Oracle exec says guidance holds, sales not slowing
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Software giant Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ:ORCL) stood by its bullish
forecast for the fiscal third quarter ending this month, an Oracle sales executive said at an investment conference on Tuesday.
"Our guidance hasn't changed from what we announced," Oracle Executive Vice President George Roberts said.
Speaking at the Robertson Stephens Technology Conference here, Roberts said the company still expected to see
database license revenues rising between 15 percent and 20 percent, and applications revenues increasing up to 75 percent from the year-ago quarter.
Roberts, who manages sales in the Americas, said he has seen no indication that business was slowing with the
overall U.S. economy.
However, like many software companies, Oracle closes the majority of its deals in the final weeks of a quarter so
the coming days will be particularly telling.
"The economy could be a wild card," Roberts said.
Database license revenues grew 19 percent in the second quarter, accounting for more than one-third of Oracle's
total sales.
Oracle shares fell 1/2 to $22-1/2 on Nasdaq on Tuesday.
The stock slid 13 percent on Friday after Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's influential software analyst Charles Phillips
said dot-com failures could reduce the range of Oracle's third-quarter database license revenue growth to 10
percent to 13 percent, or about $40 million lower than anticipated.
The stock fell further on Monday, hitting a new low of $21-1/2, off more than 50 percent from its September high
of $46-7/16.
Database sales grew at an unusually brisk 32-percent pace in the third quarter of fiscal 2000, helped by
fast-spending Internet startups, so comparisons will be tough with the current quarter.
Other analysts have set guidance at the low end of Oracle's database sales forecast.
"We have been projecting 15 percent database license growth ... for at least the last six months," Lehman Brothers analyst Neil Herman said in a recent research note.
Mark Verbeck, an analyst at Epoch Partners, said Oracle's fourth quarter, ending in May, is the key period to
watch. The company traditionally has pulled in about one-third of its total sales in that quarter. |
