Lotsa money at Oracle

Oracle public relations somehow managed to wait until just past midnight EST to release their final earnings figures for fiscal year 2006. For the record, Oracle net income for the period through 31 May was US $3.4 billion, an increase of seventeen percent over the previous year. And in the fourth quarter alone, figures show income of US $1.3 billion, an amazing twenty-seven percent increase. And the bottom line says that Oracle’s 2006 revenues were up twenty-two percent to US $14.4 billion. The success story within the Oracle success story of fiscal year 2005 was the applications business. New software licensing revenue from applications was $640 million in the fourth quarter, up eighty-three percent over the previous year.

Total applications software revenues for the period were US $1.3 billion, a whopping sixty-six percent increase from the previous quarter. Licensing revenue from the Oracle applications business grew fifty-six percent. "We saw extraordinary growth in the quarter," proudly stated Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in a conference call (currently available at www.oracle.com/corporate/), followed by an irresistible swipe at his firm’s bitter rival: "We are growing the applications business faster than SAP." In database and middleware, software license revenue was US $1.48 billion, up eighteen percent over the previous year. Total database and middleware software revenue was US $2.68 billion, an increase of fifteen percent. Revenue from the sale of Siebel CRM software for the quarter was $81 million, more than twice as much as what Oracle forecasters had expected, representing a huge piece of the revenue pie chart.

Oracle’s growth came both from increased deal activity and from a higher number of large deals. During the quarter, the number of transactions valued at over $1 million grew by thirty-nine percent over the previous year. Company forecasters expect GAAP earnings per share to grow from US $.10 US $.11 in the first quarter of fiscal year 2007, with software revenue rising as much as twenty-five percent over first quarter 2006.

Oracle expenses rose during the fourth quarter, with operating expenses up twenty-one percent; sales and marketing expenses were up a big thirty-six percent. (Oracle spokespeople chalk this up to rises in salaries.) Service costs were up twenty-four percent. Finally, on-demand business revenues grew to $130 million, up a wowing sixty-two percent.