Oracle Earnings Sneak Out Early, Dividend & Stock Buyback (ORCL)

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) was set to report earnings later in the week but they were issued out in a SEC filing after the close on Monday.  It would seem that somehow this news was getting out ahead of time, otherwise the company would have stuck by its prior release.

The enterprise software giant’s fourth quarter results showed that revenues were up 1% to $10.9 billion on a GAAP basis, but non-GAAP total revenues were up 1% to $11.0 billion. The earnings came up 10% to $0.82 non-GAAP earnings per share. Thomson Reuters had estimates of $0.78 EPS and $10.89 billion in non-GAAP sales.  Here are some of the individual metrics:

• new software license revenues were up 7% to $4.0 billion;
• software license updates and product support revenues were up 5% to $4.2 billion
• hardware systems products revenues were down 16% to $977 million
• Non-GAAP operating income was up 5% to $5.5 billion
• non-GAAP operating margin was 50%
• non-GAAP net income was up 7% to $4.1 billion.
• GAAP operating cash flow for fiscal year 2012 was up 23% $13.7 billion.

Oracle’s GAAP earnings would have been $0.03 higher at $0.72, up 16%, and Q4 non-GAAP earnings per share would have been $0.04 higher at $0.86 had it not been for the impact of currencies.

Total revenues would have been up 5% without the currency impact but the breakdown is as follows: non-GAAP new software license revenues would have been up 12% and non-GAAP hardware systems products revenues would have been down 13%.

The company called this quarter a record-breaking fourth quarter and the company called development of Oracle Cloud as being strategic to increasing the size and profitability of Oracle’s software business.

Some more shareholder-friendly data came out as well.  Oracle declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.06 per share and authorized the repurchase of up to an additional $10.0 billion of common stock under its existing share repurchase program in future quarters.

Shares closed down 2.1% at $27.12 today, but the stock is up 2.9% at $27.92 in the after-hours.

JON C. OGG