Oracle Corp (ORCL) reported lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter, sending its shares down nearly 5 percent in the after-hours trading session on Monday, amid tough competition in the cloud computing market.
Revenue from its cloud services and license support unit jumped 3.2 percent to $6.61 billion in the latest quarter, missing consensus forecast of $6.61 billion. Co-Chief Executive Officer Safra Katz blamed strong dollar for the miss.
The Redwood City, California-based company is a late entrant to the cloud business and has been making efforts to catch up with competitors including software maker giant Microsoft and e-commerce giant Amazon. As a part of those efforts, Oracle said earlier this year that it plans to increase the number of its biggest data centers by four-folds.
Overall, the company reported earnings of $2.27 billion, or 57 cents a share in the three-month period ended Aug. 31, as compared to $2.14 billion, or 50 cents a share in the same period last year. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 71 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters were looking for a profit of 69 cents a share.
Revenue for the quarter came in at $9.19 billion, up 1 percent from the comparable quarter last year, but missed consensus forecast of $9.28 billion.
Looking forward, Oracle projected sales to be flat to up to 2 percent in the second quarter. Earnings for the current quarter are expected in the range of 78 cents per share to 80 cents per share, that is in line with the consensus forecast.
Oracle shares fell about 4.64 percent in the after-hours trading session on Monday following the first-quarter results. The 52-week range of the stock is $42.57-$53.48, while the company’s market cap is $195.79 billion.
