Oracle Beats Q2 Expectations

Oracle Corporation ORCL announced fiscal 2015 Q2 results Wednesday. Total revenues were up 3 percent compared to the prior year period to $9.6 billion, above estimates of $9.52 billion. Non-GAAP earnings per share were up 1 percent at $0.69, above estimates of $0.68.

Software and Cloud revenues were up 5 percent compared to the year-ago period and accounted for $7.3 billion of total revenue.

Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) revenue was up 45 percent to $516 million. Hardware Systems revenues were up 1 percent to $1.3 billion.

Non-GAAP operating income was up 3 percent to $4.4 billion, and the non-GAAP operating margin was 46 percent.

"We continue to deliver industry-leading operating margins and cash flow even after adding the thousands of specialized sales people and engineers necessary to accelerate the growth of our new cloud businesses," said Oracle CEO Safra Catz.

"By Q4 of this year we expect our new cloud bookings to exceed $250 million," said Oracle Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison. "Next fiscal year our new cloud bookings will be well over the billion dollars mark."

The Board of Directors also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share of outstanding common stock. This dividend will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on January 7, 2015, with a payment date of January 28, 2015.

Oracle traded at $42.20 in the after-hours session, up 2.5 percent.