Oracle Announces Big Profits, Big E-Commerce Deals

Database and Internet solutions heavyweight Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced on Thursday powerful third-quarter gains and key e-commerce deals. The company reported a whopping 36% increase in profits for the quarter ending February 28, 1999, and major contracts with e-commerce leaders like eBay, eToys, Excite, theglobe.com, Infoseek, NECX, and Techies.com.

Oracle’s products are increasingly seen as shifting from an internal-only database to a premier Internet-development platform, deployed by sites like Amazon.com Inc., Onsale Inc., and CDnow Inc.

According to Adam Hertz, vice president of development for Excite, “Today, with millions of people viewing nearly 60 million pages per day on the Excite service, reliability is critical to us. Oracle’s solution hasn’t missed a beat — it’s reliable 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Deals, Deals, Deals

Oracle has also been emphasizing its Customer Relationship Management products, which encompass the full cycle of sales, marketing, and service-related activities. Major companies that signed third quarter deals for Oracle Customer Relationship Management products are American Electric Power, American Management Association, Public Broadcasting Service, and Shop At Home Network.

Additional companies and organizations signing major deals with Oracle in the third quarter include ALLTEL, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc., Fingerhut Companies Inc., Hartford Fire Insurance, Herbalife International Inc., Honeywell Inc., NATO, Sequent Computer Systems, Signature Eyewear, Tepe-Alfen-Vie (Turkey), Tosco Corporation, and Young & Rubicam.

“Oracle’s database products will be the foundation of our plans to migrate away from our legacy applications and to support data warehousing,” said Sandi Walker, chief information officer at Bell Helicopter Textron Inc.

Growth Across the Board

According to the company, revenue from Oracle’s two businesses, database and applications, totaled $8.3 billion (US$) over the last four quarters. The database business, which includes database tools and related services, grew 20 percent to $6.0 billion for the last four quarters, maintaining Oracle’s position as the largest database provider in the world.

Revenues from the applications business and related services grew 37 percent to $2.3 billion in revenues for the last four quarters, continuing Oracle’s position as the second largest applications business in the world.

Product related revenues (license and support) in the third quarter grew by 16 percent versus the same period last year, led by growth in applications related products. Oracle’s Education and Consulting services revenue increased 27 percent during the quarter.

The company offers its database, tools and application products, along with related consulting, education, and support services, in more than 145 countries around the world.

Stock Watch

Despite what seems to be good news and good growth, Oracle’s stock has taken a beating since third-quarter earnings were announced on Thursday. Some analysts seem to have “expected more” from Oracle, and therefore downgraded the stock from a “buy” to a “hold” or a “long-term buy.”