Enterprise

Oracle hits all-time high after blowout earnings report

Key Points
  • Oracle shares were up 11.4 percent at the open. The company last hit an all-time high on March 16 of $46.99.
  • Oracle beat estimates for earnings and revenue.
Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Oracle's stock opened at a record high on Thursday.

Shares opened at $51.61, up 11.4 percent from Wednesday's close, after the company's fourth-quarter earnings beat analysts' expectations. Oracle hit its last all-time high on March 16, when shares climbed to $46.99.

The company reported earnings per share of 89 cents, excluding items, beating the 78 cents a share expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue totaled $10.9 billion versus $10.5 billion expected by analysts.

Oracle beats on top line
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Oracle beats on top line

Revenue for the quarter rose 3 percent. Subscription software reached more than $1 billion for the first time.

Oracle has been pushing hard in public cloud, aiming to compete with market leader Web Services (AWS). In May, Oracle said would move thousands of databases to its cloud.

However, the second-generation cloud infrastructure that Oracle announced in September is "currently a bare-bones 'minimum viable product,'" IT research group Gartner said in a major industry report last week. This marked the first year Oracle was included in the report.

In the fourth quarter, Oracle produced $208 million in cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) revenue, up 23 percent from the prior year. (Last quarter, CEO Safra Catz predicted IaaS revenue would increase by 25 percent to 29 percent.)

Revenue at AWS jumped 42 percent to $3.7 billion in revenue in the first quarter.

With respect to guidance, Oracle is predicting that it will deliver 59 to 61 cents in non-GAAP earnings per share and 4 percent to 6 percent revenue growth in the first quarter of its 2018 fiscal year. Analysts expected an average of 59 cents in earnings per share and 3.9 percent revenue growth for guidance, according to Thomson Reuters.

CNBC's Jordan Novet contributed to this story.

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