Oracle Beats Q3 Earnings Estimates

Oracle Corporation ORCL shares ticked incrementally higher in Thursday's after-hours session following a quarterly earnings beat.

Third-quarter earnings per share came in at 87 cents, beating estimates by 3 cents. Sales of $9.614 billion came in just ahead of the $9.61 billion estimate.

Oracle's Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of 24 cents per share of outstanding common stock, reflecting a 26-percent increase over the current quarterly dividend of 19 cents.

"I'm pleased with Q3 non-GAAP results as revenues grew 3%, operating income increased 5% and EPS grew 12% in constant currency," said Oracle CEO Safra Catz. "Our overall operating margin improved to 44% as our lower margin hardware business continued to get smaller while our higher margin cloud business continued to get bigger. With year-to-date non-GAAP EPS growth rate now at 16% in constant currency, we will comfortably deliver another year of double-digit EPS growth."

Oracle's stock closed Thursday's session at $53.05 per share. Shares were up about 1 percent in after-hours trading.

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