Oracle Corp. shares declined in after-hours trading Thursday despite better-than-expected quarterly earnings results but then rebounded after the company’s forecast also surpassed expectations.
Oracle ORCL, -0.42% on Thursday afternoon reported earnings for its second fiscal quarter of $2.44 billion, or 80 cents a share, on revenue of $9.8 billion, up from $9.62 billion a year before. After adjusting for stock-based compensation and other effects, the software company reported earnings of $1.06 a share, up from 90 cents a share a year earlier. Analysts on average expected adjusted earnings of $1 a share on sales of $9.77 billion, according to FactSet.
“Our highly profitable multibillion-dollar Fusion and NetSuite Cloud ERP applications businesses grew revenue 33% and 21%, respectively, in Q2,” Oracle Chief Executive Safra Catz said in Thursday’s announcement. “These two strategic cloud-applications businesses are major contributors to Oracle’s increased operating earnings and consistent earnings-per-share growth.”
Oracle’s stock sank more than 1% in after-hours trading immediately following the release of the results, after declining 0.5% to $59.43 in the regular session, but then moved back to flat after Catz provided her forecast in Thursday afternoon’s conference call. Catz projected that Oracle would collect third-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.09 to $1.13 a share and that revenue would grow by 2% to 4%. Analysts had been projecting adjusted earnings of $1.04 a share and year-over-year revenue growth of less than 1.4%.
Shares reached record highs in October but took a dive after another software giant, SAP SE SAP, +0.02%, issued a warning about its sales and profit; Oracle’s stock had recovered to roughly its levels before SAP’s warning prior to Thursday afternoon’s report.
Overall, Oracle stock has risen 12.3% in 2020, as the S&P index SPX, -0.13% has gained 13.7%.
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