Oracle shares soar 13% on better-than-expected quarterly earnings

Oracle reported quarterly earnings on Monday that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. Shares rose 13% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in the fiscal third quarter ending Feb. 29, compared to estimates by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

• Earnings per share: $1.41 adjusted vs. $1.38 expected
• Revenue: $13.28 billion vs. $13.3 billion expected

For the fiscal fourth quarter, Oracle said it expects earnings of $1.62 to $1.66 per share. Analysts were expecting $1.64 in adjusted earnings per share, according to LSEG. Revenue growth will be between 4% and 6% over sales of $13.8 billion a year ago. The midpoint of that range would equal revenue of about $14.5 billion, while analysts were expecting a little more than $14.7 billion.

Oracle CEO Safra Catz said the company was committed to hitting previously stated goals of $65 billion in sales by fiscal 2026. “Some of these goals might prove to be too conservative given our momentum,” Catz said.

Revenue rose 7% in the quarter from $12.4 billion a year earlier. Net income climbed 27% to $2.4 billion, or 85 cents per share, from $1.9 billion, or 68 cents per share, a year ago.

Oracle’s cloud services and license support segment, its largest business, saw sales rise 12% to $9.96 billion, slightly beating StreetAccount consensus expectations of $9.94 billion. The company attributed the rise to strong demand for its artificial intelligence servers.

Catz said the company added several “large new cloud infrastructure” contracts during the quarter. The company’s cloud revenue, which is reported as part of the cloud services unit, rose 25% year over year to $5.1 billion, Oracle said.

“We signed several large deals this quarter and we have many more in the pipeline,” Catz told investors on the earnings call.

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison cited increased business from Microsoft on the earnings call.

“We’re building 20 data centers from Microsoft and Azure. They just ordered three more data centers this week,” Ellison said.

The company’s other units didn’t fare as well.

Cloud license and on-premise sales declined 3% to $1.26 billion, slightly beating StreetAccount’s forecast. Hardware revenue fell 7% to $754 million, while sales in the company’s services division slid 5% to $1.31 billion, both falling short of StreetAccount expectations.

Prior to Monday’s report, Oracle shares were up 8.7% for the year, slightly outperforming the S&P 500.