Analysts Add to Oracle Earnings Hype

By Chris Lange Updated Jan 12, 10:48AM EST · Published Jun 22, 10:00AM EDT

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Analysts Add to Oracle Earnings Hype — © Thinkstock

Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) released its most recent quarterly earnings report after the markets closed on Wednesday. Following these fiscal fourth-quarter results, shares hit a new all-time high early on Thursday. Earnings were further bolstered by an incredible outpouring from analysts that was very positive.

The company said that it had $0.89 in earnings per share (EPS) and $10.94 billion in revenue, compared with consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters that called for $0.78 in EPS and revenue of $10.45 billion. The same period of last year reportedly had EPS of $0.81 and $10.6 billion in revenue.

Short-term deferred revenues were up 8% to $8.2 billion compared with a year ago. The company sold $855 million of new annually recurring cloud revenue (ARR) in this quarter, putting Oracle over its $2 billion ARR bookings goal for the 2017 fiscal year.

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In terms of its segments the company reported:

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) revenues grew 67% to $964 million from last year.
Cloud Platform (PaaS) and Infrastructure (IaaS) grew 40% to $397 million.
New software licenses revenues fell 5% to $2.63 billion.
Software license updates and product support revenues increased 2% to $4.90 billion.
Hardware revenues fell 13% to $1.11 billion.
Services revenues grew 3% to $894 million.

Safra Catz, Oracle’s CEO, commented:

Our fourth quarter results were very strong as revenue growth and earnings per share both substantially exceeded the high end of guidance. We continue to experience rapid adoption of the Oracle Cloud led by the 75% growth in our SaaS business in Q4. This cloud hyper-growth is expanding our operating margins, and we expect earnings per share growth to accelerate in fiscal 2018.

After analysts had a chance to look at the earnings report, they updated their calls:

RBC has an Outperform rating and raised its price target to $53 from $47.
Merrill Lynch reiterated a Buy rating and raised its price objective to a street-high $62 from $54.
Canaccord Genuity has a Buy rating and raised its price target from $49 to $56.
Wedbush has an Outperform rating and raised ts price target to $56 from $44.
BMO Capital Markets has an Outperform rating and raised its price target from $48 to $57.
Rosenblatt Securities reiterated a Buy rating with a $55 price target.

Shares of Oracle were last trading up 8.7% at $50.35, with a consensus analyst price target of $48.64 and a 52-week range of $37.62 to $51.85.

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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.