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

To: rag2rag who wrote (5425)	2/6/1998 9:03:00 PM
From: mcmiller	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19080

Friday February 6, 8:33 pm Eastern Time Oracle shares jump after bullish comments REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Feb 6 (Reuters) - Oracle Corp. shares jumped 13 percent on Friday after the database software company's executives reiterated their view that sales likely will improve in the coming quarter. Oracle Chief Financial Officer Jeff Henley and President Ray Lane gave an ''upbeat management presentation'' to a group of about 25 institutional investors visiting the company's headquarters, said Catherine Buan, senior director of Oracle investor relations. The investors were on a bus tour of Silicon Valley sponsored by the San Francisco arm of investment bank Merrill Lynch. The investors met with the executives of several high tech companies. Buan, who was at the meeting, said Henley and Lane told the investors that they expected North American database sales to rise about 25 percent in the fiscal third quarter, ending Feb. 27. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison first gave that projection last week at an investment conference, boosting Oracle's flagging stock. ''Larry meant that sales in North America is a good proxy for the health of the business,'' Buan said. Even though Asian sales have been damaged by the region's economic troubles, Oracle's fundamental business remain strong, she said. On Friday, Oracle shares jumped $3.125 to $27 on Nasdaq trading of 22.2 million shares, making the stock the most active in U.S. markets. Since Ellison first made the bullish comments on Jan. 26, Oracle shares have jumped 42 percent from $19. Oracle is the world's biggest publisher of database software, the computer programs big companies use to store vast amounts of business information like payroll data and inventory lists. The company's stock plunged in early December when it revealed that database sales grew just 3 percent in the fiscal second quarter, down from about 30 to 40 percent in recent quarters. That raised concerns among analysts that every customer that would need a database had already bought a copy, and that the industry -- once one of the fastest-growing niches of software -- was facing an extended period of slow sales. Oracle executives have been trying to dispel that notion in recent weeks. ''The idea that the industry is saturated is a very bizarre notion,'' Ellison said last week. ''The database business is very solid.''