Oracle results exceed estimates, riding on boom in cloud services

BENGALURU • Cloud and enterprise software firm Oracle topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly profit and revenue on Monday, as more businesses increased spending on cloud services while transitioning to a hybrid work environment.

Investors reacted positively, sending its shares up more than 13 per cent in extended trading after a day in which the overall market plunged and Oracle's stock hit a 16-month low.

Oracle's total cloud revenue, which includes its infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service businesses, rose 3 per cent to US$7.61 billion (S$10.6 billion).

"We believe that this revenue growth spike indicates that our infrastructure business has now entered a hyper-growth phase," Oracle chief executive Safra Catz said in a statement.

Mr Catz attributed the jump in revenue to the company's Fusion and NetSuite cloud applications and high demand for its infrastructure cloud business.

Oracle has been expanding its data centre operations across the world as it seeks to capture the rise in demand for cloud computing and enterprise software.

It is striving to increase its cloud regions, or geographical areas that allow customers to get faster access from a local data centre, to better compete with firms such as Microsoft, Amazon.com and Alphabet's Google.

Revenue for the fourth quarter ended May 31 grew 5 per cent to US$11.84 billion, above analysts' average estimate of US$11.66 billion, IBES data from Refinitiv shows.

Excluding items, the company earned US$1.54 per share, beating estimates of US$1.37 per share.

REUTERS