Oracle Q3 Profit Misses Street View; Stock Down 5%

(RTTNews) - Shares of Oracle Corp. (ORCL) slipped over 5% in extended hours on Thursday after the business software giant reported a third-quarter profit that missed Wall Street estimates. However, revenues for the quarter were in line with analysts expectations.

Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle reported third-quarter profit of $2.32 billion or $0.84 per share, down from $5.02 billion or $1.68 per share last year.

On an adjusted basis, earnings for the quarter were $3.10 billion or $1.13 per share for the period, down from $3.49 billion or $1.16 per share last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $1.18 per share. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Revenues for the quarter rose 4% to $10.51 billion from $10.09 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $10.51 billion.

Cloud services and license support revenues rose to $7.64 billion from $7.25 billion, while Cloud license and on-premise license revenues rose to $1.29 billion from $1.28. Hardware revenues dropped to $798 million from $820 million last year, while services rose to $789 million from $737 million.

"In Q3, Oracle delivered over 7% constant currency revenue growth—our highest quarterly organic revenue growth rate since we began our transition to the cloud," said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. "This strong top line growth was coupled with a solid non-GAAP constant currency operating profit growth of 4%, but the big story is that our overall revenue growth is being driven by both our rapidly growing Cloud Infrastructure and Cloud Applications businesses.

ORCL closed Thursday's trading at $76.65, up $0.55 or 0.72%, on the Nasdaq. The stock, however, slipped $4.38 or 5.71%, in the after-hours trading.