Oracle has long tried to find its footing in the lucrative industry of renting computing power and storage. — Bloomberg
NEW YORK: Oracle Corp reported quarterly revenue in line with estimates, disappointing investors who have boosted the stock to a record high in recent weeks on enthusiasm for the company’s ascendant cloud business.
The shares fell in extended trading.
Financial second quarter revenue increased 9% to US$14.1bil, the company said on Monday in a statement.
Sales from Oracle’s closely watched cloud infrastructure business jumped 52% to US$2.4bil, in line with the growth projected by analysts.
Oracle has long tried to find its footing in the lucrative industry of renting computing power and storage, which is dominated by much larger rivals led by Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp.
The recent success has been fuelled by demand from artificial intelligence (AI) companies seeking to train their models and marquee customers like Uber Technologies Inc and ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok.
Chairman Larry Ellison has focused particularly on Oracle’s ability to provide the hardware and integrated software needed to handle powerful AI workloads.
The stock slipped about 7% in extended trading after closing at US$190.45. Expectations were high for Oracle headed into the results, with its stock jumping 81% this year.
It was a “mixed quarter against elevated expectations”, wrote Rishi Jaluria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.
Remaining performance obligations – a measure of bookings – were US$97bil as of the period ended Nov 30, a step down from US$99.1bil in the previous quarter.
Earnings, excluding some items, were US$1.47 a share. Analysts, on average, estimated US$1.48, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Total cloud sales, including infrastructure and applications, was US$5.9bil. Analysts, on an average, estimated US$6bil.
That 52% growth in infrastructure sales suggested “strong expansion in AI workloads, both from direct and indirect clients”, wrote Anurag Rana, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
For the financial third quarter, revenue will increase about 8%, chief executive officer Safra Catz said on a conference call after the results were released.
Profit, excluding some items, will be US$1.47 to US$1.51 a share. Cloud revenue will rise about 24%, she said. All of those metrics missed analyst estimates.
Still, executives remained bullish on company momentum. Oracle’s cloud “trains several of the world’s most important generative AI models because we are faster and less expensive than other clouds”, Ellison said in the statement.
He added that Meta Platforms Inc has signed an agreement to use Oracle’s cloud infrastructure to develop AI agents built on Meta’s Llama models.
Capital expenditures, which are watched as a metric of data centre investment, were US$3.97bil in the quarter. Analysts estimated US$3.52bil.
Overall capital expenditures should double this financial year compared to the previous, Catz said.
The company spent US$6.87bil in the financial year 2024, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Last week, a US Appeals Court federal court upheld a law that would ban TikTok in the United States unless the social media company was sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd.
Oracle has warned investors that a ban on TikTok would hurt its financial results. Oracle executives didn’t comment on the conference call about TikTok’s situation. — Bloomberg
