Acxiom and SAP to jointly market

Acxiom Corporation company leader Charles D. Morgan together with Bill McDermott, President and CEO of SAP Americas, announced that the two companies will jointly market Acxiom product in delivering a single customer view within SAP’s CRM solution, mySAP Customer Relationship Management.

The philosophy has SAP clients and prospects leveraging Acxiom AbiliTec customer data integration technology and InfoBase products. By combining Acxiom’s consumer content with SAP’s marketing and sales functionality, the firms hope to assist companies in maximizing marketing and sales efficacy. The players had much to be proud of during SAP’s annual summer sales meeting where the announcement was made, touting SAP’s ability to deliver enterprise-wide customer information and Acxiom’s over thirty years in data, analytics and customer data integration.

SAP stockholders had to have been pleased with the announcement, as the day previous Acxiom released some fairly impressive financial results from the first quarter of fiscal year 2007. Year over year, first-quarter earnings per diluted share at Axciom increased 186 percent to US $0.20. Consolidated net earnings for the quarter increased 168 percent to US $17.8 million.

First-quarter revenue totaled us $336.7 million, representing an 8.5 percent increase over the same quarter last year. Other highlights of Acxiom’s first-quarter performance include reported revenue of US $336.7 million, up 8.5 percent from US $310.3 million in the first quarter a year ago; income from operations of US $36.3 million, a 143 percent increase compared to US $15.0 million in the first quarter last year; pre-tax earnings of US $29.2 million, up 173 percent from US $10.7 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2006; diluted earnings per share of US $.20, a 186 percent increase compared to US $.07 in the first quarter last year.

Services gross margin increased to 25.1 percent from 18.5 percent in the same quarter last year and from 23.7 percent in the sequential quarter ended March 31, 2006; computer and related expense continued to decline as a percentage of revenue. This key performance metric fell to 21.7 percent versus 25.0 percent in the first quarter last year; finally, share repurchases for the quarter were approximately 576,000 shares for a total value of approximately US $13.9 million.

On announcing the results, Morgan stated that “We are pleased with our performance in the first quarter, but we believe we have considerable opportunity to improve operating performance and deliver additional growth through execution of our long-term strategies.” Acxiom Corporation integrates data, services and technology to provide customer and information management solutions for larger companies.

Core components of Acxiom solutions include customer data integration technology, data, database services, IT outsourcing, consulting and analytics, and privacy leadership. Founded in 1969, Acxiom is headquartered in Bill Clinton’s old stomping grounds of Little Rock, Ark., and has office in the United States, Europe, Australia and China.