Oracle Swings To Loss On Tax Charge, Revenues Miss Street

(RTTNews) - Business software giant Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Monday said it swung to a third-quarter loss after taking a $6.9 billion charge related to the new U.S. tax law. Revenues for the quarter grew 6 percent reflecting strong growth in cloud revenues. Adjusted earnings for the quarter trumped Wall Street estimates, while revenues fell short of expectations.

Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle reported third-quarter loss of $4.02 billion or $0.98 per share, compared to last year's profit of $2.24 billion or $0.53 per share. Profit for the quarter included a one-time net charge totaling $6.9 billion related to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Adjusted earnings for the quarter increased to $0.83 per share from $0.69 per share last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.72 per share.

Revenues for the quarter rose 6 percent to $9.77 billion from $9.21 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $9.78 billion.

Oracle's total cloud and On-Premise software revenues rose 8 percent to $8.0 billion, while hardware revenues slipped 3 percent to $994 million. Total services revenues dropped 2 percent to $796 million.

In the quarter, total cloud revenues were up 32% to $1.6 billion, with Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) revenues up 33% and Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) plus Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) revenues were up 28%.

"During FY17, I forecast double-digit non-GAAP earnings per share growth for FY18," said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. "With non-GAAP earnings per share up 20% in Q3, our year-to-date earnings per share growth is now up to 16%. At this point, I feel quite confident that we will comfortably deliver on my original forecast of double-digit non-GAAP earnings per share growth for FY18."

Further, the company declared quarterly dividend of $0.19 per share, payable on April 17.

ORCL closed Monday's trading at $51.95, down $0.32 or 0.61%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further dropped $1.76 or 3.39% in the after-hours trade.