Oracle Corp. Shares Rise on Q4 Results (ORCL)

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) shares rose sharply in trading on Tuesday after the business-software giant reported better-than-expected adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter. ORCL released its financial results late Monday, three days earlier than planned.

ORCL posted an 8% gain in earnings, with adjusted earnings coming ahead of Street estimates. The company’s software-licensing revenue climbed 5%. The company also added $10 billion to its existing share repurchase program.

Oracle shares rose to an intra-day high of $28.75 on Tuesday. The stock ended the day 3.10% higher at $27.96 on above average volume of 81.05 million.

For the quarter ended May 31, 2012, Oracle reported net income of $3.5 billion, or $0.69 per share. This compares with net income of $3.2 billion, or $0.62 per share reported for the same period in the previous year.

On a non-GAAP basis, ORCL posted earnings of $4.1 billion, or $0.82 per share, compared with Street estimates of $0.78 per share.

Revenue for the quarter rose 1% to $10.9 billion. Analysts had forecast ORCL’s fourth-quarter revenue to come in at $10.89 billion. The company’s revenue from new software licenses climbed 37% to $3.98 billion in the fourth quarter. Hardware sales rose 9% to $977 million in the fourth quarter.

Looking ahead, Oracle said that it expects new software licenses growth to be between 5% and 15%, without adjusting for exchange rate fluctuations, in the first quarter. Total revenue growth for the first quarter is expected to be between 3% and 6%.

CEO Larry Ellison said that the development of Oracle Cloud is strategic to increasing the size and profitability of ORCL’s software business. Ellison further said that the company’s Oracle Cloud SaaS business is nearly at a billion dollar revenue run rate, the same size as the company’s engineered systems hardware business. He added that the combination of engineered systems and the Oracle Cloud will drive ORCL’s growth in FY2013.

Oracle’s Board of Directors also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.06 per share.