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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (51246)	5/7/2002 9:13:31 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 54805

Oracle's Roberts Comments on Software Spending, Market Share By Ashley Gross San Francisco, May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp.'s George Roberts, executive vice president of North American sales for the world's third-biggest software maker, commented on the outlook for a sales pickup. Oracle, which trails Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. in software sales, has had four straight quarters of year-over-year revenue declines. Roberts spoke at the J.P. Morgan H&Q Technology Conference in San Francisco. ``Technology spending for enterprise software remains very soft and doesn't appear to be improving. Visibility is extremely poor. We can't predict when the economy will see an upturn.'' ``Customers are still digesting projects they started over the last several years and continue to be more cautious. Large forward buying is almost non-existent in this environment. We're back to the way people bought in 1997. All the other companies are experiencing the same thing.'' ``We continue to manage the business in an extremely profitable manner in extremely tough times. We are very well positioned when spending patterns return to normal.'' ``We continue to hire resources in lower-cost areas like China and India. Because we have our arms around costs, there's tremendous opportunity for margin expansion.'' On a Gartner Inc. report that said IBM surpassed Oracle in database market share: ``We believe frankly we're not losing real market share. We believe a lot of this is a marketing game people are playing.'' ``We look at customer loyalty and buying intentions. We haven't seen that change at all. As long as we're seeing customers remain loyal to us, we believe we'll maintain our advantage. We still maintain the lion's share in this marketplace.'' On Oracle's accounting practices: ``We're extremely conservative. We changed our revenue recognition policies 10 years ago. We're a cash machine.'' On Oracle's $95 million contract with the state of California: ``You can obviously tell it's an election year in California. They make the statement that nobody is using the software, which is absolutely untrue. Whatever the state wants to do, we're happy to do. It's not a significant amount -- it's $30 million.'' On whether Chief Executive Larry Ellison can manage Oracle while training for the America's Cup yacht race: ``Larry's been very engaged in the business. He has been for years. I don't see any disengagement. I've got lots of things to worry about besides whether Larry goes racing or not.''