Oracle profits slump
Still, Oracle’s profit edged past Wall Street’s estimates and its revenue from new software licenses ratcheted higher for the second quarter in a row. That is an encouraging sign that big companies are steadily increasing their spending on new technology projects.
New customers are key for Oracle, the world’s No. 1 maker of database software, because they often lock into technical-support contracts that fuel Oracle’s growth for years down the road. Oracle gets more than half its total revenue from those contracts.
Oracle said after the market closed Thursday that its net income was $1.2 billion, or 23 cents per share, in the three months ended Feb. 28. That compares with $1.3 billion, or 26 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
Revenue jumped 17 percent to $6.4 billion.
Excluding items, the company earned 38 cents per share. On that basis, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected Oracle to earn 37 cents per share, on $6.3 billion in revenue.
The latest numbers include about a month of contributions from Sun Microsystems, the struggling server and software maker that Oracle bought for $7.4 billion. The deal was completed in January after months of wrangling in Europe over whether the deal would violate antitrust laws.
Oracle’s revenue from new software licenses rose 10 percent, excluding Sun. The company had predicted it would rise as much as 9 percent. The September-November quarter, which Oracle reported in
December, marked the first time in a year that figure had risen. Before the earnings report, Oracle shares rose 28 cents, 1.1 percent, to close at $26.04. The stock lost 34 cents, 1.3 percent, to $25.70 in after-hours trading.
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