bad news for ORCL out after the clsoe on fri... ooops.. LOL
Oracle's 1st-Qtr Software Sales to Fall, CFO Says (Update3)
By Ashley Gross
Redwood City, California, Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp.'s fiscal first-quarter software sales are likely to fall, compared with an earlier forecast that they would be little changed, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Henley said.
The third-largest software maker hasn't seen an improvement yet in corporate spending, Henley said in an interview. The Redwood City, California-based company probably will still meet its forecast for profit of 8 cents a share for the quarter ending this month because of cost-cutting, he said.
First-quarter software sales could decline by a percentage similar to the drop in the fourth quarter ended May 31, when they fell 10 percent, Henley said. Corporate software spending has slackened this year as Internet-related companies shut down and bigger businesses curtail purchases because of concerns about the economy.
``The environment in North America hasn't shown any pickup yet,'' Henley said, adding that business in Europe and Asia has remained slow. ``I just don't think we're seeing a lift yet.''
Oracle divides its sales into software revenue, which refers to sales of new licenses for programs, and services revenue, which comes from support and maintenance of customers' software programs.
On June 18, Henley said he thought sales would pick up in the first quarter, sparking a 13 percent rise in the shares the next day. Today, Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Richard Sherlund lowered his fiscal 2002 earnings estimate for Oracle to 46 cents from 48 cents, saying that the spending environment has worsened.
Oracle shares, which have declined 48 percent this year, fell 83 cents to $15.16 in regular U.S. trading. They slipped as low as $14.87 following Henley's comments today and were the most active stock in after-hours trading.
Currency Conversion
Henley said the strength of the U.S. dollar is hurting Oracle's revenue from outside the U.S. Sales outside the U.S. must be converted into dollars, and when the dollar rises, those sales are worth less when translated. He estimated about 5 percentage points of the decline in first-quarter software sales will be because of the strong dollar.
The euro has fallen 5.2 percent against the dollar this year, and the Japanese yen has fallen 6.2 percent.
In the fourth quarter, software revenue was $1.66 billion compared with $1.84 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
``Because things aren't picking up, there's more risk we could have a negative number'' this quarter, Henley said.
Oracle's total fourth-quarter sales dropped 3.3 percent to $3.26 billion. The company is forecast to have revenue of $2.39 billion in the first quarter, according to a Thomson Financial/First Call poll of analysts. First-quarter software sales last year were $807 million.
Databases, Applications
Sherlund said in a note today that he expects Oracle's first- quarter database sales to fall 5 percent and sales of applications, used to manage tasks such as accounting and purchasing supplies, to be little changed.
At a June 27 meeting with analysts and investors, Henley said he expected database sales to be unchanged and applications sales to rise 15 percent. He said today that was probably too optimistic.
``I think what Rick (Sherlund) did was right,'' he said, though he declined to give specific forecasts. ``It's difficult to predict the overall number, let alone the database and applications.''
Database sales made up 74 percent of the company's software revenue in the fourth quarter |
