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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rag2rag who wrote (5239)	1/28/1998 9:03:00 PM
From: Nick	Respond to of 19080

Wednesday January 28, 8:20 pm Eastern Time Oracle shares rise on forecast SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 28 (Reuters) - The stock of database software company Oracle Corp. (ORCL - news) rose sharply on Wednesday in response to a positive forecast for third-quarter North American sales by Chairman Larry Ellison. Seeking to dispel concerns about the lagging database software business at the NationsBanc Montgomery Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco Tuesday, Ellison said North American sales of Oracle's database software product could rise about 25 percent in the third quarter ending Feb. 28 vs. the same quarter a year ago. The forecast marked a big improvement over the second quarter when Oracle reported worldwide database software sales growth of just 3 percent. The stock rose $2.125 to $21.125 in early afternoon trading on Nasdaq. Randal Chin, analyst with BT Alex Brown, said the stock was boosted by the executive's comments, but thought it was exaggerated since Ellison's forecast did not address the continued weakness outside North America. ''I think Ellison was talking more about the intermediate term and more about North America specifically, as opposed to the data base business in general,'' he said. ''In other words, I think the company believes that North America is turning around and getting back on track but there are still pockets of weakness, particularly Asia,'' Chin said. Including the effects of weaker markets outside North America and currency impacts, analysts see Oracle's total worldwide server computer business growing at a rate of 15 percent to 20 pecent over the next quarter or two. Oracle's poor performance -- combined with huge losses reported by Oracle rivals Sybase Inc. (SYBS - news) and Informix Corp.(IFMX - news) -- has led many analysts to suspect that the market for high-end database is saturated