Oracle
topped
fourth-quarter
revenue
estimates
and
forecast
an
upbeat
first
quarter,
driven
by
growing
demand
for
its
cloud
offerings
from
companies
deploying
AI.
Oracle’s
push
into
the
cloud
computing
market
has
started
to
bear
fruit,
helped
by
its
acquisition
of
electronic
medical
records
firm
Cerner
last
year
that
has
helped
it
better
compete
with
industry
giants
like
Microsoft
and
Amazon.
The
cloud
and
software
company
has
also
boosted
its
AI
cloud
offerings,
including
its
partnership
with
Nvidia
to
make
the
chip
company’s
AI
software
and
chips
available
to
Oracle
customers
via
its
cloud
services.
Oracle’s
revenue
for
the
fourth
quarter
jumped
about
17
percent
to
US$13.84
billion
($20.5
billion),
beating
analysts’
estimates
of
US$13.74
billion,
according
to
Refinitiv.
Cloud
revenue
rose
54
percent
to
US$4.4
billion.
Analysts
believe
that
given
the
company’s
partnership
with
Nvidia,
Oracle
Cloud
Infrastructure
(OCI)
is
well-positioned
to
become
a
major
AI/ML
development
platform,
which
could
be
another
leg
of
emerging
growth.
“Companies
doing
LLM
(large
language
model)
development
such
as
Mosaic
ML,
Adept
AI,
Cohere
plus
30
other
AI
development
companies
have
recently
signed
contracts
to
purchase
more
than
US$2
billion
of
capacity
in
Oracle’s
Gen2
Cloud,”
Oracle
chairman
and
CEO
Larry
Ellison
said
in
a
statement.
The
company
forecast
its
total
revenue
to
rise
eight
percent
to
10
percent
in
the
first
quarter.
Analysts
on
average
were
expecting
growth
of
about
eight
percent.
Oracle
expects
cloud
revenue,
excluding
Cerner,
to
grow
at
least
at
similar
rates
in
fiscal
2024
as
in
2023,
Chief
Executive
Safra
Catz
said
on
a
conference
call
with
analysts.
The
company’s
shares,
which
closed
at
their
record
high
of
US$116.43
on
Monday,
were
up
at
US$120.53
in
extended
trading.
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