REDWOOD SHORES (dpa-AFX) - Business software giant Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Wednesday reported a first-quarter profit that was in line with Wall Street estimates, however, revenues fell short of expectations. Oracle's co-CEO Mark Hurd announced he will take a leave of absence for health related reasons. In absence of Hurd, co-CEO Safra Catz will cover for him.
'Mark has requested a leave of absence from Oracle to address some health related issues and we all wish him a speedy recovery,' said Oracle Founder, Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Larry Ellison. 'Oracle has an extremely capable CEO in Safra Catz and an extraordinarily deep team of executives, many with long tenure at Oracle. Safra and I will cover Mark's responsibilities during his absence with support from the rest of our strong management team.'
Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle reported first-quarter profit of $2.14 billion or $0.63 per share, down from last year's profit of $2.27 billion or $0.57 per share.
Adjusted earnings for the quarter increased to $0.81 per share from $0.71 per share last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.81 per share.
Revenues for the quarter rose slightly to $9.22 billion from last year's $9.19 billion. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $9.29 billion.
Oracle's cloud services and license support revenues rose 4% to $6.81 billion, while cloud license and On-Premise license revenues slipped 6 percent to $812 million. Hardware revenues declined 9 percent to $815 million, while Services revenues slipped 2 percent to $786 million.
Commenting on the business, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, said, 'As our low margin hardware businesses continue to get smaller, while our higher margin cloud business continues to get bigger, we expect Oracle's operating margins, earnings per share and free cash flow all to grow. We're off to a good start in FY20, and we expect this to be our 3rd consecutive year of double-digit non-GAAP earnings per share growth.'
The company authorized share repurchases of up to $15 billion. The board also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.24 per share, payable October 24 to shareholders of record October 10.
ORCL closed Wednesday's trading at $56.29, up $0.82 or 1.48%, on the Nasdaq. The stock, however, slipped $1.59 or $2.82% in the after-hours trade.
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