Ellison exhibited some very poor leadership today if you ask me. I don't usually do this, but I bought in at $22 and change yesterday, and after Ellison's actions today, I will be getting out at the next technical bounce to $25-$27 (hopefully). Good luck ORCL investors.
joey
Oracle's Ellison Does Little To Soothe Investors
(12/10/97; 5:00 p.m. EST)
By Larry Dignan, TechInvestor
NEW YORK -- Oracle chief executive officer Larry
Ellison was short on answers regarding his company's
future earnings prospects, but long on one-liners
Wednesday.
Ellison, who gave the afternoon keynote speech at New
York's Internet World under the glare of camera
flashes, spoke before a packed house, but said little to
soothe investors. "It's fortunate we're talking about the
network computer," he said. "If you lost a lot in the
market like I did, you can save a fortune with network
computing."
Ellison, who lost more than $2 billion in Tuesday's slide,
quipped his way through the first few minutes of his
familiar network computing speech, handed the
presentation off to two of his troops, and left via a door
to the right of that stage before the lights went up.
Ellison did not attend a news conference following the
keynote, but left it up to Oracle's senior executives to
try to shed some light on the Redwood Shores, Calif.,
company's disappointing earnings.
Karen White, senior vice president of worldwide
marketing and business development for Oracle, said
the fundamentals driving the company were still strong,
and any problems in the quarterly results can be fixed.
The recent quarter could be attributed to "growing
pains," she said.
White added that the extent of Asia's problems and an
internal reorganization cut into the second quarter
results. She also defended Oracle's network computing
strategy, which some Wall Street analysts have said is
keeping the company from focusing on its core
applications business.
"We are in two businesses: low-cost computing and
high-value business applications," said White. "We
moved from a vendor of databases to a solution
provider. We made the changes when we were flying
high."
Oracle executives pushed the network computing
theme as the company unveiled a series of products
that will enable corporations to move from the
client/server model to the network.
Among the products unveiled Wednesday, Oracle
launched its Application Server 4.0, Internet Commerce
Server 1.1, Payment Server 1.0, and Lite 3.0, which will
be a Java-enabled database.
Oracle said it is hoping the new products will jump-start
revenue growth, but success depends on the speed
existing customers move toward network computing
and how many new clients are attracted.
"The new products make our applications more
competitive, and that adds to revenue," said Ron Wohl,
senior vice president of applications development. It will
have a positive impact, but how much is hard to
predict."
Oracle [ORCL] closed up 1/2 to 23 7/16 in heavy
trading Wednesday. |
