Bank of America Merrill Lynch Reiterates Buy on Oracle

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is out with its report today on Oracle ORCL, reiterating Buy. In a note to clients, Bank of America Merrill Lynch writes, "We reiterate our Buy rating with a Price Objective of $39. We are raising 2012E EPS from $2.40 to $2.41. License revs were +19%, better than consensus +15% and at the high end of 9-19% guidance, as previewed. Ex-currency, organic license growth of 12% is very respectable. Exadata revs were better than expected and +50% q/q, highlighted by a large deal with a prominent ‘mobile device' player that has been in the press for its ‘cloud' services. Investors likely to focus on hardware product revs of $1.16 bn vs. our $1.34 bn." At the time of posting, shares of ORCL were trading at $31.38, down 3.34% from Thursday's close.