Database giant Oracle this afternoon reported fiscal Q2 revenue just slightly above Wall Street’s expectations, and profit per share that beat the average estimate by six cents a share, with results dominated by sales of subscriptions for cloud software. The company offered a revenue forecast in line with consensus.
The results sent Oracle stock down slightly in late trading.
Oracle’s CEO, Safra Catz, said in prepared remarks that cloud subscription sales were the standout development of the quarter, as she had suggested they might be when Oracle reported in September.
“Our highly profitable multi-billion dollar Fusion and NetSuite Cloud ERP applications businesses grew revenue 33% and 21% respectively in Q2,” said Catz.
Added Catz, “These two strategic cloud applications businesses are major contributors to Oracle’s increased operating earnings and consistent earnings per share growth. We expect this rapid market share and revenue growth trend to continue as both Gartner and IDC rank Oracle’s ERP suite number one in the cloud.””
Chief technology officer and chairman Larry Ellison in prepared remarks said that, “Oracle’s Gen2 Cloud Infrastructure is adding customers and growing revenue at a rate well in excess of 100% per year.”
Added Ellison, “Demand for our Gen2 Cloud Infrastructure is exceeding our plan and we are opening new datacenters as fast as we can. Oracle opened 13 additional regional datacenters in 2020 to bring our total to 29 regional datacenters worldwide, more than AWS.”
For the three months ended in November, revenue rose 2%, year over year, to $9.8 billion, yielding EPS of $1.06.
Analysts had been modeling $9.77 billion in revenue and $1 per share in earnings.
Oracle’s revenue in its largest category of sales, Cloud services and license support, rose 4%, year over year, to $7.11 billion. That compares to a 2% rise in the prior quarter.
The company’s Cloud license and on‐premise license revenue, consisting of transactions, meaning, deals for a license to software that close within the quarter, declined 3%, year over year, to $1.09 billion. That compares to a 9% rise in the prior quarter, when transactions dominated the company’s business.
Oracle’s hardware sales declined 3%, year over year, to $844 million, and its services sales declined 7%, year over year, to $752 million.
The company held a conference call this evening with stock analysts, starting at 5 pm. You can catch the remainder of that call on the company’s investors relations Website.
For the current quarter ending in February, the company on that call forecast revenue to rise 2% to 4%. That is in line with analysts’ average estimate for $9.93 billion in revenue, a 3.3% increase. The company sees revenue in a range of $1.09 to $1.13, ahead of consensus for $1.04.
