By Tess Stynes
Oracle Corp. said its earnings fell 2% on higher costs that
offset stronger revenue during the quarter ended November, the
first one with Safra Catzand Mark Hurd as co-chief executives.
Shares rose 2.6% to $42.22 in recent after-hours trading as
earnings excluding certain items and revenue beat Wall Street's
expectations.
Ms. Catz and Mr. Hurd were promoted to the top job in September
as Larry Ellison, who built Oracle into one of the world's biggest
tech firms, stepped down as CEO after 37 years. Mr. Ellison will
stay on to lead the company's software and hardware engineering
functions.
Oracle has been under pressure to make its products more
compatible with subscription-based cloud computing services
accessed from remote computers and to reduce its reliance on sales
of licensed software that runs on customers' own server
systems.
In the latest period, cloud revenue, excluding update and
support revenue, climbed 45% to $516 million. New software license
revenue rose 3.6% to $2.05 billiion.
For the period ended Nov. 30, Oracle reported a profit of $2.5
billion, down from $2.55 billion a year earlier. On a per-share
basis, earnings were flat at 56 cents as the number of shares
outstanding declined. Excluding stock-based compensation,
restructuring-related charges and other items, per-share earnings
were 69 cents.
Revenue increased 3.5% to $9.6 billion. Excluding
foreign-exchange impacts, revenue rose 7%.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share profit of
68 cents and revenue of $9.51 billion.
Total operating expenses grew 3.3%.
Write to Tess Stynes at tess.stynes@wsj.com
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