Sentiments ride strong even as Oracle 2Q Net Profits dip

San Francisco, December 19: A stronger dollar during the quarter ended November, weakened Oracle Corp.’s global sales resulting in a dip in quarterly profit. Oracle has witnessed such a plunge in profits for the first time in the last three years. The business software maker however convinced its investors to stay away from anxiety, as it was well equipped to ward off the deepening recession.

Jeff Gaggin, an analyst with Avian Securities echoed the opinion. He said, "They are managing through this downturn relatively well." Moreover, Oracle had a positive guidance to offer and claimed that its costs were under check and sales targets were being reasonably met. The shares of the company were up by 3 percent in extended trading.

The quarterly results revealed that Oracle made $1.3 billion, or 25 cents per share for the quarter ended November 30, 2008. The revenue was up by 6 percent at $5.61 billion. However, the net income curved in by $7 million vis-à-vis last year’s income for the same period. The earnings per share (EPS) remained the same though.

Oracle is susceptible to exchange rates of currencies as it earns a good 50 percent of its revenues from global sales. If Oracle was to negate the impact of any currency swing, its profit and revenue would have jumped by 10 percent and 12 percent respectively.

Safra Catz, Oracle's co-president, appeared satisfied with the results as she said, "Now, of course, obviously currency was not the only news going on in the quarter in the outside world and yet we feel just extremely good about our results."

Headquartered in Redwood City, CA, Oracle Corporation is one of the leading software companies along with Microsoft and IBM. Well known for its flagship Oracle database, it also develops the popular enterprise resource planning software (ERP), customer relationship management software (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) software.

Oracle was incorporated on June 16, 1977, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates. Since its inception, Larry Ellison, has been at the helm of affairs and has served as the company’s CEO ever since.