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Acxiom 1Q Net Income Down 1 Percent

2 min read

Acxiom Corp. of Little Rock posted earnings of $13.1 million in its first fiscal 2014 quarter, down about 1 percent from the same quarter in 2013.

Earnings were 17 cents per diluted share, the same as last year. Revenue was $266 million, a 2 percent drop from last year’s $271 million. Still, Acxiom beat analyst expectations on earnings per share and revenue.

In a news release, the company stated it had lost some clients in its information technology infrastructure management segment.

In a conference call with investors, CEO Scott Howe said some of the losses were “basically bad luck,” where the clients had been acquired by third parties and had moved to in-house IT services.
The others were lost by being outbid by competitors, he added.

“This is obviously not the result we worked for, nor is it acceptable,” Howe said.

He said the company would be revamping that segment and had several prospects in the pipeline to replace the lost clients.

The company did gain several marketing and data services clients, including Springleaf Financial of Evansville, Ind.; Wellmark Inc. of Des Moines, Iowa; and U.S. Cellular of Chicago.

The release said that Acxiom now partners with five of the six largest publishers in the country, bringing the company’s reach close to about 1.1 billion unique visitors, or nearly 100 percent of the Internet.

It also said that the company repurchased 720,000 of its own shares for $16.1 million during the quarter, bringing the company’s total repurchased shares to 11.1 million since it introduced a share repurchase program in August 2011.  

Acxiom expects revenue for the rest of the fiscal year to be flat compared to about $1 billion last year.

“Revenue growth in marketing and data services is expected to be offset by a decline in IT infrastructure management,” the release said.

The company also announced it will release a new product, the Acxiom Audience Operating System, on Sept. 24 in New York City during AdWeek.

“We are pleased with our development progress and with the support we are receiving from our customers, prospects and agencies,” Howe said in the release. “We believe our technology is ground-breaking and will redefine marketing. For the first time marketers, agencies and publishers will have one-to-one marketing capabilities at scale across all channels and devices.”

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