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- Oracle climbed as much as 7% in pre-market trading on Thursday morning after the firm reported better-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter.
- The cloud and database company is set to open at a record high, which it last hit in April at $55.41 a share.
- Oracle’s strong fourth-quarter results were thanks to a boost in its cloud applications business.
- Watch Oracle trade live here.
Oracle jumped by as much as 7% before the opening bell on Thursday and was on track to open at a record high after beating expectations for its fourth-quarter earnings.
The company generated $1.16 in earnings per share, outperforming analysts’ expectation of $1.07. Fourth-quarter revenues were $11.1 billion, beating Wall Street’s estimate of $10.93 billion. Revenues grew about 1% from the same quarter last year.
"These strong results extend Oracle’s already commanding lead in worldwide cloud ERP," Mark Hurd, the co-chief executive officer of Oracle, said in a press release on Wednesday. "Our cloud applications businesses are growing faster than our competitors."
Oracle competes with companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, and SAP in the cloud market.
The company attributed its strong fourth-quarter results to growth in its cloud application business, which includes a number of cloud services that help other companies run their businesses. Cloud Services and License support revenues, Oracle’s largest business segment, accounted for $6.8 billion in revenue this quarter.
"Our high-margin Fusion and NetSuite cloud applications businesses are growing rapidly while we downsize our low-margin legacy hardware business." Safra Catz, the co-CEO, said in a press release.
Total revenues in 2019 reached $39.5 billion, with its Cloud Services and License segment support generating $26.7 billion.
The company’s board of directors also declared a cash dividend of $0.24 per share.
Oracle is up more than 24% so far this year.
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Daniel Strauss)