Like information, but don't know how to crunch it? Data collator Acxiom (NASDAQ:ACXM) can solve your data mining needs. Like investing, but don't know where to find good ideas? Acxiom, the stock, may help with that one, too. The company reports on its fiscal Q3 2006 earnings after market-close tomorrow.

Wall Street wisdom:

  • General consensus. Ten analysts follow the company, with opinions all over the map. Three say "buy," six "hold," and one "sell."
  • Revenues. The analysts believe that Acxiom grew its revenues by about 8.5% in its fiscal third quarter 2006.
  • Earnings. For three quarters straight, the company made a habit of missing estimates. But last quarter, Acxiom blew the analysts' numbers out of the water, beating them by a 43% margin. Tomorrow, analysts expect the company to earn $0.25 per share, just a penny more than last year. Can Acxiom make it two in a row?

Acxiom says "yes." On December 20, the company issued a press release rejecting a buyout offer from private equity fund ValueAct Capital, and justified its decision thusly: "We have seen increasing strength in our business performance as our fiscal year has progressed, which we are confident will allow us to exceed consensus analysts' estimates."

Margin watch:
Personally, I don't see evidence of this "increasing strength" in the company's recent performance (below). But given the recent date of the company's promise to wow its critics, betting that the firm will have to eat its words tomorrow seems risky. To learn more about margins, click here.

Margins %

6/04

9/04

12/04

3/05

6/05

9/05

Gross

23.1

24.6

25.5

25.9

24.8

24.6

Op.

10.4

10.9

10.9

9.9

8.8

7.6

Net

5.6

6.0

6.0

5.7

5.1

4.1
All data courtesy of Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. Data reflects trailing-12-month performance for the quarters ending in the named months.

Valuation metrics:
Buying Acxiom looks like a better idea than betting against it. The company's trailing-12-month P/E of 42 may not look cheap, but its mammoth cash flows give the firm an ultra-cheap price-to-free-cash-flow ratio of 8. Even when you factor the firm's debt into the equation, Acxiom's enterprise value-to-free-cash-flow ratio of 10 looks awfully tempting in light of its projected 15% annual earnings growth.

Competitors:
Acxiom's competitors range in size from very, very large to very, very small. At the large end of the scale, there's Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE:DNB). On the small side, you'll find infoUSA (NASDAQ:IUSA).

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above.