Oracle (ORCL) And RIM (RIMM): Tech, Large And Small, Is Doing Fine

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Wall St. focused on earnings forecasts from Oracle (ORCL) and RIM (RIMM) and thought the numbers were a bit light. That turned traders against the shares of both companies, but that is a mistake.

The news from the two companies is that technology sales, both $300 Blackberries, and $10 million database software systems, are doing just fine.

Oracle said that its fiscal Q4 profits were up 27%. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Oracle projected revenue growth of 18% to 20% in the current quarter." Even in a good economy, those are outstanding projections for a company Oracle’s size.

RIMM earned $482.5 million, which is more than twice what it bought in a year ago. The firm added 2.3 million net new BlackBerry subscribers, ending the quarter with more than 16 million subscribers.

Investors were upset that RIMM said it would only earn 84 cents to 89 cents a share in the current quarter. That would be up from 50 cents last year, which seems pretty good.

Investors are watching the wrong set of numbers. With this kind of growth, the tech sector is signaling that it is fine. It may be the only part of the economy that is.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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