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Here's Why You Should Bet on TransUnion (TRU) Stock Now

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Headquartered in Chicago, IL, TransUnion (TRU - Free Report) offers data and analytics solutions, particularly in credit risk management. The company boasts a rich domain proficiency across a wide range of industry verticals, including insurance, healthcare and financial services.

Growth Drivers

The company’s addressable market includes the burgeoning Big Data and analytics market, which is expanding rapidly as companies comprehend the advantages of building an analytical enterprise where decisions are derived from data and insights. Numerous underlying trends are supporting this market growth, including the creation of massive amounts of data, advances in technology and analytics that allow data to be processed more swiftly and efficiently, and mounting demand for these business insights across industries and geographies.

Research firm, IDC projects that global spending on Big Data and analytics services will grow at a projected compounded annual growth rate (“CAGR”) of 11.7%, and will reach $203 billion in 2020 from $130 billion in 2016. In order to capitalize on the immense potential growth in this market, TransUnion has leveraged its next-generation technology in order to strengthen its analytics capabilities and has further expanded its database.

The company’s gigantic treasure trove of data is its most distinguishing asset and also is perhaps the biggest barrier to entry for competitors. TransUnion has over 30 petabytes of data, growing at an average of over 25% annually since 2010. Acquiring or building such data involves huge costs, making it extremely difficult for a new company to build the contacts and data that TransUnion already has. This fortifies TransUnion's ability to sustain its competitive advantage and protect its market share.

TransUnion has outperformed the Zacks categorized Business Information Services industry in the last three months, with an average return of 22.3% compared with 8.1% gain for the latter. As emerging market economies continue to develop and mature, the company is well-positioned to gain from the associated favorable socio-economic trends. Additionally, increased risk of identity theft due to data breaches and higher consumer awareness about the importance and usage of their credit information are propelling the demand for TransUnion’s consumer solutions. Further, businesses are also seeing increasingly complex regulations, such as new capital requirements and the Dodd-Frank. This further boosts demand for TransUnion’s services.



In addition, TransUnion has an attractive business model with highly recurring and diversified revenue streams, significant operating leverage, low capital requirements and strong and stable cash flows. The inherent nature and significance of its solutions in customers’ decision-making endow it with high customer retention and revenue visibility. Impressively, it deals with the 10 largest U.S. banks, the top five credit card issuers, the biggest 25 auto lenders and thousands of healthcare providers and federal, state and local government agencies. Also, the company keeps making significant investments to modernize its infrastructure and facilitate the seamless transition to the latest Big Data and analytics technologies. This enables TransUnion to expand its business and improve its cost structure.

Estimate Revisions

Over the past two months, TransUnion’s current-quarter estimates have increased 3 cents to 36 cents while that for the current year have increased 10 cents to $1.61 per share. The stock witnessed three positive estimate revisions for the current quarter in the last two months, and five upward estimate revisions and a solitary downgrade for the current year.

TransUnion currently has a Strong Buy or Buy broker rating of 80% and Hold rating of 20%. Stocks with brokerage upgrades are are likely to outshine their peers. Consequently, a downgrade may indicate rough days ahead. Whatever the movement, the market tends to react to it. Also, research shows that stocks with broker rating upgrades outperform those that aren't upgraded and they almost certainly record better results than the stocks that get downgraded.

TransUnion Broker Recommendations

 

TransUnion Broker Recommendations | TransUnion Quote

To Sum Up

We remain impressed with the inherent growth potential of this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock. With strong fundamental strengths and a solid Zacks Rank, TransUnion appears to be a good investment proposition with a healthy return on investment.

Some other favorably ranked stocks in the industry include National Research Corporation , Recruit Holdings Co.,Ltd. (RCRRF - Free Report) and FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS - Free Report) . While both National Research and Recruit Holdings sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), FactSet carries a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

National Research is currently trading at a forward P/E of 41.1x.

Recruit Holdings is currently trading at a forward P/E of 34.2x.

FactSet has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 10.7% and has beaten estimates thrice in the trailing four quarters for average positive earnings surprise of 1.89%.

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