Acxiom job cuts hit some in state

In LR region, 25 employees to go

Acxiom Corp. is laying off part of its workforce, including about 25 employees in central Arkansas, as the company combines with the San Francisco-based tech startup it purchased last year for $310 million.

The job cuts come less than a year after the Little Rock-based data broker eliminated several hundred positions in rounds of layoffs. Acxiom said it expects the next round of layoffs will affect less than 2 percent of its global workforce.

"Acxiom is constantly evaluating ways to increase efficiencies, sharpen the focus on our core business and deliver outstanding service to our clients," said Jena Compton, senior vice president of human resources, in a statement sent by Acxiom's spokesman.

"This is especially true as we accelerate the integration of LiveRamp and realize synergies in the process," the statement said. "The recent changes in our workforce are a result of that process along with the normal course of doing business in a fast-paced, ever-evolving environment."

Acxiom's statement about the layoffs came a day after Advertising Age, a marketing and media news magazine, reported that the company was discarding the Audience Operating System, or AOS, label for its client marketing platform and combining it with LiveRamp to create LiveRamp Connect.

"The aligned platform will bring customer data gathered offline into programmatic ad exchanges, media platforms and other systems enabling mobile and addressable TV targeting," Advertising Age reported.

Acxiom's main business as a data broker is to use information gathered via public records, shopping habits and clients to help its customers with targeted marketing campaigns.

Acxiom purchased LiveRamp, a marketing service company, in May in a move to help the company use offline data in its marketing applications.

At the time of the acquisition, Acxiom said it would absorb LiveRamp's 70 employees and 200 customers.

Daniel Salmon, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, addressed the joining of LiveRamp and Acxiom in a research note dated Oct. 2.

"The company is not aiming to rush the integration of LiveRamp," Salmon said in the note.

"Eventually, we see these teams coming together as the 'ad tech' specialists, while Acxiom's legacy sales force can return to focusing on the core business and running quarterback for major clients, calling in the specialists where needed," Salmon wrote.

Salmon, in the same note, mentioned skepticism at the role of the Audience Operating System.

"To be blunt, we've been skeptical that AOS can overcome its ownership by a professional marketing services organization," he wrote.

In a recent research note, dated Feb. 5, Salmon said analysts were "encouraged by the improvement in metrics around" the operating system and LiveRamp, rating Acxiom's stock as likely to meet the market average.

Shares of Acxiom rose 1.9 percent to close Wednesday at $19.77 on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The company's stock has traded between $16.04 and $39.30 in the past 52 weeks.

Acxiom has undergone several rounds of layoffs since November 2013 as it worked to cut its "annual cost base" by as much as $30 million.

Sources familiar with the cuts told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that in the third round of cuts in February 2014, more than 215 employees nationwide, some of them in Arkansas, were let go.

Chief Executive Officer Scott Howe told the Democrat-Gazette last year that the company had been working to improve its efficiency by cutting divisions and management positions that duplicated work.

In the interview, Howe declined to say specifically how many jobs had been cut, saying the layoffs had affected a "single-digit percentage in Arkansas."

Business on 02/26/2015

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