How Macro Headwinds Are Holding Back Oracle

By Chris Lange Updated Apr 27, 11:14PM EDT · Published Jun 17, 4:33PM EDT

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Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) reported its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results Wednesday after the markets closed as $0.78 in earnings per share (EPS) on $10.7 billion in revenue compared to Thomson Reuters consensus estimates of $0.87 in EPS on $10.95 billion in revenue.

Revenue fell 5% from $11.33 billion in the same period of the previous year, but they would have been up 3% without the strengthening dollar.

Larry Ellison, Chairman and CTO of Oracle, gave the company’s outlook for the coming year:

We expect to book between $1.5 and $2.0 billion of new SaaS (software as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) business this fiscal year. That means Oracle would sell more new SaaS and PaaS business than salesforce.com plans to sell in their current fiscal year — the only remaining question is how much more. Oracle’s planned SaaS and PaaS revenue growth rate is around 60% in constant currency; salesforce.com has a planned growth rate of around 20%. When you contrast those growth rates it becomes clear that Oracle is on its way to becoming the world’s largest enterprise cloud company.

In terms of its segments Oracle reported the following results (note that comparisons are sequential):

Software and Cloud Revenues were $8.4 billion, down 6%, but up 2% in constant currency
Cloud SaaS and PaaS revenues were $416 million, growing 29%, and up 35% in constant currency
Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) revenues were $160 million, increasing 25%, and up 31% in constant currency
Hardware Systems Revenues were $1.4 billion, down 4%, but up 5% in constant currency

The board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share on outstanding common stock.

Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, commented on the earnings:

Coming into Q4, we forecast selling $300 million of new SaaS and PaaS annual recurring revenue. We dramatically beat that forecast by selling a cloud industry all-time-record amount of $426 million of new SaaS and PaaS business. That is a year-over-year bookings growth rate of over 200%. As our multi-billion dollar cloud business gets bigger, our SaaS and PaaS revenue growth rates are on their way up to 60% in constant currency. Compare this to our primary cloud competitors’ whose own revenue growth forecasts are on their way down to 44% and 22%.

At the end of the quarter Oracle recorded $54.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short term investments. At the same time in the previous year, the company had $38.8 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short term investments.

Shares of Oracle closed Wednesday up 0.6% at $44.91 on a 52-week trading range of $35.82 to $46.71. Following the release of earnings, shares were down 6.6% at $41.93 in the after-hours trading session. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $46.50.

About the Author Chris Lange →

Chris Lange is a writer for 24/7 Wall St., based in Houston. He has covered financial markets over the past decade with an emphasis on healthcare, tech, and IPOs. During this time, he has published thousands of articles with insightful analysis across these complex fields. Currently, Lange's focus is on military and geopolitical topics.

Lange's work has been quoted or mentioned in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, MSN, Yahoo, The Verge, Vice, The Intelligencer, Quartz, Nasdaq, The Motley Fool, Fox Business, International Business Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Barron’s, Benzinga, and many other major publications.

A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Lange majored in business with a particular focus on investments. He has previous experience in the banking industry and startups.