• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, May 17, 2013

Marketing services company Sapient reported first-quarter revenues of $292.6 million -- up 12% from the same period a year ago -- with net income of $6.6 million, down 26%.  

The profit slide was partly the result of investments the company is making to expand overseas in markets in Asia and Latin America.

The company’s digital agency SapientNitro had revenues of nearly $196 million -- up 8% -- which accounted for 67% of the firm’s revenue.

Company CEO Alan Herrick told analysts on a conference call earlier this week that the company got off to a slower than anticipated start to the year. He attributed that to the fact that some clients delayed giving the go-ahead to anticipated projects. Also, the completion of some pitch decisions took longer than expected.  “It was worse in Europe than in North America,” said Herrick. “But now we’re underway.”

Even better, he said, is that the company is on target to achieve 10% or greater revenue growth for the entire year. 

The company doesn’t currently see any fiscal cliff-like issues looming this year, which caused a slowdown in the company’s second-half 2012 growth due to client pull-backs. “We don’t see any of those back-half issues,” he said. The new business funnel is “much stronger” than it was a year ago.

The company also said it restated some financial numbers going back to 2006 after uncovering some errors in the way certain items related to "cross-border mobility of employees into various countries" were reported. There was a resulting additional tax liability of $14.1 million over the period from 2006 to 2012. The company stressed that the additional taxes were immaterial to its financial results.