Dun & Bradstreet Feels Customers' Pain

SHORT HILLS, N.J. (TheStreet) -- Shares of Dun & Bradstreet(DNB Quote) lost 13% of their value Friday after the company scaled back its growth expectations for the rest of the year.

The company, which sells business data to organizations, has been hurt by the cost-cutting that has become general across the corporate world.

After the closing bell Thursday, amid a lackluster second-quarter report in which it tied Wall Street profit targets, the company said its per-share earnings for 2009 would likely grow at a 1% to 5% rate, well below its original forecast of 9% to 12%. (The growth rates exclude items.)

The company also said its "core revenue," a metric that does not take into account cash generated by businesses that it has recently sold off, could contract by 1% in the worst case and grow by 1% in the best case. Originally it had believed its revenue would grow at a 2% to 5% clip.

Consensus analyst estimates had pegged full-year 2009 EPS for the company at $5.83, a more than 10% increase from the $5.27 a share it earned a year ago.

Dun & Bradstreet stock in afternoon trading Friday was moving at $72.27, down $10.51, or nearly 13%, on volume of 1.85 million shares. Average daily turnover is about 600,000 shares.

Financial-info peer McGraw-Hill(MHP Quote), which owns the Standard & Poor's credit rating agency, also has had a rough go of it. On Wednesday, the company said its second quarter earnings declined 23%.

-- Reported by Scott Eden in New York.