Collins Stewart Has Thoughts On Hurd's Hiring (ORCL)

Collins Stewart is out with a research report on Oracle ORCL, as the software company announced it has hired Mark Hurd to be its co-president. In the research report, Collins Stewart writes, "We believe Hurd’s skill-set will be used in a slightly different way at Oracle vs. how it was used at HP When Hurd took the reins at HP the $100B revenue run-rate company was very decentralized and needed cost cutting, centralization and reorganization. Hurd executed against that need and lifted operating margins from 6% to 12%, a pretty incredible improvement in just five years. Our impression of Oracle, even though we have never followed the company, is that the need is not to fix Oracle’s core operations, but to do more acquisitions, possibly big ones. Thus, Hurd’s operational skills will be needed on the integration side." It goes on to say that Dell DELL could be an acquisition target, as Oracle looks to compete with IBM IBM and HP HPQ. Shares of Oracle are gaining 5.58% this morning, to trade at $24.20.