(RTTNews.com) – Business software giant Oracle Corp. ( ORCL ), Thursday reported an increase in profit for the second quarter, as revenues grew 6 percent reflecting strong growth in cloud revenues. Earnings for the quarter trumped Wall Street estimates, as did revenues.
Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle’s second-quarter profit rose to $2.23 billion or $0.52 per share from $2.03 billion or $0.48 per share last year.
Adjusted earnings for the quarter increased to $0.70 per share from $0.61 per share last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.68 per share.
Oracle’s total cloud and On-Premise software revenues rose 9 percent to $7.83 billion, while hardware revenues slipped 7 percent to $940 million. Total services revenues gained 1 percent to $856 million.
“Overall cloud revenue growth of 44% drove our quarterly revenue and earnings higher,” said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. “With non-GAAP Cloud SaaS Applications growth of 49% leading the way, Oracle delivered 14% non-GAAP earnings per share growth and 6% overall revenue growth. Our success in the quarter was based on the increasing scale and the gathering momentum in our cloud business. I expect the business to continue to grow and strengthen over the coming quarters.”
In the quarter, cloud software as a service (SaaS) were up 55 percent to $1.1 billion and cloud platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (Iaas) revenues were up 21 percent to $396 million.
Further, the company authorized stock repurchase by $12 billion. The Board also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.19 per share, payable stockholders of record as of January 10, with a payment date of January 24.
ORCL closed Thursday’s trading at $50.23, up $0.18 or 0.36%, on the Nasdaq. The stock, however, slipped $1.63 or 3.25% in the after-hours trade.
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