Thanks for joining. I'm Ashish Sabadra. I cover business and info services companies at RBC. I'm excited to host Bryan, CFO of D&B. Bryan, thanks for joining. Yeah, Ashish, thanks so much. Always, you know, my pleasure to join here each and every year, and so I look forward to the conversation. Thank you. Thanks. I wanna start off with the recent quarter. We saw a pretty material acceleration in growth. Went to mid-single digit, 5% revenue growth, which is more in line with your mid- to long-term targets of 5%-7%. Can you just talk about or discuss what drove that pretty material improvement in growth profile? Yeah, it's something, Ashish, that if you look at, you know, we've continued over almost four years now, if you can believe it- Yeah ... really transforming the business. And, and what we've always talked about is, you know, creating, you know, sustainable, you know, mid-single digit growth, and then, you know, obviously stepping it up into that 5%-7% range. So a couple things happened. One, you know, it was the Q1 where some of the headwinds that we had inherited prior to taking over the business were finally falling out of the system, right? And so, you know, while we had said, "Hey, we're doing, you know, X if you back out Y," you know, this time there was no Y to back out, and you saw it really shine through from that perspective. So North America F&R was probably one that went from 1% to 6%. But that was, you know, one of the big pieces because, you know, one of the contracts was a government contract that sat within that. And so it coming out really exposed what we had said, which was, you know, as of last, you know, kind of Q4, 90% of the revenues were already growing in that kind of 5%-6% range. Now you've kind of weaned that last portion of the 10% down, you know, to something in the single digit range, and the rest of the business is continuing to flow through. So nice momentum in third-party risk and supply chain risk management. Strong, you know, durable growth in master data management. International continues to progress very well, and so when you, you know, start looking at that holistic, I think we feel really good about the fact that despite, you know, what appears to be a pretty difficult, you know, macro, you know, backdrop, our transformation and our acceleration has continued to progress on. That's great. Before we talk about- Mm ... those growth drivers, I just wanted to talk about just quickly the turnaround. As you said, some of those businesses that were struggling a bit are now a much smaller piece of the business, so just want to get that out. I was just wondering if you could talk about the turnaround and the Credibility, Hoovers, some of those, and Data Vision and some of the other legacy products. Sure. And so when you look at it, look, we're always gonna have a portfolio, right? And there's always gonna be some that are smaller, that are declining, and that's what we've kind of weaned it down to, right? Is Credibility was the last one that kind of had inherited, you know, that FTC consent order investigation. It got solved. Clearly, the renewals, auto renewals were challenged from that side, but we're, you know, now a little over, you know, a year from that perspective. We'll kind of lap it as we get through the end of this year, and then, you know, you start to see, I think, a little bit more normalization, you know, as we head forward from that perspective. Hoovers, right, was a bigger chunk of business. We spent, you know, some investment and put some weight behind that, and turned it from what was a, I would say, a four-year, you know, kind of decliner into something now, you know, that is, you know, breaking even to starting to grow a little bit, right? Which in of itself is great as we continue to build momentum there. And certainly as, you know, the environment continues to improve, there's nice, you know, upside potential in that product set. The other, you know, Data Vision and Visitor Intelligence, some of these little ones, they're $1 million here, $2 million there, so not big- Yeah ... but certainly it's like, can you take the functionality that they have, you know, invested into, you know, an incremental enhancement into D&B Connect or into, you know, Hoovers, and then, you know, kind of wind down that other platform and move on? Roy's just very cognizant of kind of turning something off or selling something because the incremental, you know, EBIT impact, you know, could be, you know, material from that perspective. And so I think, you know, again, where we're at, you know, we've, we've kind of wound things down to a pretty manageable set. And now, you know, through our planning processes, through our, you know, kind of product lifecycle management, you know, we'll deal with those as they come up. But it's really about focusing on the core areas of growth in MDM, in third-party Supply Chain Risk Management, and really, you know, expanding from that perspective. That's great. And that's a great segue into my next question around... I was going to drill down further on the supply chain risk management that has had several quarters or rather, several years of really strong growth, strong momentum. How do you think about the addressable market there? What's driving that momentum? Is that opportunity to-- How do you think about opportunity of not only selling into your existing customer base, but also that being a, like, a leader to further expand your addressable market? Yeah, I think it's been great. I mean, if I go back to what it originally came out of, it was one of our largest, and it's the largest trade credit extender on the planet, right? And so if you google that, you'll figure out, you know, who it is, an extremely large retailer that looks like Walmart. And so, you know, Walmart was a great example of, you know, has a big, complex, you know, vendor and supply, you know, chain organization. And so, you know, being able to extend what we were doing for them in the finance department into their vendor and supplier was a natural progression, right? And another leveraging of, you know, our core data cloud. And so, you know, obviously, as we've continued to mature the product, industrialize that, it's something that, you know, really works in that. We call it KYTP, like, know your third party. Yeah. And so from that perspective, what started with finance, went to reg and compliance, is now extending into sustainability and social, right? Backs up even onto the fraud side. And so while B2C fraud, you know, is always kind of the easiest and most lucrative and quickest to turn around, B2B fraud is something that's picking up, you know, more and more. And so protecting yourself in that environment and that third party is really, you know, critical. As we've, you know, expanded that in North America with our great, you know, 500 million businesses that are in the data cloud, you know, those are the ones that are, you know, really fed into the automation process of not only underwriting, but monitoring from that perspective. As we extend this into Europe, that's something that is really exciting. I was in Stockholm, I was just in Frankfurt and London, as we talked about. And traditionally, we had sold our finance solutions, we'd sold, you know, some sales and marketing products, but we hadn't gone very deep onto the Supply Chain Risk Management side. When I think about a country like Sweden, very, you know, industrial, very, you know, mechanistic from that side, and, you know, you think about the impact of suppliers and supply chain and vendor management, it's big. And so I think there's gonna be a great opportunity for us to continue that momentum and garner what I feel like is a growing TAM over the next, you know, three, four, five, you know, 10 years. That's great. That's fantastic. Moving on to the next growth area, MDM, master data management, that has consistently grown, mid-single digit plus. How do you think about the growth drivers there and, your ability to how much room, opportunity there is to further cross-sell that into your existing customer base, but also if you can talk about the new logos and pipeline there? Yeah, so, you know, again, really kind of a mission-critical, very, you know, sticky product from that perspective. So one that obviously, you know, takes, you know, nice price on a year-over-year basis, is in, you know, a lot of the multi-year contracts from that side. And then it creates this kind of exoskeleton for us to hang more and more alternative data sets off of, right? And so, you know, it's really critical as we embed it in our strategic customers. We've also kind of taken it into the connect land, where mid-sized customers didn't need, you know, a PhD or a degree in, you know, engineering to actually, you know, operate the whole data mapping parent-child relationship. And so, you know, you had to remove a little bit of the bells and whistles and get it to be slightly less sophisticated, but more approachable from that side, from that mid layer. The small end, it, it's probably never gonna go down that far, right? But if I go back up into that strategic, it's really creating, you know, two things. One, you know, that base master client record, golden thread master vendor record, which then can appropriate out to software platforms and into, you know, processes around an organization. The other thing, and I'm not gonna jump forward into the Gen AI conversation, which is in an inevitability- Yeah ... is, you know, a core of, of how you're gonna run AI, analytics, Gen AI, is having clean, you know, responsibly sourced data upfront- Yeah ... that, you know, then is repeatable and can propagate from that perspective. So it's very exciting, it's very interesting. You know, I think if you saw, we just did, you know, a partnership with Databricks, right? Mm. Where they're gonna densify, you know, the marketplace. So all of that, you know, kind of pre-densifications just makes it that much more seamless, that much more frictionless, you know, to move, you know, these data elements into, you know, their lake houses and it, and again, drive powerful, connected, consistent, you know, analytics, that are gonna help their organizations be more efficient, more effective, you know, than they were in the past. That's great. Just within sales and marketing, you also have an online marketing business, which has been growing at a double-digit pace. There were two acquisitions there, Eyeota and NetWise. Yeah. I was just wondering if you can talk about that offering. How are those acquisitions come along? Yeah, they've been great. And so when I look at, you know, where we had a business called Audience Solutions upfront. You know, before, I think before we got to Dun & Bradstreet, you kinda had to secretly try to innovate, you know, like in a back office way where nobody saw you. But it was cool because, you know, a small team in New York had started to build, you know, this Audience Solutions, which sounds, you know, like what it is, which was taking our offline data and starting to build some B2B audiences online that ended up propagating into firms, you know, like large telecoms, et cetera. Because while traditional online advertising was done via, you know, B2C products, right? Yeah. So, you know, you talked about, I like Nike shoes, Alexa heard it, and all of a sudden, you know, it's starting to, you know, propagate, you know, Air Jordans, you know, on your, on your website. Now you're starting to think about, you know, from a non, you know, specific to the person, but specific to the role and, and their kind of business profile. And think about me. If I'm on, on the Wall Street Journal, you can sell, you know, a $5 ad in, in McDonald's and Burger King, whoever are fighting in the background, or you have Oracle, Workday, you know, SAP fighting in the background to present a treasury workstation, you know, application to someone who looks like the CFO of a multi-billion dollar corporation, right? And so, you know, it's seen that, you know, evolution from that perspective, and that's where NetWise helped, you know, continue to build out, you know, our identity graph from that perspective. Mm-hmm. And then Eyeota is a nice ecosystem for, you know, kind of the distribution and organization that feeds into the demand and supply side platforms. And so there's kind of six steps as you think through, the last being obviously the publisher from that perspective. But for us to play in that first region, you know, made a lot of sense. Demand and side, supply side platforms, you know, maybe not so much. Yeah. But definitely, you know, continuing to drive the data, you know, offline as well as it is online, is the strategy from that perspective. That's great. Shifting gears a bit, just moving on to international. You've seen some pretty strong momentum in international. International continues to grow much faster than the company average. I was just wondering if you could talk about what's going on with UKI, which has been growing really well, worldwide network, but also the turnaround at Bisnode? Yeah, I think it's across the board, Ryan. And so the good thing is, I think we're starting to narrow the gap in terms of, you know, the overall growth rate with, you know, the international side by North America continuing to progress and pick up. You know, we've had a bit of an advantage in terms of the growth percentage right out of the gates, because traditionally international felt like to me, where we were collecting the data, which was really key and important for our multinational customers, but we weren't driving localized product into those regions. By driving localized product into those regions, meaning we even took Hoover's, right? And that wasn't available in, you know, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, in local language with, you know, the local data elements to make it, you know, relevant from that perspective. In doing so, in part why you see the Vitality Index as high as it is, is because we could do that relatively quickly, get it in, get it to market, and the uptake's been really nice from that perspective. Bisnode was a great example where they were already selling some of our D&B products, and we saw them growing faster than a lot of their legacy. But again, you know, I don't know if we're gluttons for punishment, but going through that transition, right, of migrating products from one to the other, and it takes, you know, a discipline, and it takes experience. Yeah. You know, Neeraj has done this. We've done it, you know, many times. And so, you know, that migration has been great. They've moved, you know, off of disparate legacy credit systems onto FA, right? They've moved. You know, starting to move off of disparate, you know, sales marketing platforms onto Hoover's or D&B Connect. And that uplift you get from, you know, better product, also better pricing and mechanisms from that side has really allowed us to continue to drive growth in those regions. So yeah, I think, you know, we're very pleased with, you know, where the Bisnode transaction, you know, has in transformation has been. You remember, it was -2%, I think- Yeah ... organically, now 3%-4%. A lot of potential, as I said, in the regions for, you know, risk analytics and racy to go in there. And also at the same time, margins that were 12%-13% and now, you know, in the 30-ish% range. So very pleased with how things are going. No, it definitely has been a great- Mm ... turnaround story. Can you also talk about worldwide network, how big that is, and what's the strategy for worldwide network going forward? Yeah. So on the worldwide network, you know, we kind of broke it out in that international, you know, pie chart. So, you know, it's a chunk, you know, certainly of the international revenues. I think around, you know, 15%-20%, you know, if I'm remembering, you know, correctly. But, you know, in essence, it's going well. You know, we've renegotiated a lot of those agreements. You know, there, there's some, you know, kind of core minimums that go through, and then upside through, you know, product royalties when they're distributing our solutions, you know, throughout the regions. But you know, it was something that, you know, again, took some time and, and effort, you know, to, to make sure that the balance of, you know, who, you know, was really kind of driving, you know, the, the relationship and, and certainly that's evolved over the last four years. And look, there are circumstances where Bisnode was a great example, who was a worldwide network partner, and, you know, the valuation and the regions that, that we're in, made sense for us to acquire from that perspective. And so we're always kind of monitoring, you know, how those things evolve from that side. But I think right now, we're, we're pleased with, you know, the step-ups in data quality, you know, the step-ups in the relationship, the ability to drive our, our solutions through those regions has been, you know, very helpful. That's great. A question that we're asking all the companies at the conference is just about the macro, and what do you see from a macro perspective? And this could be the demand environment across... just because you have such a breadth of customers across all regions. I was wondering if you could comment on that front. Yeah. And, and, you know, before I go to the macro- Yeah ... actually, it triggered a thought, too, on- Yeah ... the international side and worldwide network. I mean, we own our data- Yeah ... throughout the world, right? Versus, you know, we're not a consolidator of data. And I think this is gonna be an interesting point as things continue to evolve from, for instance, a GenAI perspective. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, as an owner of the data, we have control over where that data goes, how it goes, do we wanna commercialize it, not commercialize it? As a consolidator, I think what's interesting is, you know, how do you deal with all of these kind of, you know, disparate, you know, contracts, disparate entities who actually own the data, and then ultimately, as it's feeding through into an application, you know, where does that go? So, you know, we feel like the proprietary nature of the data- Yeah ... the ownership of the data, these are really important concepts as we're pushing forward from that perspective. On the macro, look, I think that we were pretty, you know, consistent from- Yeah ... you know, when we spoke in February, right, and guided that. We have these two competing forces, which is a pretty tough macro backdrop with, you know, our overall transformation. In that, you know, I think we've achieved, you know, very strong results year to date, and, you know, with the ability to raise, you know, kind of the midpoint of our guide up, you know, as we're heading into the end of the year. We're all, you know, good things from that perspective. We don't have the big cyclical drivers, you know, mortgage rates go up or, you know, consumer, you know, spending goes down, or bond issuance boosts from that side, that would change, you know, kind of volume levels from that perspective. Really, as I think about macro, it's more around kind of that second derivative effect, which is, you know, what are businesses' budgets? You know, how are they thinking about, you know, the amount of approvals, you know, that it goes through within an organization. But the nice part that we're in is that, as a data and analytics provider, we're always looking at use cases to drive efficiencies, right? We're always looking at, you know, if we're the backbone in that kind of exoskeleton, can we take, you know, other complementary, you know, data sets and convert them into ours, save our customer money. I mean, it may eliminate another vendor out there, but, you know, that's kinda how things go in these environments. So, overall, anybody who says they're completely unaffected, I think that's a little silly. But, you know, in the grand scheme of things, you know, we're a business that is never gonna get massive upswings, right, from, you know, tailwinds in the macro. But on the downside, you know, it's the benefit of being a defensive growth asset, with, you know, I think a lot more growth potential in front of us. Yeah, and as you mentioned, defensive growth, just the fact that you have such a high percentage of subscription-based revenue model, that makes it highly defensive. It does, and in the multi-year contracts, right? Yes. I mean, one of the things that we set out, you know, as a clear vision, you know, four years ago was we had less than 20% of our revenues, I think it was like, you know, in the teens, on multi-year contracts. And we said, "Look, we wanna set that, you know, to multi-year contracts with price escalators." And certainly, as you get into these types of environments, that's a great, you know, model to have, right? The other thing it's done is it's taken the focus off of renewals, right? Renewing the same book of business, the same revenue, the same solution, and say, "Listen, set that up, allow it to, you know, grow at a reasonable rate, but then go in and spend your time cross-selling and upselling these new innovations that we're bringing, you know, to bear. That's great. You've mentioned Vitality Index a couple of times. We've seen some really strong Vitality Index, both in the U.S. as well as international market. I was wondering if you can talk about the technology transformation, the digital transformation that you have embarked on, and how has that driven that new product innovation, which has driven the Vitality Index? Absolutely. You know, that's the foundational element of it. We had this discussion a little earlier in one of the meetings. But, you know, setting that foundation of, you know, cloud-based infrastructure, setting the foundation of, you know, some of the changes we needed to make in terms of the data supply chain and the throughput, those have allowed us to really start to innovate, right, with more urgency and innovate with more success. And so, you know, part of the high, I would say, Vitality Index is a bit of a, you know, a question of what was going on, you know, prior to 2019, right? So what I always say is, and you know this, "Don't expect 25%, 30% Vitality Indexes forever," right? Because at some point, you know, it's kind of a four-year cycle, and then you start to lap from that perspective. But, you know, teens, you know, and going forward it is certainly on the radar. The changes, and look, a lot of that underlying work is done. We still have a little bit, you know, that we're working through on some of the final kind of cloud conversion and some of that, you know, evolution in terms of some of the applications that we have, even on the back office side. But, you know, the majority of our time, effort, and focus is on new product innovation. And I would tell you that if GenAI had accelerated in 2018 or 2019, we wouldn't be in the position that we're in today, which is being on the front foot, being a first mover. I don't think, you know, that would've been possible, you know, four years ago. And so it's really... I'm thankful for, you know, the technology team, the data team, you know, the operations team, the work that got put into it, because it's allowed us to be in the position that we're in today. Yeah, that's a great segue into my next question on, on GenAI, and I was gonna ask you about ABE as well as the dnb.ai lab. Sure. So you've been busy with GenAI initiatives. I was wondering- Sure ... if you can talk about some initial feedback, what have you done on the GenAI front, and, and, yeah, initial customer feedback? Yeah, I think, again, you know, initial customers' feedback and engagement has been, you know, strong. Yes. You know, with ABE, I think what's interesting is that there's so much out there, and it's like, how do you focus that into use cases that are manageable and that, you know, drive a specific outcome, right? Like, it's one thing, you know, and you look at, like, the early ChatGPT or this ability to create, you know, paintings, or it fixes your Photoshop of your, you know, iPhone, you know, immediately. It's all interesting, right? Yeah. You know, in the end, you're coming to a guy like me in an organization and saying, "How is this gonna increase my revenue? Yes. Reduce my expenses, or, you know, increase and optimize my risk profile," right? That's what we're focused on with customers from that perspective, because the other side is: how do you do it in a responsible manner that is repeatable and has longevity? Because, you know, part of the you know, privileged position we're in is our proprietary data cloud and, you know, its ability to go back and kind of audit to the original owner of the data, where it was sourced, how it was sourced, and be confident that when it does enter into, you know, an LLM, that output is gonna be relied upon and valid for, you know, years to come. You know, the situation where two years from now, you know, these models that have been out kind of scraping questionable, you know, public data, private data, you know, that in and of itself. You know, I think Mike, you know, our CTO, said, "The first few years of GenAI are gonna create the next 10 years of litigation," right? And so, you know, for us and for partners, you know, like watsonx and IBM, we have a really similar, I think, philosophy in terms of, you know, the governance responsibility and how we're gonna go forward solely focused on business. And so, you know, ask procurement's a great, you know, kind of next highlight. And it's democratizing, I think, how people work, for instance, in, like, a source and procurement organization. And so with our data, you know, feeding in, and then the model sitting on top, you can all of a sudden ask a simple question in terms of, "Hey, what are the, you know, top chip providers, you know, in Latin America?" Okay, great. Which of those, you know, have a Paydex score of over, you know, 90? Okay, great. And which of those have what appear to be, you know, a strong sense of, you know, environmental readiness? And all of a sudden it shows your ESG score over, you know, 85, and out comes three businesses that's down from the 500 million, and allows you to, you know, really start to move forward with efficiency. So those are the types of things I think that we're kinda in early stages on. Mm-hmm. But you know, that combination of solution- Yeah ... with the combination of, you know, the things like, you know, Databricks and that early kind of DUNS and entity resolution- Yeah ... and how that's kind of the start, right, of the process, and then clearly just the data in and of itself. What I would say is, you know, our GC, our risk team, our compliance, we're all over the upfront part because, you know, one of the biggest pieces is making sure, you know, that we're leveraging the data properly. But, you know, we're keeping it in an area where if it comes out, it comes out, you know, and it's gone, and it's not residual from that perspective. So a lot of, I think, interesting and powerful things for us to do in that space. That's great. And as you've mentioned a couple of times, the proprietary data and the ownership of the data, that truly creates a differentiated value prop. Can you also talk about if you're using GenAI internally for improving cost efficiency, and how should we think about that opportunity over the 3-5-year period? Yeah. So Anthony's like, "Hey, look, revenue," you know what I mean? "Growth," you know? My side, of course, is, you know, we're balancing... I love revenue growth, obviously, you know that, and I, and involved with a lot of customers. But- Yes ... on the expense side, you know, are there things? Of course. And so part of the reason that we've done a lot of the work that, you know, nobody likes to do, right? Nobody in my shoes likes to convert, you know, an ERP, right, from a global perspective. But having those kind of back office systems- Yeah ... that are consistent, right, and modernized, allows you to lay things like GenAI on top of them, you know, to start to do what I would say lower value tasks, and then allows, you know, the, the folks to focus on higher value tasks. Think about our, our data, you know, procurement, right? And our data, you know, operations in the background. Another place that, you know, there is, I think, large opportunity for GenAI to come in to, you know, help with QA, QC, normalization, you know, some of the, accelerations around what we're doing from a match and append perspective. So there definitely are, you know, those applications, and then there's this generic application in terms of how it can work from a, a coding perspective, right? Yeah. I've always asked, right out of the gates, can I give it a contract and have it do revenue recognition on 150-page, you know, agreement? They told me no initially, but I still feel like, you know, that's something to come. That's great. Maybe just broadening the topic out a bit more and just talking about margin expansion. Can you talk about what are the drivers for margin expansion going forward? Yeah. How much more opportunity that you have? Yeah, sure. So I, again, I think, you know, where we're at now, you know, in the roughly 40% is, is very strong from that perspective. If you look at the incrementals, you know, as, as we go forward, you know, this quarter was a good example, 5.8%, you know, organic constant currency revenue growth. I think, you know, Adjusted EBIT grew in, like, 6.5% range. Now, posted was, like, 40.1%-40.0%, but it was the FX, you know, deviation from that side. Yeah. On a constant currency basis, we were up about 40 bips. So, you know, what we kinda talked about is, you know, the, the general algorithm is in that growth range of, you know, roughly, call it 5%-7%, you're dropping, you know, 50-100 bips of margin expansion from that perspective. And that includes, obviously, the normal investment in, in data, the normal investment in our people, et cetera, which would take something north of that and, and obviously bring it back down. So, you know, again, there's always gonna be a little bit of that, you know, FX noise in terms of the Adjusted FX EBIT margin percentage. Yeah. But, you know, the core piece that we look at, you know, that's how we think about that, that margin expansion going forward. That's great. Two questions that we are asking all the companies at our conference. First one is, what is the biggest decision that you think... Or sorry, biggest decision that management team has to make over the next three years? So that's a great question. I think, you know, in terms of, you know, how we're thinking about, you know, the strategy, right, and, you know, where do we wanna continue to place the bets on, right? Mm-hmm. And so, you know, some of that is in, you know, potentially going deeper in industry verticals, right? And which would take some subject matter expertise, but then, you know, also potentially new data elements from that side of the equation. You know, for us, I think we have a pretty straightforward path on what we need to do, right? So we're executing from a results perspective. We're continuing to drive, you know, a better balance sheet right, and deleveraging, you know, the asset. And then, you know, obviously we're looking at, okay, once we're in those two positions, then capital allocation in terms of, you know, buyback strategies, in terms of, you know, M&A tuck-in, et cetera. And so for us, I don't think the big question is as ambiguous as it might be for some. You know, we know what we need to do, and you know, we're gonna set out to do it. That's great. In the closing, what is one thing that you are most excited about for D&B? I'm really excited about, you know, again, where the transformation has taken us, right? Mm-hmm. What these next, you know, steps are in terms of, you know, how do we, you know, take this to the next level, right? And so we've gotten a lot of that, you know, tough work out of the way. You know, we're starting to see, you know, the innovation flywheel spin, and so what we can do with our own assets, what we can do with, you know, our partners, and what's going on from a GenAI perspective, I think those are the things that are really exciting. And I love to be in very germane spots like MDM, like in third-party risk and supply chain risk management, because, you know, that's what, you know, that's what gets me excited. That's great. Thanks again. Thank you.