Oracle reports strong Q1 profit growth

Oracle reported improved quarterly profits Thursday, in part fuelled by sales of its Fusion middleware.

Investors applauded Oracle's first-quarter performance, sending its stock up in after-hours trading to $19.2 per share. During regular trading, Oracle closed at $18.75 per share - up nearly 3.6 per cent for the day.

Oracle posted net income of nearly $1.1bn, or 21 cents per share, for the period ending 31 August, up 28 per cent from the same period a year ago. Excluding charges, Oracle posted profits of 29 cents per share, beating Wall Street's estimates by two cents per share, noted Brent Thill, an analyst with Citigroup Global Markets.

Revenue rose to $5.3bn in the first quarter, up 18 per cent from the year ago period. And new software licences, a figure investors use in gauging the health of the company, increased 14 per cent to $1.2bn in the quarter over last year. New software licences accounted for 23 per cent of Oracle's overall revenue.

Charles Phillips, Oracle president, said in a statement: "More and more Oracle database customers are buying our integrated suite of standards-based Fusion middleware to modernise their computing environment."

But Thill noted that the first-quarter growth for Oracle's enterprise applications business was down 12 per cent, far less than his projections for the company.

Going forward, however, Thill predicts Oracle will post at least a 14 per cent growth in licence revenue in the second quarter when compared to year-ago figures, as well as an 18 per cent growth in overall revenue.

Original article: Oracle posts improved first quarter from CNET News.com