Oracle Stock Surges On Strong Results Despite Tough Macro Environment

Jun 15, 2022

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Shares of Oracle (NYSE:) are up practically 9% at this time after the pc expertise firm reported better-than-expected .

Sturdy Income Progress

Oracle reported adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.54, topping the consensus estimates of $1.37 per share, in accordance with Refinitiv. Income got here in at $11.84 billion, up 5% year-over-year and above the analysts’ estimates of $11.66 billion. Sturdy quarterly income was fueled by development in Oracle’s cloud infrastructure unit.

The corporate’s cloud infrastructure enterprise noticed its gross sales surge by 36% within the quarter, with whole cloud income rising 19% to $2.9 billion. Oracle did not compete with main cloud infrastructure suppliers as of the tip of 2021. Nevertheless, the database software program maker has lured each outdated and new purchasers to its cloud options within the first quarter, leading to a powerful gross sales enhance.

The corporate’s Chief Govt Safra Catz famous a strong enhance in demand for cloud infrastructure, saying that “this income development spike signifies that our infrastructure enterprise has now entered a hyper-growth section”.

Oracle reported a foreign money headwind of 5% in its newest fiscal quarter, up from 2-3% in Q3 2021, because the dollar headed in the direction of a 20-year excessive towards a basket of currencies. The headwinds are more likely to persist within the present quarter.

The Santa Clara, California-based firm additionally expects a $100 million hit per quarter in fiscal 2023 after its exit from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February.

Heading into the earnings, the choices market anticipated a transfer of 9.5% in Oracle shares.

Cerner Deal Closed

After asserting the deal final yr, Oracle lastly closed its $28 billion takeover of Cerner final week. The acquisition was one of many prime enterprise offers of 2021, and the transfer was praised by analysts, together with Constellation Analysis’s Holger Mueller.

Mueller mentioned the deal would deliver the worthwhile market to Oracle’s cloud merchandise, which is why Oracle was ready to pay $28 billion for the digital well being information firm.

Mueller mentioned after the announcement:

“It’s a wise transfer by Oracle. It cements Oracle expertise even deeper into healthcare and brings a variety of present and particularly future workload to Oracle Cloud. To not point out that Oracle is shopping for into the most important and fastest-growing vertical trade,”

Whereas the deal might considerably reinforce Oracle’s place in healthcare, it’s going to all come right down to how effectively the database software program firm and Cerner match ultimately and whether or not Oracle will handle to satisfy the potential Cerner presents.

Identical to Oracle, Microsoft (NASDAQ:) paid practically $20 billion to amass Nuance Communications in April final yr, hoping to learn from the corporate’s revolutionary conversational AI options.

JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens famous “actually attention-grabbing issues” inside Oracle’s enterprise, such because the sturdy development within the firm’s cloud unit and its buyout of Cerner.

Walravens, who has a Market Carry out ranking on Oracle inventory, says the corporate will try to enhance Cerner by bringing it to its “cloud infrastructure and different platform expertise.”

Nonetheless, the analyst famous that it will likely be crucial to keep watch over the combination of the deal, which is the most important one in Oracle’s historical past, as a result of unstable macroeconomic surroundings.

Investor Consideration Is Growing

Regardless of FX and macro headwinds, Oracle expects to proceed seeing strong income development in its cloud unit within the face of record-high inflation and a stronger . Oracle’s rivals Microsoft and Salesforce (NYSE:) additionally forecasted substantial upside for the cloud market as corporations and organizations proceed to extend spending on cloud options.

For this quarter, Oracle expects the income development to be within the vary of 17% to 18%, pushed by its latest buyout of healthcare IT firm Cerner Corp (NASDAQ:). The software program maker expects Q1 adjusted EPS to be within the vary of $1.04 to $1.08, whereas analysts have been on the lookout for $1.13 per share.

Oracle’s sturdy monetary report for the fourth quarter was welcomed by many traders who’re more and more centered on corporations which are capable of generate money and revenue through the present bear market.

The corporate’s steerage got here on the identical day when the benchmark noticed one more decline as a result of traders’ issues {that a} new rate of interest hike later this week might tip the financial system right into a recession.
Conclusion

Oracle shares are buying and selling sharply increased at this time after the corporate delivered better-than-feared Q1 outcomes regardless of the troublesome macro surroundings. The tech firm delivered sturdy income development, with revenues from the cloud infrastructure enterprise surging by 36% within the quarter.

Oracle inventory can also be more likely to profit from the corporate’s higher relative positioning as the broader tech sector continues to get battered by the rising charges and a particularly aggressive financial coverage from the Federal Reserve.

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