All right, we will go ahead and get started. Thank you, everybody, for joining us this afternoon. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and I cover capital markets for Raymond James. Next, we have Dun & Bradstreet, and on their behalf, we have CFO Bryan Hipsher. Bryan, thank you for joining us. Yeah, Patrick, thanks for having us out. So just to kick things off, we don't do slides much these days, but I think just to help level set, if you can walk through for the people in the room what Dun & Bradstreet is, what it does, how you guys view it today. Yeah, no, it's a great question. Sometimes we don't spend as much time on what we're doing, what problems we're solving. D&B, obviously, has been around for a long time. I think we've talked about the presidential history that sits behind it. Really, what we do is, through our proprietary database of over 550 million companies throughout the world, really linked through a parent-child hierarchy, we start with kind of a data management philosophy. So we use the D-U-N-S number as a unique identifier that really kind of substantiates either a master client or master vendor record. And then we solve use cases. My sports background, so we talk about either offense or defense. So on the financial risk side, which is probably what D&B has been known for a very long time, is around finance solutions. Third-party supply chain risk management is kind of the other newer piece of that. FS is really centered around the business-to-business lending, the extension of trade credit. You'll hear that the PAYDEX used a lot, which is the kind of commercial credit score from a business perspective. Then we took that and kind of turned it on its head, added some new data, and really third-party risk and compliance grew out of that. That's where we're bringing in regulatory and compliance and other risks, things like sustainability, things like cyber, et cetera, and helping businesses to onboard, monitor third-party suppliers, vendors, et cetera, from that perspective. If you then kind of take that core center data universe and turn it to the sales and marketing side, we use that data to help our customers identify, write, and then understand and acquire new either prospects or clients from that perspective. On the digital marketing side, which is some of the newer things we've done from that side, it's a little bit of taking the D-U-N-S from offline to online and then using a mix of both the individuals within those businesses, but also the businesses themselves to present marketing and advertisements to decision makers. And again, it's all about leveraging data and analytics to drive either efficiency, effectiveness, and their revenue growth or expense management. Got you. So that would be the offense side of things. That's the offense. So let's get the elephant in the room out of the way. Can you walk us through how the company's current strategic review was started, detail the process so far, and expected time for conclusion to the extent that you can share any information? Yeah, I think the words are important on there too, Patrick, because one of the things is we didn't go out and hang a for sale sign on the door. We didn't announce the strategic process from that perspective. We had talked about looking at some of the smaller assets within the organization and seeing whether or not those fit in the overall portfolio. Credibility has been around for a long time. It obviously went through a Consent Order really previous to when we owned the business. But the impact of that, obviously, was kind of coming to a head. And so we were looking and saying, hey, does it make sense to own the whole thing, to own a piece of this, and what do we think as we're kind of making the final improvements from that perspective? Digital marketing, actually, a little bit more transactional for that side. So we were evaluating that. In the meantime, we got some inbound interest from that perspective. And as you know as well as I, you have to take that interest in and kind of run it to ground. And so that's really what we've been doing from that perspective. Obviously, that's kind of led into what we described as the process, but it was really being responsive from that perspective because, again, our fiduciary responsibility is to drive all of these outcomes. I mean, just like we're here today explaining what we're doing at D&B, where the business was, where it is, and where it's going, those were the same types of conversations we were having from that perspective. So look, it's clearly been something that at this point, Anthony mentioned, we're going to bring to a head here because, like I said, we didn't have to sell the company. And so from that side, we're to the point where we're going to get enough information. We're going to get insight. We'll share that with the board. The board will make a decision from that perspective. And then depending on that outcome, we'll move forward one way or the other. The timing for that was by the end of March, I believe you communicated? Yeah, we said end of the quarter, which is end of March, exactly. Switching gears to the business itself, to what extent was the revenue missed during the fourth quarter of 2024 due to transitory factors versus things that might impair the company's ability to eventually grow to your targeted 5%-7% range? Yeah, really some transitory factors. I mean, we called out three specific things. And look, there's kind of two pieces of it. There's the fourth quarter, and then there's the timing that kind of occurred throughout the year. We had talked about that and kind of the cadence of how the year was going to stack up from that side. But really, the components that we discussed in the fourth quarter were pretty specific. The one that can happen from time to time is the movement of deliveries from a client perspective. So again, in any 12 months, really easy. Annual contract value, sales equals revenue. But what ends up happening is if we have deliveries that are on a quarterly basis, our contracts don't start on January 1st or end on December 31st, so that would make my life a lot easier, actually. But the ones that cross calendar years, if the client's delivering at a different cadence, again, their commitment is the same, but the revenue recognition gets a little bit shifted, either positively or negatively in a month. December is a big delivery quarter, and we had about $4 million that shifted from that perspective. The other piece in there, again, as we got to the end of the year, we had some renewals of some partnerships. And again, those are ones that we're always evaluating. We knew they were coming up for renewal, so we had been working towards getting them into the right place. Ultimately, that changed, and they didn't get into the right place. And we had some expenses, either fixed expenses or we had some pass-through expenses that they weren't making them economically smart for us to continue on and go-forward basis. And we ended up not renewing those. So that had an impact to the quarter. It also had an impact into 2025, where revenues were a little bit lower, but the expenses more than offset that from that perspective. The last piece, and I would say, was really around some of the deal timing. So one of the things that you've seen us do a nice job of is take these relationships from kind of point solutions within an organization and raise the level of conversation up and raise it up to more of an enterprise-level agreement. Look, those are bigger deals, and obviously, they're multi-year deals. And frankly, with some of the noise that was out in the market, obviously, some of the clients were saying, like, "Okay, if we're going to do this and it's going to extend, what's that mean? Who's on the other end of this?" And for us, it was very difficult to say one way or the other because, obviously, that's, as you said, quite a private matter from that side. So that caused some slippage from that perspective. Some of those deals have signed. Some of them are still in conversation from that perspective. So not something that was like, "Hey, it's gone," or there was some kind of negative impact. Really, you had this kind of timing issue specific to the fourth quarter, which, again, it's a good thing in the end. Moving from on-delivery to ratable, moving from a delivery mechanism to an API that's embedded within your customer's workflow, that's great. Does that change the timing of those revenue patterns? It does. But in the end, like I said, in a 12-month period, that's what we're really focused on from that perspective. To the point of delayed purchase decisions by your customers because of the conversations going on, would you then look at the conclusion of that review by the end of March as a potential catalyst for closing some sales? Yeah, I think, look, it certainly takes the kind of distraction off the table from that side. So when we thought about the guide for the year and we thought about, we said, "Look, there's obviously the impact from some of those partnerships we walked away from," so we built that in. We also thought about, "Hey, look, coming out in the first quarter, if we talked about it being some distractions fourth quarter, then obviously, it's going to have some of that impact in the first quarter." And then again, the timing of execution, sale, and then the revenue from that perspective, we just wanted to be mindful from that side of the equation. Got you. And then what are some of the growth opportunities that you're excited about as we move into 2025? Yeah, look, I mean, some things, like for instance, I'm excited that we've gotten through a lot of the migration effort because, again, whether you're migrating from an old platform to a new platform, that causes a level of disruption in and of itself. And so having those behind us, I think, is really positive because then it allows us to focus on, I want to say, some fun things. So not that migrating your customers isn't fun. They've been going offense again. Yeah. It's things to me. So if I think about the verticalization of our GTM and some of the verticalization of our products, the things we're doing from that perspective to go a little bit deeper in things like financial institutions, insurance, healthcare, they're really big markets. And what we can do is take a data set that is superb from a horizontal perspective, from an international perspective, from a depth, and start to add on those certain specific data sets or workflows that really drive another level of benefit to our customers from that side. Where we are, and again, we're early on, we did a couple of partnerships to start off with around the fringes of capital markets and private credit. Man, that is a huge opportunity for us on a go-forward basis. You think about our data set and our database. If you have 550 million entities, most of those are obviously private company. And so the data we have around the financials, the data we have around the firmographics, it puts us in a position where, are we at the end point? No. Are there certain data elements we have to continue to grow and evolve? Absolutely. But if I think where we're starting and where we could be, it's really exciting from that perspective. And again, you're seeing it and got some questions around the tariffs and things like that. But third-party and supply chain risk management continues to be a big opportunity for us. MDM, big opportunity for us. Obviously, there's more, I think, momentum continuing around the GenAI space. And someone asked me earlier today, their thesis sits around the importance of databases and the unique and proprietary data that sits behind it. It's like, do you agree with my thesis? And I was like, yes, I agree with your thesis. These models are great and they're really interesting, but when you apply them in a business setting, foundationally, the data has to be curated, it has to be owned, it has to be understood and properly gathered, and that trust factor, I think, is going to be a big component of what we can do in that space going forward. So then speaking of GenAI, how do you think about Dun & Bradstreet's ability to monetize GenAI? Yeah. It's going to come in a couple of different ways. So one would be, for instance, what we've rolled out with ChatD&B, what we're doing around Ask Procurement, which is using some of IBM watsonx as a foundational component with our data, having it in kind of a containerized environment, and then going out to our customers from that side to solve that solution. Then there's going to be just the data side of the equation and how, again, we allow that data to be used. We want to be very mindful in that space, though, because it going out into the core LLMs has a level of risk associated with that versus trying to figure out with our client and/or with other partners in that software space, how do we collaborate from that side to license the data or use the data from that perspective, but to make sure that it's not kind of creeping out into these core models that it then learns and has residual impact from that perspective. So when I think about monetization, I think about us building our own types of solutions in-house and then really allowing our data to go in a properly contracted manner and being leveraged by our customers because we're quite, I would say, restrictive. That was one of the things that was good about our existing agreements with the usage rights from an AI perspective and/or a GenAI perspective. There are ways to incrementally monetize even with existing agreements from that perspective. Is it fair to say you're still pretty early in the journey of monetizing GenAI? It is. And I think most businesses are, to be honest. You have a lot of our clients coming to us trying to strategize and coordinate on what is the best way to push this going forward because when you make those decisions, they have lasting impact. When you go in to automate something, and generally, that's what you're doing, you have to be confident that that is going to continue on for years and years. Y ears because once that kind of goes down that path, to reel that back in, to go get maybe the resources that you used to use from that perspective, that's quite impactful from that side. So it's really about doing it right and doing it so it's consistent and repeatable. That's what we're working from that side, which I think, again, is the right place to be because then once you're in, you're in. So you touched on earlier your credibility and digital marketing businesses and how you're evaluating. Do they make sense as part of Dun & Bradstreet? And it sounds like you kind of put the brakes on that evaluation process. But in the meantime, how are those businesses actually trending? Yeah. I mean, they both trended positively. And I think in the fourth quarter, both of them went from kind of negative growth early in the year to positive growth in the fourth quarter. So I think that was a good step forward in terms of how we're progressing. Sustainable is going to be really important for us too. And so as we think about them going forward, we want them to be contributing to that achievement of 5%-7% growth versus getting around that. And so that's where the evaluation really has come in. And again, where the digital marketing has been a little bit more transactional, a little bit more cyclical, what I don't want and what we don't want is it to be helping one year, hurting the next year, helping one year, hurting the next. That's the evaluation more on that side where credibility is kind of like, "Okay, it's come out of this consent. It's coming out. What's the new kind of rules of the road? How have the changes we made? How are those continuing to show sustainable improvement?" I think the green shoots are there. But the other piece is getting them into a positive place is also helpful when you think about the potential for divestiture. When you're in a spot where you're like, "Hey, it's going to get better versus it has gotten better," that's a different dynamic too because we want to make sure it's an accretive transaction to the business that we have the ability to take those funds, repay debt, and then move on from that perspective. How are client budgets looking so far in 2025? And is there any difference across your geographies or end markets? Yeah. This is where we mentioned verticalization earlier. I think that's important because there are, I would say, generally, businesses are getting a little bit more front-footed. So I think budgets around data, analytics around AI, and you're seeing that, I think, shift a little bit internally to say, "How do I continue to free up capacity to spend on those areas?" And so I think that's been a positive move. Certainly, you see there's been some ups and downs even past presidential elections. Germany just kind of came through. There's too. All of that, I think, is helpful in terms of just having clarity and insight going forward. But overall, I think what we're seeing is we've seen stabilization kind of late last year, and budgets seem to be getting a little bit more positive as we're leaning into this year. Dun & Bradstreet has disclosed revenue retention of around 96%, I think, every year since 2020. Is there potential upside in that number? And is it just unavoidable given kind of turnover and bankruptcies within some of the SMBs in your credibility business? Yeah. You're always going to have some level of churn. So is it ever going to get to 100%? No. Where I think we can continue to improve is as we're finishing some of these migrations, as we're finishing some of the wind down of some of the legacy solutions, it can get a little bit better from that perspective. But again, 1% better, you close the back door. All of a sudden, if you're growing 3%, you close the back by 1%, now you're growing 4%. And so that's where when Anthony and the team mentioned doing the right thing that doesn't necessarily help you in the immediacy, it helps you going forward. So retention's a little bit better. Pricing has the opportunity to be better. And so that's where things like shifting off of these kind of legacy platforms in the finance solution side, it doesn't make it look as great as it is in a very short time period. But going forward, I think those are the positive results that we expect. What's the current competitive dynamic like across the two main components of your business? And we talked about GenAI as something you're going to market with. Do you foresee or do you look at GenAI as a potential competitive threat at all? You know what? Because of the data side of the equation, again, I don't see it as much of a threat as I see it as an opportunity. When you think about the proprietary nature of the data, the proprietary nature of what we do in terms of the data management side of the equation, it's really not something that jumps off the page from that perspective. Competitively, again, I think the dynamic has been relatively consistent. Look, there are certain spots that we have really unique offerings in. And then to be able to bundle off of that and kind of contain that, that's where we can really continue to differentiate ourselves. International, I think we're in a very different place than we were five years ago, six years ago, and you can see that out of the growth and the strength from that side. North America, when I think about the competitors on the very low end of the market, they're still the same ones. When I think the competition that's in that maybe Hoover's sales acceleration side, it's much more fragmented from that perspective. But if you're going to the core and you're saying, "Hey, look, my MDM strategy, my cleanse match, append dedupe entity resolution, how I think about my TAM, how I think about my RevOps," for us, it's about how do you continue to put complementary things on top of that. That creates much more of the differentiation than, "Hey, I'm just going to go head to head in this one little sliver." That's where it gets a little bit more competitive. What do you see in terms of risks or opportunities due to a new administration in DC? And obviously, tariffs have been the conversation in the last week or so. Is there any impact on your business from that? Yeah. Not necessarily. I think, again, it's another talking point. It's another focus on who you're doing business with, where are your vendors, where are your third parties, how are you thinking about being agile and monitoring and understanding what your flexibility is there. So we had the conversation, what was it, years back when COVID first started, and there was, "Where are my vendors at? Are they being impacted?" Then you add the war and conflict in Ukraine and understanding Russian, Belarusian. There's always things, and you can see executives, businesses, boards, clients, they want to know who you're doing business with. Vendors and third parties are an extension of your organization, a reflection of your organization. And I think that's going to continue on from that perspective. Dun & Bradstreet exited a couple of unprofitable data partnerships during the fourth quarter, as you touched on. Why did you guys enter into unprofitable partnerships in the first place? Yeah. So if you look at some of these, go back a pretty long ways. And so the royal we maybe came into those. And again, they started with a spot where they may have made sense as the predominant amount of data, for instance, was coming out of North America. But as it shifted and more and more was coming out of the worldwide network partners, there were circumstances where it's like, "I'm guaranteed to get a $1 in, but if I'm paying a $1.30 out, it doesn't make sense." So then when we were renegotiating, we said, "Hey, look, this is the new agreement, you know what I mean, to push that up." And that's where we didn't come to a conclusion. On the other side, what I would say is that, again, we've talked about buy, build, partner. And so we had a client who was coming in from the sales and marketing space around and buying our data. We said, "Look, we can build some bespoke hosting and software around this. In essence, you're client zero from that side, and then we'll take that and repeat it." Well, look, between market conditions, commercial conditions, etc., that didn't end up working out. And so he came back and said, "Hey, listen, if you want to keep this kind of structure, we need the, in essence, commitment to go up from there." We thought we were going to get in that position. Ultimately, that didn't pan out. And so we said, "Hey, look, we're going to have to exit from that side." So when we talk about expenses, we're not hoping the expenses go away. I mean, there were some hard costs investment from that side. Makes sense. How are you guys thinking about free cash flow generation and capital deployment in 2025? Yeah. So a couple of things. One is we've gotten to where CapEx has kind of peaked out. I would say even in our CapEx guide this year on the internally developed software, we're probably conservative from that side. So that coming down is obviously a benefit from free cash flow. D&A is starting to pick up, but those two are starting to get close to colliding from that side. So I think just the pure conversion from adjusted net income to free cash flow is stepping up. When I think about also the big work we've done from a restructuring perspective, some of the M&A, those are falling off from that side. The transition costs are probably another chunk of dollars that are going out that weren't impacting adjusted EBITDA. The portion that's like the back office transformation, we're at the tail end of that. And so those costs have come down substantially already. And you saw that kind of step down from Q3 to Q4. The cloud migration, some of that is still ongoing, but I expect that to come down materially this year and then almost be nonexistent in 2026. So when you think about that kind of investment coming down, some of those duplicative costs going away, and then just the operational gearing of the business, that's where we expect free cash flow to continue to improve in 2025 and especially as we go forward. And then as you deploy that, is that reduction still your primary objective at this point? You do have a share repurchase authorization outstanding. And then you've done some tuck-in acquisitions in the past, and maybe there's some interesting data sets or software out there that you could look at. Sure. Look, I think leverage, we talked about it again down to kind of that 3.25 by the end of the year. Some of that's just natural EBITDA expansion. But I think continuing to push that down below three, look, all businesses in leverage aren't created equally. And we've talked about that. But at the same time, realistically, to have that kind of get below three, I think takes a lot of that conversation off the table. Buybacks, obviously, before some of this conversation came up, we had been strategic from that perspective. Look, I mean, I think where we see the value of the company, the assets, the work we've done, what we have in front of us, obviously, that's something that we think is attractive from that perspective too. In M&A, it's tough to find a private company that kind of trades at a valuation that would be as attractive from our side, and so we do balance those, but if you thought about prioritization, I mean, deleveraging, buybacks, and then I think M&A is kind of after that. All right. Makes sense. I think on that note, we'll wrap it up. But thank you, Bryan, and thank you, everybody, for joining us. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Patrick.