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Verisk (VRSK) Hits 52-Week High: What's Driving the Stock?

Shares of Verisk Analytics, Inc. VRSK scaled a 52-week high of $173.77 in the trading session on Jun 3, before closing a tad lower at $170.76.

The company’s shares have charted a solid trajectory in recent times, appreciating 14.3% year to date, ahead of 8.6% growth of the industry it belongs to. In the meantime, the Zacks S&P 500 composite has declined 4.4%.

 

Notably, Verisk has witnessed an 8.4% rise in share price since it posted first-quarter 2020 results.

Let’s find out what’s supporting the uptick.

Consecutive Revenue Beat

Verisk reported revenue beat in all the four quarters of 2019 as well as in first-quarter 2020. The encouraging performance can be attributed to continued strength in the company’s Insurance segment and improvement in the Energy and Specialized Markets segments.

Strategic Acquisitions Bode Well

Acquisitions have also been one of the key growth catalysts for Verisk. The company has been continuously acquiring and investing in companies globally to expand its data and analytics capabilities across industries.

In 2019, Verisk completed seven acquisitions — FAST to enhance its data and analytics solutions in life insurance and annuities market; Commerce Signals to enhance its Financial Services segment; BuildFax to boost its Insurance segment; Genscape to expand its Wood Mackenzie business line’s existing intelligence in energy data and analytics, and strengthen its research and consultancy across the natural resources sectors; Keystone Aerial Surveys, Inc. to expand its aerial survey services; and Property Pres Wizard to enhance its Insurance segment, and Content as a Service (Caas) business to strengthen its environmental health and safety services and extend its global customer footprint and European operations.

Notably, Verisk’s long-term business strategy includes growth through acquisitions. Internally, it is focused on evaluating and integrating acquisitions that are valuable for its shareholders.

Higher Organic Revenue Growth

Verisk continues to witness higher organic revenue growth through a combination of an increase in new customers for existing solutions, cross-sale of its existing solutions to customers at present and the sale of new solutions. The company continuously seeks to expand its portfolio by leveraging its deep knowledge and position. It develops new, proprietary data sets and predictive analytics after understanding customers' evolving needs. Notably, Verisk has recorded an average organic revenue growth of about 8% in the past 10 years.During first-quarter 2020, revenues went up 5% on an organic constant currency (OCC) basis. In 2019, total revenues grew 6.7% on an OCC basis, which marks an improvement from 6.1% growth in 2018 and 5.3% in 2017.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

Verisk currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Business Services sector are DocuSign DOCU, SPS Commerce SPSC and SailPoint Technologies Holdings, Inc. SAIL. All the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The long-term expected earnings per share (three to five years) growth rate for DocuSign, SPS Commerce and SailPoint is 47%, 15% and 15%, respectively.

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