Oracle pops after beating forecasts
Oracle (ORCL) delivered quarterly earnings and revenue results that topped analysts expectations on the top and bottom lines-halting a three-quarter losing streak.
The software giant had missed Wall Street's expectations as it struggled to gain traction in the competitive cloud sector. Oracle handed in earnings of 69 cents per share on $9.6 billion in revenue, beating Wall Street projections for 68 cents a share on $9.51 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.
Software and cloud revenue totaled $7.3 billion, while hardware sales came in at $1.33 billion. Analysts expected cloud and software sales to total $7.31 billion, while hardware was forecast to come in at $1.25 billion, according to StreetAccount.
"I view this as a step in the right direction, given the disappointing numbers we've seen in the last few quarters. It comes down to cloud; that's putting fuel in the engine. Now you're going to start seeing investors go a little bit glass-half-full on Oracle here," said Daniel Ives of FBR Capital Markets.
"The key question is can they continue this, to see the type of growth and go against what we've seen in large cap tech, the softness in the Ciscos, the HPs, the EMCs." The company said new cloud bookings grew at a rate of more than 140 percent during the quarter. It expects new cloud bookings to exceed $250 million by the fourth quarter.
Shares rose as much as 4 percent in after-hours trading.
Last month, Oracle settled a seven-year copyright suit with industry rival SAP SE (XETRA:SAP-DE) for $356.7 million over improper downloads of Oracle files.
The case involved SAP's TomorrowNow unit, which the German company bought to provide software support to Oracle customers at lower rates than what Oracle charged, hoping to persuade them to become SAP customers, according to Reuters. Oracle shares have gained about 22 percent over the past 12 months, outperforming the Nasdaq by about 3 percent.
CNBC's Michelle Fox contributed to this report.
