That goal appears to have been reached as of this quarter with one more quarter yet to go: Revenue for software and platform sold as a service was $1.52 billion for the nine-month period ended February 29.
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Total cloud revenue rose 39.5 percent to $735 million, accounting for about 8 percent of Oracle’s total revenue.
The company blamed the strengthening USA dollar for putting a crimp on sales.
The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, April 28th. The company’s revenue was down -3.4% compared to the same quarter previous year. Oracle makes up 4.4% of Longview Partners Guernsey LTD’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 13th largest position. “Our cloud business is now in a hyper-growth phase”, she said. It also authorized the repurchase of up to an additional $10 billion of common stock under its existing share repurchase program in future quarters. Revenue from new software licenses fell 15% to $1.7 billion in the quarter, or 11% lower in constant currency. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $0.68 EPS. The company said the cloud revenue would actually have gained 44% if not for the impact of the strong dollar.
Analysts are looking for earnings per share of $0.62 on revenue of $9.13B. Oracle notes SaaS/Paas gross margin (an area of concern) rose to 51% from 43% in FQ2, and says it’s still targeting an 80% GM long-term. Earnings per share on an adjusted basis in constant currency would hit 82 cents to 85 cents, the company said.
Investors will closely watch how the cloud business is performing as it is considered to be the next leg of growth for Oracle as its legacy businesses are struggling to generate sales.
Ellison used the occasion to take further digs at Salesforce.com, a rival regularly cast as the villain in Oracle earnings reports.
Co-CEO Mark Hurd said that Oracle added almost a thousand new software as a service customers during the quarter, with some snatched from competitor Workday.
PaaS cloud company in the world.
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We expect another solid cloud quarter across SaaS and PaaS properties and forecast SaaS/PaaS growth of 47% Y/Y this quarter rising to 53% Y/Y growth in F4Q16. “In some of our most important SaaS markets, such as ERP, HCM, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, Salesforce.com does not participate at all”, the Oracle founder and CTO said. It trades at an average volume of 9.18M shares versus 6.31M shares recorded at the end of last trading session.
