Oracle Profit Slightly Higher Than Forecasts
Oracle Corp., the world’s No. 2 software maker, posted a second-quarter profit slightly higher than the Wall Street consensus Thursday, helped by stronger-than-expected sales of its business-management software.
Net income rose 62% to $623 million, or 11 cents a share, for its second quarter ended Nov. 30, from $384 million, or 6 cents a share, a year ago, as revenue rose 17% to $2.7 billion. Analysts on average were expecting earnings of 10 cents, according to First Call/Thomson Financial.
Sales of business management, or application software rose 66% to $279 million. Analysts had expected sales growth of 48% to 58%. Applications are seen as key to Oracle maintaining its historic growth trajectory as the market for database software matures.
Database software sales rose 19% to $775 million, in the lower range of analysts’ call for growth of 18% to 22%.Software license revenue rose 25% to $1.1 billion, and total service revenue rose 9% to $1.5 billion.
Though other companies have cited concerns about a slowing economy, demand for Oracle’s products remained strong, said Chief Financial Officer Jeff Henley.
Shares of Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle, which had closed off 88 cents at $27.50 on Nasdaq, rose to $28.50 in after-hours trading.
At a Glance
Other earnings, excluding one-time gains or charges unless noted, include:
* Adobe Systems Inc. said profit jumped 41% in its fiscal fourth quarter to $127.2 million, or 34 cents a share, surpassing forecasts of 29 cents, as sales surged 26% to $355.2 million. The maker of desktop-publishing software also said it named President Bruce Chizen as chief executive. Former CEO John Warnock will become chief technology officer.
Adobe released the news after regular trading. Its stock had closed down $8.88 at $57.31 on Nasdaq after an analyst cut it to neutral from outperform, citing the slowing economy and the company’s high value relative to potential earnings. The shares rose as high as $59.13 in after-hours trading.
* CMGI Inc. said its fiscal first-quarter loss rose more than fivefold as the operator of Internet companies continued to shed stakes in money-losing start-ups. CMGI’s loss including gains and charges widened to $636.6 million, or $2.07 a share, from $117 million, or 54 cents a share, a year ago. Net revenue nearly tripled to $366.1 million.
CMGI said it has reduced its portfolio of companies to 13 from 42 in 24 months.
The latest results reflect pretax gains of $651.4 million for unloading shares of Lycos Inc., Yahoo Inc. and two other companies. Offsetting those gains were pretax losses of $450 million from selling shares of Hong Kong’s Pacific Century CyberWorks and writing down four investments.
* Red Hat Inc., the leading provider of packaged Linux systems, said its third-quarter operating loss narrowed to $899,532, or 1 cent a share, from a loss of $5.35 million, or 4 cents, a year ago, beating analyst estimates of a 2-cent loss. Revenue more than doubled to $22.4 million.
