Oracle Corp.’s share price down, profit and sales miss analysts’ estimates amid transition to cloud-computing services

Oracle Corp. made an official statement yesterday, posting its profit and sales for the fourth quarter of the financial year that missed analysts forecasts. The announcement comes at a moment when the company is trying to shift its focus to providing primarily cloud-computing services and become a worthy rival of companies such as Salesforce.com Inc.

The Co-president and Chief Financial Officer of Oracle – Ms. Safra Catz said on a conference calL yesterday, cited by Bloomberg: “We’ve successfully grown the company’s revenues and earnings through every transition, whether it was many computer databases to a complete suite of products, client-server Internet, hardware engineered systems and now on-premise cloud.” Ms. Catz also added: “We are well under way with our most recent transition.”

Oracle Corp. revealed that its net income over the fourth fiscal quarter fell by 4.2% to $3.65 billion or 80 cents a share, compared to $3.81 billion a year ago. The company also said that its revenue increased by 3.4% over the period. Both figures missed the median analysts estimates. The company also revealed that its new software-license sales amounted to 3.77 billion dollars, while its hardware systems increased by 2.4% and reached 1.47 billion dollars over the quarter. Oracles shares declined by 5.5% in after-hours trading.

According to the companys statement, its profit before certain costs amounted to 92 cents per share in the period that ended May 31st, and the revenue was estimated at 11.3 billion dollars. In comparison, the analysts forecasts pointed to a profit of 96 cents per share and a revenue of 11.5 billion dollars.

The company tries to shift the analysts focus to its higher-growing businesses by posting its revenues from the cloud-computing services separately for the first time in its history.

One of the analysts, who work at FBR Capital Markets & Co. – Mr. Daniel Ives, who rates the companys shares the equivalent of a buy, commented the results for Bloomberg: “This is a shocker for investors who were expecting a slight beat in the quarter – new license sales were weak and it’s quite clear the company has a lot of heavy lifting in front of it. Part of it is execution, part of it is product related.”

Oracle Corp. was 0.70%% down to close at 42.51 dollars per share yesterday, marking a one-year change of +24.70%. According to the information published on CNN Money, the 33 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Oracle Corp. have a median target of 45.00, with a high estimate of 50.00 and a low estimate of 28.00. The median estimate represents a +5.86% increase from the last price of 42.51.