MW Oracle's stock gains as company improves its earnings profile
By Emily Bary
The company becomes the latest in the software sector to impress on the bottom line
Oracle Corp. is the latest software company to show profit progress - and see its stock get rewarded.
The company on Monday posted fiscal first-quarter net income of $2.92 billion, or $1.03 a share, compared with $2.42 billion, or 86 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. On an adjusted basis, Oracle $(ORCL)$ earned $1.39 a share, while analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting $1.33.
Revenue rose to $13.31 billion from $12.45 billion, while analysts were modeling $13.23 billion.
Oracle generated $10.52 billion in revenue from cloud services and license support, up 7% from a year before, whereas analysts were looking for $10.47 billion.
"As cloud services became Oracle's largest business, both our operating income and earnings-per-share growth accelerated," Chief Executive Safra Catz said in a release.
She called out a "strong contract backlog [that] will increase revenue growth" during this fiscal year.
Oracle's stock was up more than 5% in after-hours action Monday.
The company also hauled in $870 million in revenue from cloud licenses and on-premise licenses, as well as $655 million in revenue from hardware. Services revenue came in at $1.26 billion, down 9%.
Oracle said that its multi-cloud partnership with Amazon.com Inc.'s $(AMZN)$ Amazon Web Services is expected to give AWS customers easy access to Oracle databases when it goes live this December.
Software companies in general are trying to improve their profitability, which is an important factor for Wall Street these days. Salesforce Inc. $(CRM)$ boosted its operating-margin outlook earlier this cycle, while Workday Inc. (WDAY) did the same. Both moves were well received by investors.
Read: Workday follows Salesforce's lead on profits
-Emily Bary
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September 09, 2024 16:27 ET (20:27 GMT)
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