When Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc. reported third-quarter earnings in August, CEO Anthony Jabbour confirmed a Reuters report days earlier that the Jacksonville-based business data firm was talking to a potential buyer but gave no details.
Dun & Bradstreet’s fourth-quarter report Feb. 20 followed a Bloomberg news report on further talks and while Jabbour wouldn’t discuss the details of that story, he did say to expect a decision soon on a possible transaction.
“Activity ramped up in late November and has carried on through the beginning of 2025,” Jabbour said in a conference call with analysts.
“We currently expect to share the outcome of the process in the first quarter,” he said.
Bloomberg reported Feb. 6 that private equity firm Veritas Capital Fund Management is negotiating a potential $5.4 billion buyout of Dun & Bradstreet.
When pressed by RBC Capital Markets analyst Ashish Sabadra for more details, Jabbour said a transaction could be a sale of some part of the business rather than a buyout of the entire company.
“Obviously, I can’t comment on the Bloomberg article. But what I’d say is our board is open to creating the most shareholder value and whatever that looks like is certainly on the table,” he said.
Dun & Bradstreet reported fourth-quarter revenue rose by just 0.2% to $631.9 million, and adjusted earnings fell by 2 cents a share to 30 cents.
Jabbour said several factors caused revenue growth to slow from its full-year increase of 3%, including the transaction discussions.
“Our team has done their best to balance managing their day-to-day responsibilities with being responsive to the inquiries from interested parties,” he said.
However, he said distractions from the talks delayed the closing of some deals that were expected in the fourth quarter.
“These distractions intensified in November and December, shifting significant pipeline deals into early 2025 and impacting Q4 revenues by $9 million,” he said.
Sabadra said in a research note he expects the upcoming decision on a possible transaction to help the company.
“As the process wraps up, we would expect to see improving top-line trends and a renewed focus on growing the business in the second half of 2025,” he said.
Dun & Bradstreet moved its headquarters to Jacksonville after an investment group led by Fidelity National Financial Inc. Chairman Bill Foley bought the company in 2019.
The investment group took Dun & Bradstreet public again with an initial public offering at $22 a share in 2020, but the stock has been trading well below that price.
It fell $1.09 to $9.44 Feb. 20 after the earnings report.
Needham analyst Kyle Peterson maintained a “buy” rating on Dun & Bradstreet’s shares but lowered his price target from $17 to $14 after the report, as he waits for a resolution of the transaction talks.
“We believe this will either lead to a transaction and/or reduce employee distraction and help improve underlying growth, both of which should be a net positive for the shares,” Peterson said.
“While we are tempering our near-term estimates, we believe the current valuation does not reflect the underlying value in Dun & Bradstreet,” he said.
Jacksonville-based Fidelity National Financial reported higher fourth-quarter earnings, and CEO Mike Nolan said he sees industry conditions for the title insurer returning to normal.
Adjusted earnings rose 79% to $366 million, or $1.34 a share, fueled by a big jump in title profit margins, as revenue rose 5.5% to $3.62 billion.
“We continue to improve the efficiency of our operations while exploring further innovation with generative AI tools and maintaining our focus on enhancing the title and settlement processes,” Nolan said in Fidelity’s Feb. 21 conference call.
Nolan said he expects the industry to return to a normalized environment over the next few years despite persistently high mortgage rates.
He cited data from the National Association of Realtors that home sales in 2024 were at the lowest level since 1995 despite population growth over the last three decades.
“This supports our view of the pent-up demand and basic need for housing that is expected to unleash growth in existing home sales over time. That is why we remain bullish on the long-term prospects for the title insurance business and continue to invest in our company,” he said.
Fidelity’s majority stake in F&G Annuities & Life Inc. is also helping its results, accounting for 38% of adjusted 2024 earnings, Nolan said.
“F&G is a strong growth engine, which we expect to continue as they execute against their medium-term financial goals.”
Fidelity’s stock rose $1.89 to $59.46 on Feb. 21 after the report in an otherwise bad day for the markets.
“Despite still-trough like conditions, FNF turned in one of its best quarters (at least, relative to expectations and the end market conditions) in recent memory,” Stephens analyst John Campbell said in a Feb. 24 research note.
Campbell maintained an “overweight” rating on the stock and raised his price target from $68 to $75.
“The Company handily outpaced expectations across the board, but we believe that it was the extent of the Title outperformance and the sustainable step up in earnings power that seems to come with it that stand out as the major takeaway items exiting this quarter,” he said.
CSX Corp. has experienced several disruptions to its rail network in the last six months from weather events, and it is now dealing with another service issue as a major tunnel in Baltimore is closed for a renovation project.
During a Feb. 19 presentation to the Barclays Industrial Select Conference in Miami Beach, CEO Joe Hinrichs said the Jacksonville-based railroad was dealing with flooding in Kentucky and other weather-related issues in the Midwest this month.
Meanwhile, repairs continue in Tennessee for damage from Hurricane Helene in September that has closed a major north-south route, Hinrichs said.
“Then right now with the Howard Street Tunnel work being done this year, the I-95 corridor is kind of closed, so our ability to recover from weather events is taking longer because we don’t have as many options,” he said.
The 125-year-old tunnel in Baltimore was closed at the beginning of February for a planned modernization project that is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.
CSX’s dwell, a measure of the time between a train car arriving in a yard and departing, was up 17% in the fourth quarter and the closed tunnel has added to the problem.
“Our dwell is higher than we want it to be and a lot of that has to do with there’s about 13 trains right now that are not going their normal routes because of those two blockages,” Hinrichs said.
“When the Howard Street Tunnel gets completed, including some bridge clearances around it, we’ll be able to run a shorter route to the East Coast, let’s say, from Chicago,” he said.
“So it’s a big deal to us and we’re really excited about it,” he said.
Chief Financial Officer Sean Pelkey said at the conference that he expects CSX’s earnings to pick up in the second half of this year.
“What we’ve said is that Q1 is likely to be our trough for earnings and then you’ll start to see us accumulate some momentum coming out of that,” Pelkey said.
“As Joe mentioned, we’ve gotten off to a challenging start when it comes to the weather but all things considered, we said low to mid-single-digit (percentage) volume growth for the full year,” he said.
“We’re flat out of the gates through the first 6 weeks or so, a little bit behind where we would have wanted to be. But again, most of that is largely weather driven.”
After reporting in September that a group was seeking a WNBA franchise for Jacksonville, Sports Business Journal is now listing several other cities ahead of Jacksonville in the bidding.
Former WNBA President Donna Orender, who now runs Jacksonville Beach consulting and advisory firm Orender Unlimited, told Sports Business Journal in September she had a group applying for a WNBA team.
The news site said in a Feb. 16 story that Jacksonville is one of the 13 cities that bid to be the WNBA’s 16th team, but Cleveland is now expected to get that franchise.
If the women’s basketball league decides to add two more teams and expand to 18, Philadelphia, Houston, Nashville, Detroit and Miami are the “presumed leaders,” it said.
Orender was announced in January as commissioner of a new professional women’s basketball league headquartered in Jacksonville that plans to begin play in May 2026.
The UpShot League will be operated by Zawyer Sports & Entertainment.
The UpShot League will be a minor league, not a competitor to the WNBA.
Lake City-based First Federal Bank announced Feb. 19 it is opening its first Jacksonville full-service branch at 9700 Touchton Road.
First Federal has 25 other branches, including three in Nassau County and one in Macclenny in the Jacksonville metropolitan area.
The four metro area branches had $493 million in deposits as of June 30, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.
The bank’s total deposits were about $3.5 billion.
First Federal already has a mortgage operations center in Jacksonville.