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To: Nancy who wrote (3906)	6/18/2002 7:02:26 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 17639

story.news.yahoo.com Oracle CFO: Software Sales Could Fall Tue Jun 18, 6:49 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief financial officer of Oracle Corp. said on Tuesday software sales in the current quarter could fall as much as 25 percent from a year ago and said sales visibility going forward remained "very limited." "Our visibility going forward remains very limited, as has been the case for the last 18 months," CFO Jeff Henley told analysts on a conference call on Tuesday. "Our assumption is that the U.S economy will continue to improve, at least gradually, but technology spending will not show signs of improvement probably for another six months." Based on those assumptions, Henley said Oracle's software license sales -- a key measure of a software company's core growth -- would be down between 15 percent and 25 percent from a year ago. He said that would lead the maker of business software to post earnings of 7 cents a share in its fiscal first quarter 2003, ending in August, which he said was 2 cents below its earnings in the year-ago quarter. Henley said that if software sales came in at the high end of its negative growth outlook, the company would post earnings of 6 cents a share, or 3 cents lower than a year ago. Dismissing fears in a recent analyst note that Oracle was about to announce big layoffs, Henley said the company had no plans to "significantly downsize" the company, but added that if Oracle's assumptions about the economy did not pan out, then "we'll obviously have to revise our thinking and our plans." Shares of Oracle, which initially jumped more than 12 percent after the company posted fiscal fourth quarter earnings in line with expectations, dropped sharply after Henley's comments.