Oracle Tanks Following Q2 Earnings Release

Shares of Oracle ORCL are trading lower in the after-hours following the release of the company's Q2 earnings results. Currently, shares are lower by 7.95%, trading at $26.85; they ended the regular session higher by 1.94%, at $29.17. Oracle reported Q2 EPS of $0.54 on revenues of $8.81 billion; the Street was looking for $0.57 per share on revenues of $9.23 billion. Revenues increased 1.9% year over year. "Non-GAAP operating margins increased to 45% in Q2," said Oracle President and CFO, Safra Catz, "and we expect those margins to keep growing. Operating cash flow over the last twelve months grew to $13.1 billion; that's up a remarkable 45% compared to the preceding twelve month period." "We have expanded our worldwide sales capacity by adding over 1,700 sales professionals in the first half of this fiscal year," said Oracle President, Mark Hurd. "We believe that this increase in our field organization combined with innovative new products like Fusion Cloud ERP and Cloud CRM will enable solid organic growth in the second half of this year." Oracle Corporation, incorporated in 2005, is an enterprise software company. The company develops, manufactures, markets, distributes and services database and middleware software, applications software and hardware systems, consisting primarily of computer server and storage products.