Dun & Bradstreet - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Dun & Bradstreet second quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, August 3, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sean Anthony, Vice President, Corporate Financial Planning and Analysis. Please go ahead.

Sean Anthony (VP of Corporate Financial Planning Analysis)

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Dun & Bradstreet's Financial Results Conference Call for the second quarter of 2023. On the call today, we have Dun & Bradstreet CEO, Anthony Jabbour, and CFO, Bryan Hipsher. Before we begin, allow me to provide a disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. This call, including the Q&A portion of the call, may include forward-looking statements related to the expected future results for our company and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The risks and uncertainties that forward-looking statements are subject to are described in our earnings release and other SEC filings. Today's remarks will also include references to non-GAAP financial measures.

Additional information, including the reconciliation between non-GAAP financial information to the GAAP financial information, is provided in the press release and supplemental slide presentation. The conference call will be available for replay via webcast through Dun & Bradstreet's Investor Relations website at investor.dnb.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Anthony.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2023 earnings call. On today's call, I'll start with a brief overview of our second quarter results, followed by an update on our operational activities and progress towards our strategic initiatives. After that, I'll pass the call over to Bryan for an in-depth review of our results and to discuss our expectations for the remainder of 2023. We'll then open up the call for Q&A, and I'll finish up with a few closing comments. With that, let's get started. We are very pleased with our second quarter results, which continue to demonstrate the progress we are making in nearly every facet of our business.

We're building upon our strength and resiliency in both our North America and International segments through enhancing and expanding our world-class proprietary datasets, solving new use cases for our clients with modernized solutions, and rapidly and responsibly beginning to leverage the latest generative AI tools to accelerate our already rapid pace of innovation. We delivered 3.9% revenue growth on an organic constant currency basis, along with maintaining best-in-class margins as businesses throughout the world turn to us as a mission-critical partner that can assist them in accelerating growth, expanding margin, and improving their overall risk profiles. Let's now turn to the progress we're making in our two segments. Then I'll follow up with the latest on our AI initiatives. Beginning with North America, we continue to drive strong results across our core solution portfolio.

While we delivered 2.8% growth overall, finance solutions, third-party and supply chain risk management, and our sales and marketing solutions grew 5.5%. Finance solutions and third-party risk and compliance offerings continue to deliver resilient growth by offering mission-critical solutions that help clients weave their way through the increasingly complex business environment. Finance solutions is achieving continued growth through delivering incremental value throughout the contract period, as well as providing a jumping-off point for our upsell and cross-sell strategies. As we continue to successfully migrate clients to our most modern solutions, we are seeing strong retention rates and deeper integration of our solutions into our clients' business and technological workflows. Our risk solutions had another great quarter as businesses continue to search for ways to automate and optimize the onboarding, monitoring, and managing of their third-party supplier networks.

We continue to be the trusted provider of choice for end-to-end business risk monitoring. We also saw significant interest across our fraud, financial, regulatory, compliance, climate, and sustainability suite of solutions. As businesses are being impacted through local laws, regulations, or overall increased corporate responsibility demands, our risk analytics platform and related data and analytics solutions are rightly positioned to capitalize on these favorable market dynamics. Before I move on to our sales and marketing solutions, I want to touch on the latest developments to our own ESG story. At D&B, it has always been a core value of ours to be a trusted and responsible provider. In doing so, we are committed to running a socially responsible business that balances growing shareholder returns with sustainable practices and strong governance principles.

We just completed our annual ESG report, and I'm proud of what we are delivering today and what we have in store for the future. We recently formalized our commitments to ESG through a series of environmental, social, and governance pledges, and I'm proud to be part of a company that is focused on doing things the right way. Turning to our North America sales and marketing solutions, we saw another strong quarter of 5.4% growth, driven by our master data management and digital marketing solutions. Clients and prospects are looking to drive profitable growth through the use of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence-driven workflows. Our product, technology, and data and analytic teams have been working tirelessly to bring high propensity, automated solutions to bear, and it's showing through in our expanding pipeline.

As we continue to invest and innovate in sales and marketing and in finance and risk, we see a strong uptake of our new solutions, which further supports our now 25% Vitality Index in North America. Throughout the quarter, we continued to roll out new solutions, deliver significant enhancements to existing platforms, and expand upon our strategic partnerships. On the new solution side, we launched the D-U-N-S Registered Seal in North America, with direct integration into our D&B Business Directory. If you recall, the D-U-N-S Registered Seal is one of our most successful products in the Asian markets, and allows small businesses to promote themselves as a legitimate entity with a sound financial and regulatory profile.

With millions of businesses throughout North America looking to differentiate themselves as a vendor, supplier, or borrower of capital, we are providing the initial version of the seal as a way to physically and digitally represent themselves in a manner that both consumers and commercial enterprises can rely upon. We also enhanced our supply chain risk analytics to include Tier-N supplier visualization. The Tier-N visualization allows enhanced ability to map and interpret a multi-tier supply chain through its numerous components, and represents a step function change in supply chain management by providing a new level of detail and insight that was simply not possible before. Companies that have this N-Tier visibility will gain a competitive advantage in terms of cost management, responsiveness, and operational performance. On the strategic partnership front, we began to open the door for monetization of our data and analytics solutions through data marketplaces.

Most recently, we built upon our deepening relationship with Google by making our D&B data sets and products available in the Google Cloud Data Marketplace. I'm proud that we're the first company to populate the Google Data Marketplace, making it easier for our clients to access and utilize these critical solutions, while also helping to provide a frictionless procurement process for clients to consume these valuable assets. Along with other strategic partnerships such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Databricks, and Snowflake, we are working across the spectrum of providers to allow our clients an agnostic approach to data access and software tools, including the expanding array of artificial intelligence capabilities at D&B. Unique and proprietary data and analytics sets continue to be the key differentiator in the ability to drive increased performance for our clients.

The more user-friendly the information is for our clients, the more we are able to land and expand with new clients and prospects. We are also supporting our clients to create increased transparency and consistency in their onboarding of new suppliers. Another initiative launched in the quarter is that Google now requires businesses coming onto Google Play to have a D-U-N-S Number. This requirement has worked very well for some other major technology and retail clients of ours, and simultaneously has been a great way for us to further broaden the number of small businesses that come to our front door. As we continue to progress on the operational and innovation side, we're also seeing strength on the North American sales front.

Retention rates were strong, up 60 basis points versus prior year, and new business wins in the software vertical were examples of the continued demand for our solutions across both finance and risk, and sales and marketing. Beginning with Citibank, we were able to take a long-term existing customer and help them solve new and germane use cases in the finance and risk space with one of our most recent alternative data assets. Through the delivery of our shipping data assets, matched with our global corporate family tree, we're able to drive predictive analytics to solve use cases around supply chain risk assessment, enhanced credit risk insight, and overall global market trend analysis. I also want to mention how we're supporting Xylem, a water technology provider that supports operations in 150 countries throughout the world.

As they look to create a world that is more water secure and sustainable, we're able to help them run their financial operations with greater efficiency and overall effectiveness. Through expanding our existing relationship to a multi-year agreement, we are delivering customer onboarding and global credit risk assessments through finance analytics and API solutions in support of their digital modernization, vendor management, and global integration efforts. While the finance and risk solutions continue to build strong momentum, the sales and marketing side is making excellent strides as well. We are pleased to reignite our relationship with one of the top five software and technology companies in the world, who signed a multi-year deal with us to support their initiatives around a data and analytics-driven approach to sales, operations, and planning.

Through a combination of our Data Blocks, Analytics Studio, Hoovers, and API-based solutions, D&B is powering their ability to drive insightful and educated territory analysis and planning alongside a KYC-based approach to ensure that not only is a business a strong opportunity in the pipeline, but they have the financial and operational wherewithal to be a viable and sound client for the years to come. Another example is our recent multi-year new win with DocuSign, a leader in the e-document and contract lifecycle management software space. Through D&B Connect, Hoovers, and our API solutions, we are supporting the build-out of an enterprise-wide master data management solution to support their account management and sales efforts. Through our unmatched business data cloud and industry-leading matching capabilities, we offer clients the ongoing cleansing, matching, appending, enhancing, and monitoring they need to make informed decisions at the most critical points in the customer journey.

While these are but a handful of examples of what we are doing on the North American sales front, needless to say, I'm very pleased with the progress we are making and the continued strength in landing and expanding upon our exceptional client base. Turning to our international segment, we saw another quarter of strong organic growth at 6.5%. All regions performed well. Our Asian markets grew mid-teens in the quarter, with high single-digit performance from the United Kingdom and Worldwide Network, and Europe growing 4.5% organically. We continue to see strong penetration of new localized products launched across Europe, including Hoovers, Finance Analytics, and newer APIs. This drove a 500 basis point sequential increase in our Vitality Index to 33%.

We saw healthy demand across both finance and risk, and sales and marketing offerings, particularly within risk and compliance solutions, consistent trends that we saw in North America. Through our continued focus on enhancing our customer experience and creating a unified approach across our own networks, I'm very pleased with the continued strength we are showing in our international segment. On the sales front, we had another strong quarter, including delivering double-digit sales growth from enterprise accounts, which is a key focus of our strategy internationally. Retention remained healthy, improving to 94%, and we added a few more key names to our growing roster and successfully cross-sold and upsold solutions to leading multinational clients. Voestalpine, one of the largest steel manufacturers in Europe, signed a multi-year deal for our DataBlock solution to facilitate their sales and marketing master data management strategy.

MDM continues to be a very hot area in Europe, especially with large industrials and manufacturers trying to get their arms around a highly complex and fragmented supply chain and customer population. In the U.K., we added a multi-year deal with IWG, or International Workplace Group, the world's third largest office space provider. Through our third-party screening data and monitoring delivered via API, we are supporting their KYC efforts and ensuring that not only the initial underwriting but the ongoing viability of their suppliers is well instrumented. We also saw a host of large multi-year renewals, including the likes of Bayer, BASF, and the Agricultural Bank of China execute as we continue to provide our mission-critical solutions to them during these trying economic times.

Similar to what I said about North America, I am very pleased with the ongoing progress we have made year to date, and even more so with the basis on which we are setting ourselves up for accelerated growth over the coming years. I can't talk about accelerating growth in the coming years without touching on the D&B.AI Labs and AiBE, our framework and platform to leverage generative artificial intelligence to its maximum potential. That's AiBE, A, lowercase I, B-E, named for one of our most esteemed former colleagues, President Abraham Lincoln. We chose AiBE to represent our brand because of what we stand for and what President Lincoln stood for: honesty, transparency, responsibility, and a forward-thinking mindset. These principles are a perfect fit for how we are approaching this awesome new evolution.

Managing through a multi-provider, hybrid AI solution manner, we're very excited about what our assets can provide when exponentially enhanced through these significant technological breakthroughs. Beginning with our decades of vast proprietary, longitudinal data, analytics, and derived solutions, we are incrementally leveraging machine learning and large language models to create accurate, timely, and contextualized information to deliver use case-tailored solutions for our clients. For instance, with the D&B.AI Labs, we are allowing clients to safely and responsibly co-develop groundbreaking solutions tailored to their specific industry and business process needs.

In a recent client webinar, we demoed three solutions where a client could interact, extract, and verify insights from extensive sets of documents through simple questions, contextualize data into human-readable form that was not possible before, and see the power of a flexible AI agent in conjunction with our existing match and linkage capabilities to take a highly complex business use case and make it possible for a layman to solve. If you haven't seen the webinar, I highly encourage you to head to our IR site, where it's posted in the news section. With the ability to leverage our proprietary data and analytics, coupled with a client's first party and other third-party data, powered by AiBE, we believe that this could be the next big step for us in terms of our ability to accelerate value.

While the rush to AI commercialization is one that must be acted upon with urgency, we believe it is one that should be acted upon with responsibility and trust at the same time. Our products and services at D&B are underpinned by unrivaled, structured, and validated proprietary data that is accurate, timely, validated, organized, clean, and ultimately contextualized. With full interpretability and an expansive data lineage, deep subject matter expertise and analytics, and a security, legal, compliance, and ethical framework in place, we can drive exponentially advanced capabilities for our clients that reduce the risk of hallucinations and other misleading outcomes that can arise if not careful. Through our initial client engagements, including our D&B.ai client webinar from last month, we are engaging with some of the world's largest and most sophisticated businesses to begin commercializing upon this immense opportunity.

At D&B, we are excited about our ability to drive opportunities for our clients and prospects to grow revenues, enhance profits, and reduce risk through a combination of our data and analytics powered by AiBE. Overall, we delivered a strong quarter financial results, disciplined operational execution, and excellent strategic progress. I'm very pleased with the progress year-to-date. We will continue to focus on sustainable growth, innovating with urgency, and allocating our capital and resources in an efficient and effective manner to continue on our multi-year journey of increased organic growth, enhanced profitability, and a strengthened balance sheet. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Bryan to discuss our financial results for the second quarter in more detail and the outlook for the remainder of 2023.

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Thank you, Anthony, good morning, everyone. Today, I will discuss our second quarter 2023 results and provide an update on our guidance for the remainder of the year. Turning to slide one. On a GAAP basis, second quarter revenues were $555 million, an increase of $17 million, or 3% compared to the prior year, and 4% before the effect of foreign exchange. Net loss for the quarter was $19 million, or a diluted loss per share of $0.04, compared to a net loss of $2 million for the prior year quarter. Turning to slide two. I'll now discuss our adjusted results for the second quarter. Second quarter revenues for the total company were $555 million, an increase of 3% or 4% before the effect of foreign exchange.

Revenues on an organic constant currency basis were up 3.9%, driven by increased demand in both our North America and international segments. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA for the total company was $206 million, an increase of 3% compared to the prior year quarter, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 37.2%. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to higher revenue growth on expected contribution margins, partially offset by increased performance incentive compensation in our corporate segment, and a $2 million negative impact of foreign exchange resulting from a strengthening U.S. dollar. Second quarter adjusted net income was $95 million, or adjusted diluted earnings per share, $0.22.

The decrease in adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share was primarily driven by higher interest expense and depreciation and amortization, partially offset by increased adjusted EBITDA and higher tax benefits in the current year quarter. Turning now to slide three. I'll now discuss the results for our two segments, North America and International. In North America, revenues for the second quarter were $392 million, an increase of 3% or 2.8% on a constant currency basis. Finance and risk revenues were $211 million, an increase of 1%. This was primarily due to growth in revenues across our finance solutions and third-party risk and supply chain management solutions of 5.5%, partially offset by a decrease in revenues from our legacy credibility and public sector solutions, which contain the impact from the GSA.

Sales and marketing revenues were $181 million, an increase of 5%. This increase was driven primarily by growth in our master data management and digital marketing solutions. North America's second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $173 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 44%, an increase of 200 basis points from prior year, primarily due to revenue growth and lower costs related to personnel, facilities, and professional fees, partially offset by higher data acquisition and data processing costs. Turning to slide four. In our international segment, second quarter revenues were $163 million, an increase of $7 million or 5%, and an increase of 6% before the effect of foreign exchange, where organic revenues increased 6.5%.

Finance and risk revenues for the second quarter were $108 million, an increase of $6 million, or approximately 6%, and an increase of 7% before the effect of foreign exchange. There was positive contribution from all markets. Europe and Asia Pacific growth was driven by finance, analytics, and API solutions. The Worldwide Network alliances was due to higher cross-border data fees, and growth in our United Kingdom market came from third-party risk and compliance solutions, as well as finance analytics. Sales and marketing revenues for the second quarter of 2023 were $55 million, an increase of $1 million or 2%, and an increase of 4% before the effect of foreign exchange.

Excluding the impact of the divestiture of our German business to consumer business in the second quarter of 2022, organic revenues increased 5%, primarily due to higher revenues from the United Kingdom and Europe, including strong growth from new and localized solutions like Dun & Bradstreet Hoovers. International second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $49 million, an increase of $3 million or 6%, primarily due to revenue growth from the underlying business, partially offset by higher personnel costs and foreign exchange losses resulting from a strengthening U.S. dollar. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 30%, an increase of 30 basis points compared to the prior year. Turning to slide five. I'll now walk through our capital structure.

As of June 30, 2023, we had cash and cash equivalents, $261 million, and total principal amount of debt of $3,699 million. The $3,699 million in principal is made up of $460 million of unsecured notes at 5%, which mature in 2029. Term loans of $2,666 million at SOFR + CSA + 325, that matures in 2026. Subsequently, repriced to SOFR + CSA + 300 as of July 25, 2023, and then repriced again on July 31, 2023, to SOFR + CSA + 275, in conjunction with a pricing step down associated with our Moody's Corporate Family Rating upgrade to B1.

$454 million at SOFR plus 325, that matures in 2029. That also repriced to SOFR plus 300 as of July 31, 2023, in association with the Moody's upgrade, and borrowings of $119 million under our revolver. The $2.7 billion term loan has a $1 billion floating to fixed swap, effective through March 2024 at 0.4%, and a $1.5 billion floating to fixed swap, which expires February 2026 at 3.695%. The $454 million term loan has $250 million swap from floating to fixed through February 2025 at 1.629%.

We also have three cross-currency swaps at $125 million each that settle in July of 2024, 2025, and 2026. Currently, we are 87% of our debt is either fixed or hedged. We had $731 million available on our $850 million revolving credit facility as of June 30th, 2023. Overall, our weighted average interest rate was 5.66% as of June 30th, 2023. Our leverage ratio was 4x on a net basis, and the credit facility senior secured net leverage ratio was 3.4x. Turning now to slide six. I'll now walk through our updated outlook for 2023.

We now expect total revenues after the effect of foreign currency, to be in the range of $2,280 million-$2,320 million, or an increase of approximately 2.5%-4.3%. This includes an updated assumption related to the effect of foreign currency and the expected variances between the U.S. dollar, euro, British pound, and Swedish krona. Revenues on an organic constant currency basis are still expected to be in the range of 3%-4.5% for the full year. As previously discussed, it is important to note that the total and organic growth rates take into account the conclusion of the existing GSA contract at the end of April 2022. The net impact to organic growth for the full year is a headwind of 30 basis points.

Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be in the range of $875 million-$915 million. The adjusted EBITDA range also takes into account the conclusion of the GSA contract and a $5 million negative impact from the strengthening of the euro versus the U.S. dollar in comparison to the relative flatness of the British pound and Swedish krona. Adjusted EPS is now expected to be in the range of $0.92-$1.01. Additional modeling details underlying our outlook are as follows: We now expect adjusted interest expense to be approximately $230 million. Depreciation and amortization expense of approximately $110 million-$115 million, excluding incremental depreciation and amortization expense resulting from purchase accounting. An adjusted effective tax rate of approximately 22.5%.

Weighted average diluted shares outstanding of approximately 433 million. For CapEx, we still expect approximately $130 million-$150 million of internally developed software and around $30 million of property, plant, and equipment and other purchase software. Overall, while the second quarter was a bit stronger than planned, we expect the remaining quarters to be consistent with our original guidance and perform as previously communicated. In conclusion, we are well positioned to capture the significant growth opportunities in front of us, and we are pleased with the performance for the first half of the year. With improving profitability and cash flows, we will continue to prioritize deleveraging the balance sheet and focusing capital allocation strategies on driving increased shareholder returns. With that, we're now happy to open up the call for questions. Operator, will you please open up the line for Q&A?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star one. If you want to withdraw your question, please press star two. Your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from John Mazzoni, from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

John Mazzoni (Equity Research Analyst)

John filling in for Seth. Just a quick question. It seems like there's been a reacceleration in growth. Could you just explain what you're seeing in terms of the current selling environment, especially on the sales and marketing side? It seems like you had a, kind of broader base pickup in both, kind of master data management as well as the digital solutions, but just with the backdrop of a potential ad recession in the back half of the year, how are you seeing the current? Thanks.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, John. You know, first of all, I'd say that, you know, things are looking, you know, pretty much like we thought they would at the beginning of the year when we guided. Two forces going on here. There's one, the macro force, and the other one is our transformational force of the business as we continue to improve it. And really, I'd say from a sales cycle, it lengthens a couple of days, contracts a couple of days. For the most part, it's been, you know, pretty steady for us, and, and we expect it to be pretty consistent, you know, to the back half of the year as well. Certainly, you know, the solutions that we're offering are very mission-critical in, in the sales and marketing space.

So, you know, they're stickier than, you know, you might expect, and I think that also helps with, you know, the consistent, you know, growth that we're seeing in that business.

John Mazzoni (Equity Research Analyst)

That's great. Thank you. Then maybe just following up on the mission criticality point, I believe you had 25% of vitality in North America and 33% internationally, but how should we think about those kind of translating into higher growth as well as potentially higher structural pricing? Thanks.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Yeah, no, it's a great question, and I appreciate you asking it on the vitality side, because, you know, like I said on calls previously, this takes a tremendous amount of work, you know, from our team in terms of, number one, building the new modern solution. You know, there have been many initiatives across the industry where, you know, the new modern solution never sees the light of day, or if it does, the migration suffer, you know, to some degree, and companies are stranded with multiple products, versus one go forward one. You know, I'm very proud of the work our team has done in building the capability and working with clients and migrating them. Like I said, again, previously, there's not a lot of immediate revenue tied to migrating to more modern solutions.

The power is, and you're heading in the right direction, John, is that by having your clients on your most modern solutions, it creates for a stronger relationship, and ability to sell add-on modules, and certainly, add strength, you know, to our pricing capability. You know, we're in great shape that way, and, you know, we're gonna continue staying the course.

John Mazzoni (Equity Research Analyst)

Great color. Thanks again.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, John.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Kyle Peterson, from Needham. Please go ahead.

Kyle Peterson (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thanks, guys. Good morning. Wanted to touch, you know, a little bit on, you know, the guide, specifically the FX neutral, you know, revenue growth, maybe some of the different drivers that could push you either towards the, the higher or the lower end, you know, the outlook. I mean, it seems like you guys were a little bit closer to the higher end this quarter, despite still having, you know, about a month of, of the GSA headwinds. Just wanted to get a little more color on, you know, how much conservatism you guys have, you know, baked in there for the second half, and, you know, what are some of the puts and takes?

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Yeah, Kyle, thanks. You know, ultimately, as, as Anthony said, we're really, you know, pleased with the year-to-date, you know, performance from that perspective. You know, as we've talked about, right, you know, the, the overall, you know, year as it shapes up, you know, having that second and, and third quarter, you know, looking relatively in line and, and consistent from, you know, the more towards the middle range of the, of the guide, and then, you know, the fourth quarter, you know, starting to go towards, you know, the higher end from that perspective. Again, first quarter, you know, very much in line, second quarter, you know, a little bit better than expected, but we just wanna make sure, you know, we're being thoughtful, right, with the range that we've laid out.

Look, we know that, you know, things that could drive us towards the higher end, you know, of the, of the range are gonna be, you know, more sales coming in a little sooner than expected. You know, the, the usage, right, you know, picking up and, and going over and above. Again, that, that they're all around the fringes and, and why we give a range versus a point estimate.

Kyle Peterson (Senior Analyst)

You know, on the AI, you know, opportunity, you know, some, some good color, you guys gave in, in the prepared remarks. You know, just wanted to see, you know, how you guys are thinking about, you know, some of these opportunities in the near to medium term, you know, whether it's, you know, on the revenue side or, or the efficiency and cost side. I guess, where, where do you see, you know, the biggest, you know, near-term applications in terms of, you know, having a potential, you know, financial impact on the business?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Well, Kyle, with the launch of D&B.AI Labs, you know, really our, our, our real We, we've been working with generative AI previously. You know, you know, certain aspects of our, our data, you know, collection, you know, we've been bringing in and leveraging some of that already. Our focus, you know, right now really is with our clients and the commercial aspects for it. That's why we want to set up a lab environment where we can both come in to a safe place. You'll hear us over and over hitting on the responsible part, and even in choosing the name AiBE, but being responsible.

Our clients are really excited about the opportunities of generative AI and large language models, and at the same time, cautious and concerned, right? Like, like many are. So we want to create a safe place where we can collaborate together in a responsible way. That's the, the, the trusted brand that we have at Dun & Bradstreet, and where we're going to be focusing on initially. You're right, there will be opportunities to drive revenue acceleration as we find ways to help our clients more, and there'll also be ways for us to be more efficient and, and we'll be focusing on both of them.

What we wanted to get out of the gates first was an external focus with our clients to engage them, for them to start working with us on these important initiatives, because we just thought that was, you know, more important to be out in front of this and, and really helping leading our clients through it.

Kyle Peterson (Senior Analyst)

Makes sense. That's helpful. Thanks, guys.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, Kyle.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Heather Balsky from Bank of America. Please go ahead. I'm sorry, it looks like Heather is not anymore here. Next question comes from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Sean Anthony (VP of Corporate Financial Planning Analysis)

Let me scroll to the next one, maybe.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. Can you hear me now?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Yeah, we can hear you now, Stephanie.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

I'm sorry. Good morning. I'm on mute. You think I'd have that down by now. You know, you continue to see nice, you continue to see nice strength in international markets, particularly in Europe, too, though it doesn't seem like it in your results. Are you seeing any macro pressures in any of these markets?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

In the international segment, specifically?

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Yes.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

No, I'd say for the most part, we're, you know, we've got a really seasoned team leading our international business, and I, I'd say for the most part, you know, we, we, we see the opportunities that are in front. We've been thoughtful in terms of any of the headwinds, but, but, but some of the core. Like, we, we just, again, that's why I talk often about what are macro forces affecting everything, and then what are our Dun & Bradstreet transformational forces affecting? Because it's, it's powerful. If you think of our international, you know, business, you know, we've launched, you know, 100 products and localized in our, in our international markets, which is really helping offset any, you know, headwinds that we'd see.

Some of the areas like master data management and third-party risk, they're really global, you know, strong demand. You know, from our travels over there as well, meeting with clients internationally, they're really red-hot priorities there as well. I'd say for the most part, that, you know, every business has, you know, headwinds, tailwinds. In the international space, we've got a lot more opportunity, I'd say, than we have downside risk.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Great. No, I really appreciate the color. Then, you know, kind of looking at your, your almost 4% organic growth for the quarter, could you just break out what the split was between, you know, pricing, cross-selling, new logos, and how you kind of expect that to play out for the balance of the year, you know, maybe any additional pricing commentary as you think out over the next 12 months? Thank you.

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Yeah, sure. I, I, I think, you know, one part to even, you know, start with is we continue to have really strong, you know, gross retention. I think, you know, in, in North America, it was actually up, about, you know, 50, 60 bits, in the quarter. So, you know, Anthony's talked for a long time, you know, the first thing you do is, is close the back door, and, and that's the Vitality Index reflection. That's the investments we've been making, you know, the continued engagement from our sales force. So that piece, again, is, is really solid. When you think about the, the stuff stops, you're, you're absolutely right. You know, price, previously was, was something that wasn't a big impact. You know, we're now talking, you know, it approaching, you know, 2+%.

And, and starting to, you know, accelerate as we stack these, you know, renewals on and, and growth on throughout the year. Then the remainder is, is really a mix of, I'd say, you know, cross-sell and upsell, with a little bit of, you know, new product. Certainly, you know, when we look at the Vitality Index, when we look at the migrations, you know, these are all the components, both North America and international, that are contributing to the accelerated growth.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Got it. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, Stephanie.

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Thanks, Steph.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Heather Balsky from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Heather Balsky (Lead Business and Information Services Analyst)

Me back in. Sorry about that before. I was hoping you could talk about your North America finance and risk segment, stripping out GSA. You, you called out strength in third-party risk and supply chain, but you also talked about some softness in public sector and small business solutions. Can you talk about where you're seeing areas of strength and, and some of the softness as well, and kind of your expectations for how the year's gonna progress?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Sure, Heather. I'd say overall from a, you know, the core businesses that we have in North America, are performing well, right? Oftentimes we try and be very, you know, transparent with you as to, you know, what the underlying engine is, is producing. Our core, you know, finance and our third-party risk and supply chain risk, our sales and marketing is growing about 5.5%. That's where, you know, we've, you know, been very pleased with it. Similar to, you know, what I shared, I think it was on our Q4 earnings call, about, you know, the, the two areas where it's pulling back the growth, and it's in public sector, and it's in the legacy credibility business.

In both of them, you know, we're very focused on turning around those businesses. You know, we've made a, I'd say, a lot of progress on the public sector side, and, you know, you know, we expect to see a turnaround overall in that business, you know, in the coming quarters. On the credibility side, we've got a pretty aggressive transformation in place, you know, really following the consent order that we inherited when we took over the company. We've got a pretty aggressive transformation underway that we're looking to launch later this year, which, you know, is, is a very different approach, you know, to the space, and, you know, we're very excited about what it can do for us.

At, at a high level, that's really what's going on. We're seeing a lot of great growth in the core parts of our business. You know, like I said, 90 plus % of the business is growing, you know, in the range that we guided to midterm at our Investor Day 6 months ago. As we focus on, you know, these two businesses, in addition to a lot of the other work we have going on with innovations, you know, migrations and now, you know, the new generative AI initiatives on top of it, you know, that's really what our focus is here.

Heather Balsky (Lead Business and Information Services Analyst)

Thank you. Then, as a follow-up, with regards to the margin outlook, can you just help us think through potential cadence for the back half, 3Q versus 4Q?

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Yeah, Heather, if we kind of look at it, you'll see, you know, continued EBITDA growth in, in both the third quarter and, and fourth quarter. I'd say, you know, on the margin side, you know, the, the fourth quarter from just a percentage basis will be, you know, where you see, you know, a little bit more expansion, you know, than, than where we would see in the third quarter. Some of this is coming in. You know, we had about $2 million of, of headwind from the FX side, in the second quarter. We also had, the, the mix of the GSA revenues coming off and, you know, some of the other, newer revenues coming on, you know, at a, at a strong contribution margin, but just not as high as, as what the GSA was previously.

Then the final, you know, if you look in the corporate segment, we had a little bit higher, performance-based incentive comp in the second quarter than we did in the previous year. So, you know, those things, you know, start to, normalize right as the year progresses, and that's the way we would think about, you know, the fourth quarter, stepping up from the third quarter, and again, the third, you know, being even better than what the second quarter was.

Heather Balsky (Lead Business and Information Services Analyst)

Great. Thank you. That's helpful.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, Heather.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Steinerman from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Andrew Steinerman (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, Anthony. I'd like to know how Hoovers did in the second quarter, and, you know, that, that product has been revitalized, and wanted to know how you feel like Hoovers is doing, you know, competitively with B2B professional contacts versus, you know, other providers out there?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Sure. Thank you, Andrew. Our Hoovers business, like I said, that was an area that was in radiation and declining quite a bit. We've got it to, I'd say, you know, a more break-even pace where it's not a headwind on the business. We're still seeing it operate at that level right now. You know, we saw some minor, you know, pullback of licenses. You know, for the most part, the business is performing like it has for the last couple quarters.

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Anthony, I would add, too, and Andrew, you know, the, the balance between, you know, North America and international. So, you know, in international, where it's being brought to, to bear as a, a net new solution.

Andrew Steinerman (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

We're seeing, you know, nice growth and acceleration from that perspective, too. Overall, you know, I think we're, we're really pleased with the progress, you know, we're making in that, in that Hoovers space and how we're aggressively going to market there.

Andrew Steinerman (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from Manav Patnaik from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Manav Patnaik (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. I just want to follow up on that, you know, the second half, expectations, particularly the fourth quarter. You know, that's typically your biggest quarter. I know you've tried to kind of reduce the reliance there, but just talk a little bit about, you know, the visibility there, and just remind us how much of that, you know, in business there ends up being transactional versus typically recurring?

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Yeah. Manav, it's-- it is, you know, the largest. We kind of have those bookends, right? Certainly, you know, have, have moderated the, the magnitude of them, meaning that first quarter from a magnitude is generally the, the smallest, right? Second to third, relatively similar, and then the, the fourth is a little bit higher, just due to the nature of, you know, some of the deliveries that take place and, and some of the, the activity that takes place, you know, during the quarter. If you remember last year, you know, we had a little bit, you know, around the fringes on, you know, some of the delivery timing of master data management. We'll be comping that obviously, you know, as we go into the fourth quarter this year.

The visibility for this business, you know, is, is, is quite high, right? When we think about the amount of just daily ratable subscription revenues, you're talking about 75%+. You know, the, the on deliveries, right, which can be kind of semi-annual, quarterly, right, or annual deliveries, they're guaranteed, right, in that time period. Then you have some, some usage on the fringes, again, where maybe pulled down in, in different months, right? In a 12-month period, all of that is captured. When I think about this business and, and even in the, in the fourth quarter, you know, visibility is, is, is quite strong and quite high.

Manav Patnaik (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Then just one quick follow-up, like, competitively, have you seen any changes, you know, across your segments, but more in particular on the finance and risk side?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Not really, Manav. You know, like I said, you know, there are a lot of competitors out there. Obviously, it's a very competitive marketplace, but, you know, as we really focus on our game plan and executing well against it, you know, that's really our best strategy and what's proving to be, you know, most effective for us. You know, we're working with our clients closely, we're listening, we're servicing them well, getting great ideas. Our teams are working really well together in terms of building new capabilities and servicing the client. And that's what we think is, you know, obviously really important, you know, from that perspective. Look, there certainly is a lot of competition out there, and we all have to work hard for the business that we have.

Again, I'd say, like the rest of our business, most of our future is in our control versus in a macro environment or versus what other competitors are doing. I, I feel strongly that it's in our control. If we work hard, stay focused, you know, we're going to have a great outcome.

Manav Patnaik (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from George Tong, from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

George Tong (Business and Information Services Analyst)

Hi, thanks. Good morning. In the North America finance and risk business, you talked about the public sector and SMB trends. Can you elaborate on how those trends progressed over the course of the quarter and what you're assuming in the second half, whether those trends should be stable or whether we should see some improvement?

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, George, it's Bryan. When we think about those, I mean, certainly, you know, on the government side, right, you know, we've gotten out of the headwind from the GSA, and so that was a component of what we saw in the second quarter. In terms of then, you know, continuing to turn sales into revenue, as Anthony said, you know, we would expect the public sector to gradually, you know, start to improve, you know, through the second half. On the credibility side, you know, that's one where, you know, we're lacking that, that consent order. There's a bit of tail, right, from, you know, some of the impacts on the revenue side.

Again, as I would expect, you know, that to improve, you know, that's probably gonna start to improve more, you know, in maybe the fourth quarter, right? Certainly into 2024 as we're launching, you know, our new strategy and solidified, you know, vision in terms of, you know, what we're going to be doing in that space.

George Tong (Business and Information Services Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. On the international finance and risk side, you're continuing to see pretty healthy demand despite the uncertain macro environment. What would you say is driving that demand? Is it competitive share wins, wallet share penetration, new client wins, perhaps pricing or upsell? What, what are some of the, the details there?

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

George, maybe I'll start, and then, and then Anthony. Yeah. Both of us have, have spent time, you know, with Neeraj and team, you know, in strategy sessions, and then as Anthony said, connecting with customers. You know, some of this macro environment and that uncertainty and these evolutions, right, and kind of, you know, global view are really driving, you know, this view of master data management, right? Understanding, you know, who you're doing business with, how you're doing business with them. When you think about, you know, that same theme applied, you know, on the risk side of the equation, the third parties, the supply chain risk management, it's really, you know, critical. It's critical from so many different components, right?

Financial stability, regulatory and compliance stability, you know, just, you know, overall, I would say ESG and sustainable, you know, practices, right? All of these are, are creating this, you know, broader view of, you know, the types of companies that you're using as vendor suppliers and the types of companies that you're going out to sell to. You know, both of those thematics, I would say, you know, are, are partially driven by, you know, an evolution in, you know, this overall macro uncertainty.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Yeah. The only thing I'd add to that is, yeah, you know, we continue to penetrate enterprise accounts, you know, work well, listen to them, offer a lot more capability that we now have in markets. That's, you know, really, I'd say, the, the cause for the greater lift there versus, you know, just price increase or, or something like that.

George Tong (Business and Information Services Analyst)

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, George.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Craig Huber from Huber Research Partners. Please go ahead.

Craig Huber (Equity Research Analyst)

Craig, thank you. I got a broad question here for you. Since the take-private transaction, early 2019, you guys have obviously moved heaven and earth here to help transform the company here. So I'm curious, versus your original five-year plan for the company, what [NND] do you guys think you're in right now versus what you, what you originally planned to do here?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Well, Greg, thanks for the question. you know, it's interesting, you know, from the take private and even the IPO, which was just, you know, three years ago, it seems like a, a, a long time ago. you know, I'd say we're very much on track, and we're very confident with where we're headed. You know, initially, you know, in the IPO, we talked about growing from 0%-3%, and then for a period of time, and then from 3%-6%. You know, three years later, you know, we're, you know, above the, the first range, into the second one. You know, six months ago, at our Investor Day, we guided a midterm range of 5%-7%, you know, where the company's heading.

I'd say, you know, we're, we're very confident of, you know, being where we thought we would be. Again, when we talk about the durability of this business, that's through a global pandemic, conflict in Ukraine, hyperinflation, rising rates, currency volatility, like so much other macro effects out there, that, again, it just, you know, continues to give, you know, me and our team confidence in, you know, the quality of this business and, you know, the march that we're on in terms of, you know, really getting all the growth that, that we, we, we possibly can with this business.

Craig Huber (Equity Research Analyst)

My last question, if I could ask, you guys had a pretty cautious view, I recall, coming into the year on the macro environment and stuff. I'm just curious, how does that sort of play out in your mind here? Is it, is it feel better out there, the macro environment, like in North America, versus what you might have thought coming into the year? It's about the same or worse?

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Yeah. You know, it, it's always hard at the beginning of the year to talk about what the macro environment is going to be, you know, for the coming year. What I said, we looked at in, in, in two buckets, right? What will the macro do, and what will our ongoing transformation provide us to, to fight any negative macro headwinds? And, and to a large degree, I feel like the macro is sort of operating in the range that we thought it would. Bryan, do you have any other comments you'd add on macro?

Bryan Hipsher (CFO)

No, I, I think, you know, Craig, as we've, we've talked about, right, you know, it's, it's pretty consistent, you know, with our original expectations and played out that way. So, I think, you know, that, that continues to be our view, you know, for the remainder of the year. It's, it's one of the benefits of having, you know, the connectivity with the customers, you know, the insights that we have, the data, right? You know, informs our thinking, right, and how we plan. Certainly, you know, we always think about, you know, where you say, drinking your own champagne, right? That was certainly something that's, that's, you know, played out and allowed us to, to plan and execute appropriately.

Craig Huber (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for the thoughts.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call over to Anthony Jabbour. Mr. Jabbour, you can continue.

Anthony Jabbour (CEO)

Thank you, Sergio. As always, I'd like to thank my Dun & Bradstreet colleagues for their exceptional efforts to sustainably grow our business for the years to come. To our great clients for their partnership and guidance, thank you for your interest in Dun & Bradstreet, and have a wonderful rest of your day.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Thank you.