How Teradata Wins in Europe, Even in Times of Crisis

What are European businesses doing to stay vibrant and growing despite an economic crisis and budget cutbacks? Squeeze more value out of the assets they already have, of course.

For some, that means dumping expensive software licenses to install alternatives such as low-cost Red Hat (NYSE: RHT  ) Linux solutions instead. For others, it means extracting actionable information from an unwieldy bag of business data.

That's why big data management expert Teradata (NYSE: TDC  ) reported 22% third-quarter revenue growth in the EMEA market. Teradata's software and hardware tools help businesses and government agencies detect patterns and trends in their exploding digital warehouses of market data, and then take action on the results. Every dollar (or euro) invested here is likely to yield a strong return on investment.

In the third quarter, this strategy led to 23% year-over-year sales growth overall and 28% stronger earnings per share. Free cash flow jumped 60% to $75 million, and $57 million of that was used to buy back shares. With a few notable exceptions, that's generally a very Foolish way to deploy spare cash. Teradata is a smart cash machine.

Teradata's data-mangling expertise is a complement to the real-time data analysis tools made by TIBCO Software (Nasdaq: TIBX  ) and salesforce.com (Nasdaq: CRM  ) . TIBCO and Salesforce are all about speedy decisions; Teradata's number crunching takes the time to dig much deeper in treasure troves of transaction, demographic, and media consumption data.

The company is a leader in this increasingly important niche market. Challengers include Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL  ) and IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) , and storage specialist EMC (NYSE: EMC  ) is making inroads as well. But Teradata's management is confident in its ability to compete with these guys for one deal after the other. The reported numbers can back up this tough talk.

Teradata is a two-time Stock Advisor recommendation and a current favorite of the newsletter's advisors. Want to learn much more about the big data crunch and how Teradata taps into that megatrend? We've prepared a special report on exactly those topics, available right here for immediate download. Going back to the budget concerns that started off this short discussion, let me just mention that the report is totally free. Get your copy right now!