Oracle Q1 Profit Down, But Tops Street View

(RTTNews) - Business software giant Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Thursday reported a drop in profit for the first quarter, despite a slight revenue growth. Earnings for the quarter trumped Wall Street estimates by a penny, while revenues fell short of expectations.

Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle's first-quarter profit dropped to $2.03 billion or $0.48 per share from $2.20 billion or $0.51 per share last year.

Adjusted earnings for the quarter dropped to $0.61 per share from $0.63 per share last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.60 per share.

Revenues for the quarter rose 1 percent to $9.04 billion from $8.99 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $9.12 billion.

Oracle' revenue growth has slowed down in the last few quarters, raising investor concern about the company's ability to transition from its traditional approach of licensing software to the so-called cloud computing method.

Oracle's total cloud and On-Premise software revenues rose 2 percent to $7.18 billion, while hardware revenues slipped 10 percent to $1.01 billion. Total services revenues dropped 2 percent to $844 million.

"For four consecutive quarters our Cloud SaaS & PaaS revenue growth rate has increased," said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. "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."

Oracle also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.15 per share, payable to shareholders on January 26.

ORCL closed Thursday's trading at $40.86, down $0.02 or 0.05%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further dropped $0.86 or 2.10% in the after-hours trade.