Oracle Marches On

Oracle (ORCL-NASDAQ): $0.25 EPS non-GAAP and Revenues $4.4 Billion; GAAP EPS $0.20.

Estimates were $0.23 non-GAAP EPS on revenues of $4.33 Billion.  As a reminder ORCL does not give guidance until its conference call (5:00 PM EST). 

Total GAAP software revenues were up 25% to $3.5 billion with GAAP database and middleware new license revenues up 17% and GAAP applications new license revenues up 57%. GAAP services revenues were $916 million, up 36% compared to the same quarter last year.

Oracle President and CFO, Safra Catz: "Both revenue and earnings growth accelerated sharply in the third quarter.  We exceeded guidance on every metric with strong revenue growth across all product lines and in all geographies. We’ve now completed eleven quarters of our five year EPS growth plan of 20% per year, and we are delivering earnings growth comfortably ahead of that target. 

ORacle CEO Larry Ellison: "Our middleware new license sales grew 82% in the third quarter and 62% over the last twelve months. This compares to BEA’s growth rate of 8% in their most recently reported quarter and 12% over their last year. Not only are we growing faster than BEA, we’re now larger than they are in the middleware business."

"Our applications new license sales grew 57% in the third quarter and 61% over the last twelve months," said President, Charles Phillips. "This compares to SAP’s growth rate of 7% in their most recently reported quarter and 10% over their last year. Although SAP is still larger than Oracle in the applications business, we are closing the gap consistently and rapidly."

ORCL was up 2.15% at $17.55 in normal trading and shares are up almost 5% at $18.38 in after-hours.  The 52-week high is $19.75.

Jon C. Ogg
March 20, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.