Finance, Marketing, Seeking Alpha, Dun & Bradstreet Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions) Our first question comes from Michael Meltz from JPMorgan, your line is open.

Michael Meltz – JPMorgan

Thank you. I think I have three questions. Sara you – during your commentary you went through all those segments. Sales and marketing you did not actually give guidance for ?09 but if I back into the numbers it sounds like you're saying down 5% to 10%. Is that – is that the target at this point?

Sara Mathew

No. For the full year it should be about flat Michael, both sales and marketing and the Internet businesses we are seeing about flat.

Michael Meltz – JPMorgan

Okay.

Sara Mathew

So then you have mid-single digit growth for US risk management and you will have high-single to double-digit for International and you will find that should be in the 2 to 5 range.

Michael Meltz – JPMorgan

Okay and then related to that what – can you talk more about verticals. You say you talk about you saw softness in December, which isn’t a surprise but where – what types of customers, are financials worse than everybody else or what are you seeing?

Sara Mathew

Our financials definitely worsened in the fourth quarter. We actually anticipated that to be clear, so you know financials performed right in line with our expectations, we caught that. What we didn't quite see coming was really more broad-based weakness on what we would call our Optimizer Sales and Marketing products and what happened is we were getting very strong double-digit growth on that product. What happened is we really did get that. We got single digit growth on it. It still grew and it still retained very well. It wasn't what we expected and in the meantime we did not have enough pipeline that was advanced far enough along that we could have closed it and that's really, you know, when we talk about an execution miss that's really what caught us a bit off guard in the fourth quarter.

Michael Meltz – JPMorgan

Does Optimizer have industry concentration in any particular sectors?

Sara Mathew

No it's actually integration, so it pretty much is across-the-board.

Michael Meltz – JPMorgan

Okay. I – on the guidance and I don't know if this is a Tasos or Steve question, if I take your revenue guidance you are basically saying on a reported basis revenues flat to up a little bit year-over-year. You're saying EBIT will be up $25 million to $40 million after $20 million of drag from currency and pension. Can you give us more detail on the FF program, how many FTEs are impacted here? I think we need a little bit more detail on exactly what you have done so far and what is your confidence on the cost side here?

 

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