Thursday, March 27, 2008
Oracle announced fiscal third-quarter earnings rose 30% from a year ago, in line with Wall Street expectations. But sales missed forecasts, a possible sign that big businesses may be starting to pull back on tech spending.
Shares of Oracle plunged more than 8% in after-hours trading. The company said in a conference call Wednesday that it expected a strong fourth quarter.
Net income for the three months ending in February rose 30% to $1.3 billion, or 26 cents per share.
Excluding certain one time items, the company reported a profit of 30 cents per share, meeting analysts' forecasts, according to estimates from Thomson Financial.
Sales rose 21% from a year ago to $5.35 billion, below consensus expectations of $5.42 billion.
Oracle has been aggressively scooping up smaller software companies in order to compete with rivals Microsoft, IBM and SAP AG. The company is in the process of purchasing BEA Systems, an acquisition which is expected to close in the coming quarter and should give Oracle a dominant position in the middleware software segment.
Oracle president Charles Philips said in a written statement that new software license revenues continue to grow rapidly, taking market share from companies like IBM. And CEO Larry Ellison boasted in the statement that Oracle has higher operating profit margins than its competitors, including Microsoft.
Despite that good news, new license sales were only up 16%, not as high as some analysts would have liked. This could be an indication that the economic slump is taking its toll on Oracle.
By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved
|
