Analytics Firm Dun & Bradstreet Launches IPO

Analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet has launched an initial public offering (IPO), with Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, BofA Securities, J.P. Morgan and Barclays acting as joint lead book running managers, a press release says.

According to the release, Dun & Bradstreet is offering 65,750,000 shares of its common stock, with an expected initial public offering price between $19 and $21 per share.

Subsidiaries of Cannae, Black Knight and CC Capital Partners will be investing $200 million, $100 million and $100 million respectively toward private placements of Dun & Bradstreet’s common stock, depending on whether the offering ends up being at least 98.5 percent of the initial public offering price, the release says.

The company plans to use the investments to redeem its outstanding Series A preferred stock, to pay off some senior unsecured notes, and for other general working capital and corporate purchases, according to the release.

The IPO has been applied to the list of shares for common stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

The field of initial public offerings for 2020 has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, which saw big names like Airbnb delaying their offerings as the world economy spiraled into uncertainty. However, as the world has begun to recover from the pandemic over the past month, IPOs have begun to look up as well.

As the world began to reopen, IPOs started to flood in as if they’d been blocked up from the pandemic in the previous weeks. Warner Music, car dealer Vroom, FinTech provider Shift4 Payments and grocery chain Albertsons were among the companies rushing to debut IPOs or announcing their intent to do so in late May as the world signaled it was ready to start opening back up.

Neil Kell, chairman of global capital markets for Bank of America, told the Financial Times that the market for public equity sales was picking up as people looked for big sales for more liquidity in the current market.

The companies that do best in the current market might end up being young, tech-driven ones like insurance firm Lemonade.