Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Oracle Shares Fall on Weaker Than Expected Q4 Sales

Oracle’s earnings results for its fourth fiscal quarter just crossed the wires. While the bottom line was even with what analysts had expected, sales fell a little short of the consensus again by about $100 million. Oracle shares immediately fell by seven percent in after-hours trading.

Profits on a per-share basis were 87 cents, in line with the consensus view of analysts who expected 87 cents. Sales were $11 billion, falling short of the $11.1 billion consensus.

New software licenses grew only slightly to $4 billion, amounting to a year-on-year improvement of 1 percent.

Hardware sales fell 13 percent year on year, but sales of new hardware products — specifically the Exadata, Exalogic and Exalytics line of engineered systems — grew by 45 percent, CEO Larry Ellison said in a company statement. Oracle sold 1,200 of these systems during the quarter and 3,000 of them during the year. It’s primary rival in this segment is IBM.

Oracle’s board doubled the dividend the company will pay to investors to 12 cents a share. The company also said it will move its stock listing from the Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange effective July 15.

I’ll have more on the particulars shortly, but for now here’s Oracle’s original announcement.

Oracle Doubles Dividend; Cloud SaaS Revenues Up 50%, Engineered Systems Up 45%

Q4 GAAP EPS Up 17% to 80 Cents, Non-GAAP EPS Up 5% to 87 Cents

REDWOOD SHORES, CA–(Marketwired – Jun 20, 2013) – Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) today announced that fiscal 2013 Q4 GAAP total revenues were unchanged at $10.9 billion, while non-GAAP total revenues were unchanged at $11.0 billion. Both GAAP and non-GAAP new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions revenues were up 1% to $4.0 billion.

Software license updates and product support revenues were up 6% to $4.4 billion. Hardware systems products revenues were $849 million. GAAP operating income was up 9% to $5.0 billion, and GAAP operating margin was 46%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 1% to $5.6 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 51%. GAAP net income was up 10% to $3.8 billion, while non-GAAP net income was down 1% to $4.1 billion. GAAP earnings per share were up 17% to $0.80, while non-GAAP earnings per share were up 5% to $0.87. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $14.2 billion.

Without the impact of the US dollar strengthening compared to foreign currencies, Oracle’s reported Q4 GAAP earnings per share would have been approximately $0.01 higher at $0.81, up 19%; and Q4 non-GAAP earnings per share would have been approximately $0.01 higher. GAAP total revenues also would have been up 2%, non-GAAP total revenue would have been up 1%, and new software licenses and cloud software subscription revenues would have been up 2%.

For fiscal year 2013, GAAP total revenues were unchanged at $37.2 billion, while non-GAAP total revenues were unchanged at $37.3 billion. GAAP new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions revenues were up 4% to $10.3 billion, while non-GAAP new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions revenues were up 4% to $10.4 billion. GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 6% to $17.1 billion, while non-GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 6% to $17.2 billion. Hardware systems products revenues were $3.0 billion. GAAP operating income was up 7% to $14.7 billion, and GAAP operating margin was 39%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 2% to $17.6 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 47%. GAAP net income was up 9% to $10.9 billion, while non-GAAP net income was up 3% to $13.0 billion. GAAP earnings per share were $2.26, up 15% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were $2.68, up 9%.

“A record level non-GAAP operating margin of 47% in FY13 enabled us to generate over $14 billion in operating cash flow during the year,” said Oracle President and CFO, Safra Catz. “We returned almost 90% of that to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases while increasing the cash on our balance sheet to $32 billion. Consistently increasing our margins, cash flow and cash balance has allowed us to double our current quarterly dividend.”

“Oracle’s HCM Cloud, CRM Cloud and ERP Cloud grew 50% as we added over 500 new SaaS customers in Q4 alone,” said Oracle President Mark Hurd. “Our annualized SaaS revenue run rate is over $1 billion, making us a strong number two in cloud applications — we are larger than SAP and Workday combined. Furthermore, in Q4 our HCM cloud alone generated more SaaS revenue and added more new Fusion HCM customers than Workday added HCM and ERP customers combined in their most recent quarter.”

“Exadata, Exalogic, Exalytics, SPARC SuperCluster and our other engineered systems grew at a rate of 45% in Q4 as we took considerable market share from our primary competitor — IBM P-Series — which declined 32% in their most recent quarter,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “We sold over 1,200 engineered systems in the quarter and over 3,000 during the year. Our fast growing engineered systems business is now more than one-third of our overall hardware business which is one of the reasons we believe hardware will be a growth story in Oracle’s FY14.”

Oracle also announced that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share of outstanding common stock, reflecting a 100% increase over the current quarterly dividend of $0.06. Oracle’s CEO and largest stockholder did not participate in the deliberation or the vote on this matter. This increased dividend will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on July 12, 2013, with a payment date of August 2, 2013.

Oracle also announced that its Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to an additional $12.0 billion of common stock under its existing share repurchase program in future quarters.

Oracle also announced that it has applied to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under its current symbol “ORCL”. After careful consideration and deliberation, the Board of Directors of Oracle determined that the proposed transfer of Oracle’s common stock listing to the New York Stock Exchange would be in the best interests of its stockholders, customers and partners. Subject to the approval by the NYSE of Oracle’s listing application, Oracle expects that its common stock will begin trading on the NYSE on July 15, 2013. Until the transfer is completed, Oracle will continue to trade on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol “ORCL”.

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