William Blair & Company Initiates Coverage of Deltek, Inc. With Outperform Rating

William Blair & Company Initiates Coverage of Deltek, Inc. With Outperform Rating: "William Blair & Company initiated research coverage of Deltek, Inc. (Nasdaq:PROJ) ($17.26), which provides software and related services to project-oriented enterprises, with an Outperform rating and Aggressive Growth company profile. Analyst Corey Tobin estimated that the company would generate fully taxed pro forma EPS of $0.68 in 2007, $0.80 in 2008, and $0.96 in 2009. “The marketplace traditionally has positioned Deltek as a regional leader in accounting solutions for government contracting firms,” Tobin said. “In the past five years, however, changes across multiple areas of the business have transformed the company into a global, comprehensive, management-software solutions provider for all project-oriented enterprises, in our opinion.” “Through additions to the product line and a dramatic management team buildout, the company has significantly expanded its market opportunity, improved its approach to customer service, and implemented a more aggressive and expanded sales-and-marketing effort,” he added. “We believe this significant overhaul of the business has allowed the company to accelerate its top-line organic growth rate, a trend we estimate will continue. For example, in 2006, organic revenue growth accelerated to 39%, followed by an estimated 16% organic growth rate for 2007. We project top-line growth for 2008 of roughly 13%, which when combined with margin expansion in the outer years should result in strong earnings and free cash flow growth."