Shares of Oracle Corporation (NYSE: NYSE:ORCL) rose during Monday’s after-hours session, despite the Austin, Texas-based company posting earnings short of expectations.
Investors bought Oracle shares after the database software giant reported quarterly upbeat revenues with a healthy contribution from the recently acquired medical records firm Cerner (NASDAQ:CERN).
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) Analyst Keith Weiss reiterated an Equal-Weight rating and a price target of $90.
“Even looking through the inorganic contributions from Cerner, the Cloud businesses at Oracle look to be well sustaining momentum with total Cloud revenues (excluding Cerner) up 29% YoY in constant currency (cc), back office applications now exceeding a $5.8 billion revenue run rate growing at 33% YoY cc, and the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) reaching a $3.2 billion run rate with 70% growth,” Weiss wrote.
“Looking forward, the spike in capex spending to $1.7 billion in the quarter (of which the vast majority is supporting OCI) likely reflects Cloud contracts in hand or with clear line of sight, as Oracle management does not take the philosophy of "build it and they will come", but much prefers to build to suit,” he added.
Piper Sandler Analyst Brent Bracelin reaffirmed an Underweight rating and a price target of $70.
“The combination of Cerner integration expenses and rising cloud costs have pressured the operating margin to slip below 40% for the first time in six years,” Bracelin said. “While the Oracle Cloud business continues to hold promise, the blended organic growth rate of 45% suggests it is growing roughly in-line with our CloudTracker growth trends on aggregate."
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Credit Suisse (SIX:CSGN) Analyst Phil Winslow maintained an Outperform rating and a price target of $115.
Oracle’s quarterly results were solid and the “standout this quarter was infrastructure cloud services,” Winslow said.
“Oracle’s strong FQ1 results and FQ2 and FY2223 guidance commentary reinforce our view that Oracle is well positioned to emerge as the #3/#4 vendor in the PaaS/IaaS market and the #2 vendor in the SaaS market – enabling the company to continue to reaccelerate revenue growth into the double digits,” he added.
ORCL Price Action: Shares of Oracle had risen by 0.75% to $77.68 at the time of publication Tuesday.
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