Technology

Oracle CEO Ellison Steps Aside; Earnings, Revenues Wander Away Too

Oracle logo
courtesy of Oracle
Before Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) reported first fiscal quarter earnings Thursday afternoon, the company announced that CEO Larry Ellison has been named the company’s executive chairman and chief technical officer, and Safra Catz and Mark Hurd have both been promoted to CEO. All manufacturing, finance and legal functions will continue to report to Oracle CEO Catz. All sales, service and vertical industry global business units will continue to report to Oracle CEO Hurd. All software and hardware engineering functions will continue to report to Oracle Chairman and CTO Ellison.

The software and server company reported first-quarter adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.62 on revenue of $8.6 billion. In the same period a year ago, the company reported adjusted EPS of $0.59 on revenue of $8.37 billion. First-quarter results also compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $0.64 and $8.78 billion in revenue.

New software licenses contributed $1.37 billion to first quarter revenues, down 2% compared with last year’s first quarter. Cloud software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service subscription revenues rose 32% to $337 million year-over-year, while cloud infrastructure-as-a-service revenues rose 25%. Hardware sales and support revenues fell 14% and 2%, respectively, to a total of $1.17 billion. Services revenues fell 8%, to $855 million.

Oracle did not provide any guidance in its earnings announcement, but is likely to do so on its conference call later today. The consensus second quarter 2015 estimates from Thomson Reuters call for adjusted EPS of $0.74 on revenues of $9.73 billion. The full year 2015 estimates call for EPS of $3.16 and revenues of $40.19 billion.

Oracle does not provide any guidance until the company’s conference call. The company’s stock trades at around 12-times 2016 expected earnings.

In the weeks before the announcement, Oracle has seen its shares rise from August to September, but now despite these recent developments in the days ahead of the report, shares have fallen almost 4% from highs this month. The miss on earnings and revenues is going to take all the air out of the stock.

Shares are trading down about 1.7% in the after-hours market on Thursday at $40.83 in a 52-week range of $32.00 to $43.19. The consensus analysts’ price target on the stock was around $$44.50 before today’s announcement.

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