Oracle swings to profit in Q3, beats estimates

Oracle Corp. (ORCL) swung to a profit in the third quarter from a loss last year, helped by lower provision for income taxes as well as a decline in costs and expenses. The results exceeded analysts’ expectations.

Net income was $2.75 billion or $0.76 per share compared to a loss of $4.05 billion or $0.98 per share in the previous year quarter. Adjusted earnings grew 8% to $0.87 per share.

Total revenues declined by 1% to $9.62 billion, due to decreases in cloud license and on-premise license, hardware, and services. On a constant currency basis, total revenues increased by 3%.

Segment-wise, revenue from cloud services and license support rose by 1% to $6.7 billion while that from cloud license and on-premise license declined by 4% to $1.25 billion. Hardware revenue fell by 8% to $915 million and services revenue inched down by 1% to $786 million.

Short-term deferred revenues were up 1% to $8 billion compared to a year ago. Operating Cash Flow was $14.8 billion during the trailing twelve months.

The company’s Fusion HCM, ERP, Supply Chain, and Manufacturing Cloud applications revenue in total grew 32% in the third quarter. NetSuite ERP Cloud applications also delivered strong results with a revenue growth rate of 30%. By the end of Q3, Oracle had nearly 1,000 paying Autonomous Database customers and the company added around 4,000 new Autonomous Database trials in Q3.

Oracle also said its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.24 per share of outstanding common stock, reflecting a 26% increase over the current quarterly dividend of $0.19. Chairman Larry Ellison did not participate in the deliberation or the vote on this matter. This dividend will be paid on April 25, 2019, to stockholders of record as of April 11, 2019.

Shares of Oracle ended Thursday’s regular session down 0.02% at $53.05 on the NYSE. The stock has risen over 1% in the past year and over 13% in the past three months.

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