Oracle Tops Forecasts

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Oracle beat Wall Street estimates and raised guidance after the close on Tuesday, but the stock was little changed in after-hours trading.

On a GAAP basis (generally accepted accounting principles), Oracle’s earnings declined year-over-year from 12 to 10 cents a share due to charges related to the company’s acquisition of PeopleSoft. Excluding those items, Oracle’s pro forma earnings of 16 cents a share and revenues of $3.09 billion topped analysts’ forecasts.

Oracle’s new database license revenues rose 12% to $782 million, beating estimates, and application sales were also strong, thanks to the addition of PeopleSoft. On a GAAP basis, overall revenues rose 18% to $2.95 billion from the year-ago quarter. The company raised full-year earnings guidance to 64-65 cents a share, above 63-cent forecasts.

“Solid growth in our database business has enabled Oracle to take market share from IBM all year long,” CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement. “Oracle’s gain in market share highlights the accelerating acceptance of Oracle Database Grids as replacements for IBM mainframes.”

Ellison said on the conference call that the company is also seeing strong growth from Linux deployments.

Oracle’s aggressive acquisition strategy, culminating Tuesday in the company’s successful bid for Retek , has unnerved investors. Co-President and interim CFO Safra Catz told reporters on a separate conference call that the company sees no additional big mergers coming.

Oracle’s results capped a rough day for investors, as the Federal Reserve sent stocks sprawling after it raised interest rates for the seventh time in less than a year and said it sees inflation pressures.

The Nasdaq fell 18 to 1989, the S&P 500 lost 12 to 1171, and the Dow tumbled 94 to 10,470. Volume rose to 2.12 billion shares on the NYSE, and 1.87 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led 23-9 on the NYSE, and 18-12 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 73% on the NYSE, and 75% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 61-82 on the NYSE, and 62-78 on the Nasdaq.

Compuware gained 4.6% on a settlement with IBM .

Paychex surged 6% after the company beat estimates.

Marvell rose 3.7% on an upgrade.