REDWOOD SHORES (dpa-AFX) - Oracle Corp. (ORCL) said Thursday after the markets closed that its fourth quarter profit rose 10% from last year, helped by tight expense control even as revenue remained essentially flat.
The company's quarterly earnings per share, excluding items, came in line with analysts' expectations, but its quarterly revenue fell short of analysts' forecast.
Oracle also announced the doubling of its quarterly cash dividend to $0.12 per share, payable on August 2 to shareholders of record on July 12.
In addition, the company said its Board of Directors has authorized the repurchase of up to an additional $12.0 billion of common stock under its existing share repurchase program in future quarters.
Oracle further said that it has applied to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under its current symbol 'ORCL'. The company expects its common stock to begin trading on the NYSE on July 15, and until that time it will continue to trade on the Nasdaq.
Oracle shares are currently losing 8.46% in after hours trading after closing the day's regular trading session at $33.21, down 88 cents or 2.58%. The shares trade in a 52-week range of $27.24 to $36.43.
Oracle has adopted an acquisition-led growth strategy. The company has acquired more than 70 companies since 2005. Of late, Oracle has set its eyes on cloud-based software firms. In January 2012, the company completed the acquisition of RightNow Technologies, Inc. for $1.5 billion in an effort to offer a broader range of cloud solutions to its customers. The company completed its $1.9 billion acquisition of Taleo Corp. in April last year.
Oracle has recently signed deals to buy SelectMinds, Instantis and DataRaker, Eloqua, Inc. (ELOQ). In February, Oracle agreed to buy network gear maker Acme Packet, Inc. (APKT) for $29.25 per share in cash or about $1.7 billion, net of cash.
However, Oracle' revenue growth has stalled in the last two quarters, raising investor concern about the company's ability to transition from its traditional approach of licensing software to the so call cloud computing method.
Oracle's total software revenues for the fourth quarter increased 4% year-over-year to $8.4 billion, with new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions revenues up 1% at $4.0 billion.
Fourth quarter software license updates and product support revenues grew 6% year-over-year to $4.4 billion. Service revenues for the quarter fell 9% from last year at $1.1 billion.
Hardware systems revenues for the quarter dropped 9% to $1.4 billion, with hardware systems products revenue down 13% and hardware systems support revenue down 3%.
'Oracle's HCM Cloud, CRM Cloud and ERP Cloud grew 50% as we added over 500 new SaaS customers in Q4 alone,' said Oracle President Mark Hurd. 'Our annualized SaaS revenue run rate is over $1 billion, making us a strong number two in cloud applications -- we are larger than SAP and Workday combined. Furthermore, in Q4 our HCM cloud alone generated more SaaS revenue and added more new Fusion HCM customers than Workday added HCM and ERP customers combined in their most recent quarter.'
For the fourth quarter ended May 31, 2013, Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle reported net income of $3.81 billion or $0.60 per share, compared to $3.45 billion or $0.69 per share for the year-ago quarter.
Excluding items, adjusted net income for the fourth quarter was $4.11 billion or $0.87 per share, compared to $4.14 billion or $0.82 per share in the prior year quarter.
On average, 36 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $0.87 per share for the fourth quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.
Operating margin for quarter improved to 46% from 42% a year ago, while adjusted operating margin increased to 51% from 50% last year.
Total revenue for the fourth quarter grew 0.3% to $10.95 billion from $10.92 billion a year ago, while adjusted revenue for the quarter increased 0.1% to $10.96 billion from $10.95 billion last year. Thirty-four analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $11.12 billion for the fourth quarter.
Without the impact of a stronger U.S. dollar, fourth quarter revenue would have been up 2% and earnings per share would have been up 19%, the company said.
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