Oracle's latest quarter packs a wallop
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Blog: Oracle just reported its earnings for Q4 2006, and knocked the proverbial ball out of the park.  In the land of the proprietary vendors, Oracle may well be king.
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After another sub-par quarter, should investors throw in the towel?
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The Motley Fool - Open-source software leader Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT - News) reports earnings after the bell today, and analysts are expecting a doozy. With on-again-off-again reports that Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL - News) may enter the Linux market, Red Hat's stock has certainly been volatile, but management has been quite sanguine about further competition from the database giant. Is this one huge strategic misstep or savvy thinking? Read on for my thoughts.
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The company has some major issues, which weighed heavily on its recent IPO.
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A survey of Oracle Users Group attendees finds two-thirds have never applied the company's quarterly updates. Oracle set to release next update Tuesday.
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Oracle Corp. reported revenue and earnings growth in its first fiscal quarter, with its revenue from new software licenses rising 7 percent, to US$563 million.
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Mixes with new crowd Oracle is ending its brief acquisition lull with one of its largest software deals. The database giant will buy Hyperion Solutions, also an Oracle competitor in the business intelligence market and an important partner of SAP, for $3.3bn, or $52 a share - a handsome 21 per cent premium for stockholders.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The tech-heavy Nasdaq has been climbing recently, spurred by some of the usual suspects, such as Google. But Oracle results and prospects for chip makers also inspired confidence among IT investors this week. Expectations have not been great this year for mature areas of the enterprise software market. But Oracle inspired IT investors this week with aÂ strong financial reportÂ that indicates its acquisition strategy has been paying off. Quarterly revenue rose 20 percent to $5.8 billion and profit increased 23 percent to $1.6 billion. Excluding extraordinary charges, Oracle's $0.37 per share in the quarter beat estimates by analysts polled by Thomson Financial, who had forecast $0.35 per share. Oracle shares jumped $0.53 to close at $19.69 on Wednesday, a day after the earnings report, and continued strong. Over the last three years, including theÂ PeopleSoft deal, Oracle has made about 30 purchases for approximately $25 billion. For example, business intelligence software maker Hyperion,Â a recent acquisition, added $43 million to Oracle's new license revenue in the quarter. Oracle is now going after companies that will help the company target sales in vertical markets. On the post-earnings report conference call with analysts, CEO Larry Ellison said that Oracle will continue its acquisition strategy. Meanwhile, Google continues to break records and expectations. Brokerages, including Oppenheimer & Co., Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., and JMP Securities,Â issued bullish analysis reports this weekÂ and raised share-price targets after seeing the company's share price rise about 15 percent over the last quarter. As Google continues to dominate search advertising, however, it has also spent lavishly on R&D, technology infrastructure and acquisitions. Though profit has been great, the spending has sparked some debate. But this week, JMP's Bill Morrison added a new twist to conventional thinking, writing in a research report that the capital expenditures have given Google a cost-efficient technology platform. This platform gives Google an ongoing cost advantage over competitors, he said. After the report, Google shares hit their highest close on Tuesday since the company's 2004 IPO, although they drifted down over the next few days. In the chip sector, a price war between Intel and AMD, coupled with expectations for a soft PC market this year, has caused concern. But some new reports and forecasts have cheered investors lately. Lehman Brothers raised its rating on Intel this week to "overweight" from "equal weight." Lehman analyst Tim Luke cited new product cycles, progress on restructuring, and a reasonable share valuation. The report echoed a similar research paper issued by brokerage Stifel Nicolaus and Co. last week, only that one was directed at AMD. Meanwhile, GartnerÂ said this week that worldwide personal computer shipments are projected to rise 11.1 percent in 2007, higher than previously expected. PC shipments are estimated to increase to 257.1 million from 231.5 million a year earlier as sales in emerging markets grow, Gartner said, in the wake of a similar report several weeks ago from IDC. The news caused shares of Intel and AMD to spike. Intel shares closed at $23.79 Wednesday, up by $0.41, and continued strong Thursday. AMD also spiked on Wednesday, though lost some ground later in the week.
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Analysts were expecting Oracle earnings of 9 cents per share with revenue of $2.23 billion, according to Thomson First Call. New software license revenue came in at $563 billion, meeting
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle Corp. declared another strong quarter of financial results, exceeding both its own expectations and analysts' predictions, in what the database, applications and middleware software vendor has typically defined as a tough time period. In results for Oracle's first quarter of fiscal 2007 issued Tuesday for the period ended Aug. 31, the company saw its net income climb 29 percent over the year-ago quarter to US$670 million on revenue up 30 percent to $3.6 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) grew 28 percent to $0.13. Discounting the impact of recent acquisitions and other factors, Oracle's net income rose 26 percent to $931 million compared with the first quarter of fiscal 2006, while revenue was also up 26 percent to $3.7 billion, and EPS grew 24 percent to $0.18. A consensus estimate of Thomson Financial analysts had predicted that Oracle would report revenue of $3.5 billion on an EPS of $0.16. The figures were better than what Safra Catz, co-president and chief financial officer at Oracle, estimated back in June when the company issued its fourth-quarter results for fiscal 2006. She predicted then that total fiscal 2007 first-quarter revenue would rise 19 percent to 20 percent on an EPS of $0.16, without accounting for any specific charges likely to be taken in the quarter. "We exceeded our guidance on every metric and delivered strong revenue growth across all product lines and geographies," Catz said in an Oracle release. In the first quarter of fiscal 2007, Oracle gained $2.7 billion of its revenue from software sales, with new software licenses accounting for 22 percent of revenue or $804 million, while software license update and product support contributed 54 percent or $1.9 billion to Oracle's bottom line. Services made up the remaining $846 million or 24 percent of revenue. Revenue from new applications shot up by 80 percent compared to the same quarter last year, with new database and middleware license revenue growing by a more modest 15 percent, while service revenue rose by 33 percent. Â
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Business software maker Oracle Corp.  on Friday said it had decided to move forward the release date of its fiscal second-quarter earnings to Monday, Dec. 13 before markets open instead of Thursday, Dec. 16.
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Oracle executives took advantage of another strong financial quarter to take potshots at the company's primary applications rival, SAP AG.
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(InfoWorld) - Despite financial and accounting problems at Dell Inc., Novell Inc. and Yahoo Inc., underlying faith in the software sector and a solid first-day performance on Riverbed Technology Inc.'s initial public offering indicate that the end of the year may yet reward IT investors. The early part of the third quarter proved worrisome for technology investors, as high hopes in the beginning of the year gave way to softer than expected sales and a price war for PC makers. But as the fourth quarter approaches, several brokerages have raised their forecasts for the tech sector as a whole. The lower cost of hardware is expected to spark a spending spree by both consumers and corporate buyers by the end of the year. Analysts also see pent-up demand for software. Signs of hope started appearing in August, when for example Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. released a survey showing that 60 percent of chief information officers polled anticipated increasing software spending in the second half of the year. In addition, Lehman Brothers Inc. and Credit Suisse First Boston have recently recommended that investors take a closer look and invest in technology stocks, reasoning that declines earlier in the year have made some companies a bargain. Stoked by recommendations, the Nasdaq exchange started taking off in August after sinking to a yearly low in July. Good news continued this week, as the debut of Riverbed, a maker of WAN (wide area network) optimization technology, shone on the Nasdaq. Riverbed's (RVBD) initial public offering of 8.7 million shares priced at US$9.75 a share, above the target of $7 to $8.50 a share, and closed at $15.30 Thursday, showing confidence in the network optimization trend. On TuesdayÂ Oracle Corp. reported better-than-expected earnings. Excluding one-time charges for acquisitions, Oracle's earnings per share grew 24 percent to $0.18, better than the $0.16 consensus forecast of analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Several analysts said that Oracle's results, after a similar strong report from Adobe Systems Inc. last week, bode well for the upcoming quarter. Specifically, Oracle's strong sales for new applications and services indicate that businesses are in the mood to buy. Citigroup upgraded Oracle to "buy" from "hold," and UBS Warburg and Deutsche Bank raised their price targets. Some bad news midweek put at least a temporary halt to the Nasdaq rise. Yahoo (YHOO) shares plunged $3.25, to close at $25.75 Tuesday after it warned that slowing growth from automotive and financial services advertisers would affect revenue. The warning pushed down sales of other Internet companies as well. News that both Dell andÂ Novell face delisting from the Nasdaq also helped depress the market Thursday. Due to accounting probes, both companies delayed financial reports, which triggered delisting notices. Hewlett-Packard Co. shares, which up until this week seemed impervious to the company's growing spy scandal, finally took a hit Thursday after revelations that Chief Executive Office Mark Hurd may have known about possible illegal investigative techniques as they were being planned. HP shares (HPQ) closed at $34.87, down by $1.91 Thursday. On balance, the bad news seems company-specific, while the solid software results and the excitement sparked by Riverbed appears to speak more to underlying trends. For the hoped-for fourth quarter tech rally to really happen though, investors need to see some strong quarterly reports next month. Â
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Plus, Amazon's broken heart, Microsoft's unearned revenue, and is PeopleSoft stronger?
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A survey of Oracle Users Group attendees finds two-thirds have never applied one of Oracle's quarterly Critical Patch Updates. Oracle, meanwhile, prepares to release its next quarterly CPU on Tuesday.
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SAN FRANCISCO Business software maker Oracle&#39;s quarterly earnings barely exceeded analyst expectations, despite sluggish sales.
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It&#39;s no secret that Oracle (Quote, Chart) has been considering a dip in the enterprise content management well, especially after companies like Microsoft (Quote, Chart), IBM (Quote, Chart) and EMC (Quote, Chart) made such a splash in the sector over the