Financial innovators: 2 buys and 1 hold

Article Excerpt

These three companies are trading near their alltime highs. That’s partly because the improving economy is giving their main clients— banks and financial services firms— more to spend on their hard-toreplace services. As well, all three are tapping into the “big data” trend, helping businesses capture and analyze a lot of information about their operations. We like the long-term outlook for all three, but we see only two as buys right now. DUN & BRADSTREET CORP. $128 (New York symbol DNB; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 36.0 million; Market cap: $4.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.8; Dividend yield: 1.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.dnb.com) provides credit reports on over 230 million companies. Its clients use this information to make lending and buying decisions. Dun & Bradstreet gets 64% of its revenue from credit reports. The remaining 36% comes from other information products, like software businesses use to manage websites and customer data. In 2010, the company sold subsidiary Dun &..