Teradata's Q1 profit down 35 percent

ATLANTA (AP) -- Data management company Teradata Corp. reported Thursday its first-quarter profit dropped 35 percent as the company got off to what its CEO acknowledged was a slow start to the year.

Net income at Teradata, which helps financial, marketing and other companies store and analyze data, fell to $59 million, or 35 cents a share, in the January-March quarter. That compared with $91 million, or 53 cents a share, in the first quarter of 2012.

Excluding one-time items and stock compensation expenses, Teradata said it earned $73 million, or 43 cents a share, in the first quarter, compared with $103 million, or 60 cents a share, a year earlier.

First-quarter revenue declined 4 percent to $587 million.

Analysts had been expecting adjusted net income of 53 cents a share on $611.5 million in revenue, according to FactSet.

"As we expected, Teradata got off to a slow start in the first quarter of 2013," President and CEO Mike Koehler said in a statement. "Although we continue to see softness in large capital purchases, we continue to have strong market momentum with our Aster Big Data Analytics and Integrated Marketing solutions as well as our Unified Data Architecture which helps organizations drive value from all of their data."

Teradata said it now expects revenue to grow this year at the lower end of its previous estimate of 6 percent to 10 percent, measured in constant currency rates. It posted revenue of $2.67 billion in 2012.

The company expects 2013 adjusted earnings to come in at the lower end of the previously estimated range of $3.05 to $3.20 a share. Analysts had been forecasting adjusted earnings of $3.12 a share.

Teradata's stock dropped $5.06, or 9.5 percent, to $48 in after-hours trading following the release of the earnings report. It had ended the regular trading session up $1.72 at $53.06.