Oracle sees revenue below estimates

8 months ago AndyC

Oracle projected current-quarter revenue below Wall Street targets and narrowly missed expectations for the first quarter as a tough economy pressured cloud spending by businesses.

After a surge in cloud demand during the pandemic, businesses are rethinking their digitisation plans, hurting Oracle as it plays catch-up in a segment dominated by larger rivals such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

Still, analysts have said that the rise in adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) applications could boost Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business because the advances made in its networking technology are more suited to take on AI workloads.

“As of today, AI development companies have signed contracts to purchase more than $4 billion of capacity in Oracle’s Gen2 Cloud. That’s twice as much as we had booked at the end of Q4,” Oracle chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said.

Ellison, a self-described close friend of Elon Musk, announced that the Tesla CEO’s AI startup xAI had signed a contract to train AI models in Oracle’s Gen2 Cloud.

He also said all nine utility companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway will replace their existing enterprise resource planning systems with Oracle’s Fusion Cloud applications.

Shares of Oracle have gained about 55 percent so far this year.

The firm forecast second-quarter revenue growth of between five percent and seven percent, lower than analysts’ average estimate of 8.2 percent, according to LSEG data.

It also expects adjusted profit between US$1.30 and US$1.34 per share, compared with expectations of US$1.33.

Revenue for the first quarter stood at US$12.45 billion, slightly below estimates of US$12.47 billion.

Excluding items, it earned US$1.19 per share, compared with estimates of US$1.15.

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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