Why Investors Are Not Pleased With Oracle Earnings

When Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) reported fiscal second-quarter 2017 results after markets closed Thursday, the enterprise software company posted adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.61 on adjusted revenue of $9.07 billion. In the same period a year ago, the company reported adjusted EPS of $0.63 on adjusted revenue of $9 billion. Second-quarter results also compare to consensus estimates for EPS of $0.60 and $9.11 billion in revenue.

Adjusted operating income totaled $3.8 billion, and adjusted operating margin came in at 42%. Non-GAAP net income totaled $2.6 billion.

Short-term deferred revenues totaled $7.4 billion, up 6% in U.S. dollars and up 8% year over year in constant currency. Operating cash flow on a trailing 12-month basis was $14.2 billion, up 9% from the prior year.

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CEO Safra Catz said:

For four consecutive quarters our Cloud SaaS & PaaS revenue growth rate has increased. As we get bigger in the cloud, we grow faster in the cloud. Our non-GAAP constant currency SaaS and PaaS growth rate is now up to 89%. This growth rate acceleration has driven our quarterly cloud revenue over the $1 billion mark.

Fellow CEO Mark Hurd added:

Oracle has now passed salesforce.com and become number one in SaaS cloud applications sales to customers with over 1,000 employees according to the latest IDC report. In other words, this year we are selling more enterprise SaaS than any cloud services provider in the world. We expect to book over $2 billion in new annually recurring cloud business this year alone. And, with the acquisition of NetSuite, we plan on being the #1 cloud applications service provider for companies with less than 1,000 employees as well.

Investors have been less impressed. The company missed (barely) the top-line estimate, even though it beat on the bottom line. Sales in the company’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) business was a rather modest $175 million, up just 6%. Oracle has targeted sector leader Amazon Web Services, which posted a 55% jump in AWS sales to $3.23 billion in its most recent quarter.

Shares traded down about 3.2% in Friday’s premarket session, at $39.55 in a 52-week range of $33.13 to $42.00. The consensus 12-month price target for the shares is $44.06.

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