Oracle Corporation (ORCL)

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Oracle (ORCL) shares fall 12% on soft cloud guidance; Goldman flags 'lofty' expectations
By: Investing.com | September 12, 2023

Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) shares slumped by roughly 12% in early U.S. trading on Tuesday after the business software group offered a soft outlook for the current quarter and posted first-quarter revenue that narrowly missed estimates.

It is the biggest fall for the Texas-based company's shares since March 2020, and wipes almost $30 billion off of its market capitalization compared to its closing price on Monday. Meanwhile, the decline weighed on shares in rival SAP SE (ETR:SAPG) in Germany, dragging the stock down by more than 2%.

On a call following its most recent quarterly results, Oracle executives said they see total revenue in the fiscal second quarter growing 5% - 7%, missing estimates of 8.2% from analysts cited by Reuters. Adjusted profit was also projected to be between $1.30 and $1.34 per share during the three-month period. Analysts had pencilled in $1.33 a share.

Oracle's management attributed the weak outlook to the accelerated change in operations at its Cerner (NASDAQ:CERN) health records division. The unit is in the process of moving customers to cloud subscriptions and away from license purchases, which are recognized upfront.

"This transition is resulting in some near-term headwinds to the Cerner growth rate," Oracle Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said on the earnings call.

In a note to clients, Goldman Sachs analysts said the second-quarter guidance "fell short of lofty expectations."

Oracle, which sells database software and technology, is in a race with players like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s Azure to develop its cloud technology. However, the effort has been hampered by a slowdown in tech spending by businesses wary of an uncertain economic environment.

Cloud services and license support revenues grew by 13% year-on-year to $9.5 billion in the first quarter, but cloud license and on-premise license revenues slipped 11% to $809 million. Despite increasing by 8.8% annually, the group-wide top-line result of $12.45B narrowly missed Bloomberg consensus expectations of $12.47B.

On an adjusted basis, income per share came in at $1.19, above projections of $1.15.

Many analysts remained bullish over Oracle's prospects, arguing that the share price decrease was likely due to a surge in the stock prior to the earnings. Shares have jumped by more than 50% year-to-date.

"Do these results change our thesis on Oracle? No," analysts at Guggenheim said.

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