Acxiom Q4 Adj Profit Tops View, Revenues Miss: To Buy Privately-held LiveRamp

(RTTNews) - IT services company Acxiom Corp. (ACXM) reported Wednesday a net loss for the fourth quarter compared to a profit last year, hurt primarily goodwill/asset impairment charges and lower margins. Adjusted earnings per share topped analysts' expectations, while quarterly revenues missed their estimates by a whisker.

The company also provided earnings guidance for the full-year 2015, in line with Street view, but projected weak annual revenues.

Separately, Acxiom said it agreed to acquire privately held LiveRamp, a leading service for onboarding customer data into digital marketing applications, for about $310 million in cash. The deal, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close mid-summer.

The deal will expand Acxiom's capability to bridge the gap between offline data and the rapidly growing universe of online marketing applications with better matching, more connectivity and faster onboarding.

"We successfully launched our Audience Operating System and Aboutthedata.com. We tightened our operating focus through the separation of our business units and the exit of our analog paper survey business in Europe," CEO Scott Howe said in a statement.

The Little Rock, Arkansas-based enterprise data, analytics and software-as-a-service company reported a net loss of $29.22 million or $0.38 per share for the fourth quarter, compared to net earnings of $13.24 million or $0.18 per share in the prior-year quarter.

Results for the latest quarter include $29 million of write-down of the carrying value of goodwill and other long-lived assets associated with European operations.

Excluding items, adjusted net income for the quarter was $18.52 million or $0.24 per share, compared to $14.10 million or $0.19 per share in the year-ago quarter.

On average, four analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $0.20 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Revenues for the quarter edged up to $277.21 million from $277.13 million in the same quarter last year, but missed three Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate of $278.57 million by a whisker.

Segment-wise, marketing and data services revenues grew 3.6 percent to $209.75 million, while revenues from IT infrastructure management services declined 9.8 percent to $74.24 million from last year. Other services revenue totaled $8.65 million, down 8,2 percent from $9.42 million last year.

Total operating costs and expenses declined 13.8 percent to $292.41 million from the year-ago quarter, including impairment of goodwill and other expenses of $28.83 million.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2015, the company expects earnings in a range of $0.75 to $0.85 per share, on projected revenues decline of abut five percent. Street is currently looking for full-year 2015 earnings of $0.82 per share, on flat annual revenues of $1.10 billion.

Looking ahead to 2015, our focus will be on growing our AOS user base, while continuing to innovate and invest in our product portfolio," Howe added.

ACXM closed Wednesday's regular trading session at $27.14, down $0.50 or 1.81% on a volume of 0.82 million shares.