Oracle beats Wall Street on fiscal Q4 earnings

Amid reports that a senior executive is announcing his or her departure later this week, Oracle reported better than expected earnings on Monday afternoon.

Oracle reported a fourth quarter net income of $3.5 billion, or 69 cents a share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 82 cents a share on a revenue of $11 billion.

Wall Street was expecting fourth quarter earnings of 78 cents a share on revenue of $10.9 billion.

For fiscal year 2012, GAAP total revenues were up 4 percent to $37.1 billion, while non-GAAP total revenues were also up by 4 percent to $37.2 billion.

CEO Larry Ellison commented in prepared remarks:

The development of Oracle Cloud is strategic to increasing the size and profitability of Oracle’s software business. Our Oracle Cloud SaaS business is nearly at a billion dollar revenue run rate, the same size as our engineered systems hardware business. The combination of engineered systems and the Oracle Cloud will drive Oracle’s growth in FY 2013.

As analysts predicted, a stronger U.S. dollar did hold Oracle back a bit, as noted in the report:

Without the impact of the US dollar strengthening compared to foreign currencies, Oracle’s reported Q4 GAAP earnings per share would have been $0.03 higher at $0.72, up 16%, and Q4 non-GAAP earnings per share would have been $0.04 higher at $0.86, up 15%. Both GAAP and non-GAAP total revenues also would have been up 5%, GAAP new software license revenues would have been up 11%, non-GAAP new software license revenues would have been up 12% and both GAAP and non-GAAP hardware systems products revenues would have been down 13%.

But software might have saved the day. Oracle president and CEO Safta Catz also commented in the statement that Oracle experience "several all-time highs" during the fourth quarter, including new software license sales at $4 billion and total software revenue of $8 billion.

UPDATE: Looking forward, Catz offered guidance figures during the conference call with investors on Monday. For the next quarter, Oracle is predicting revenue to fluctuate by -2 to 1 percent at 54 to 58 cents per share on a non-GAAP basis -- assuming exchange rates stay at current levels.

"I do read the same newspapers you all do," Catz acknowledged. "So I have tried to keep that in mind in my guidance regardless of our achievements in the fourth quarter."

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