Oracle’s net rises 36 percent, but servers slip
Stronger spending on business software helped Oracle Corp.'s quarterly profit jump 36 percent, but the company's server business further deteriorated, a decline Oracle attributed to its move to shed lower-margin deals.
The company said after the stock market closed Tuesday that its net income rose to $1.84 billion, or 36 cents per share, in the quarter that ended Aug. 31. That compared with $1.35 billion, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier.
Its adjusted net income for the latest quarter was 48 cents per share, a penny higher than the average forecast of analysts polled by FactSet.
Revenue rose 12 percent to $8.37 billion, slightly exceeding the $8.36 billion that analysts expected. Read more...
Is Office 2010 in for a significant price decline?
Stock market prognosticating company Trefis specializes in predicting stock prices by analyzing a company's major components and calculating how much of the company's stock price is attributable to each piece. Their recent take on Microsoft Office -- the tail that waves the Microsoft stock price dog -- has caught the attention of Forbes Magazine, among others.
The Trefis analysis of Microsoft attributes 28.6 percent of Microsoft stock price to Office, 25.1 percent to Windows, 13.5 percent to Server, 7.9 percent to Xbox, 4.3 percent to Bing, 1.6 percent to Skype, and 19 percent to cash. Read more...
Wall Street: Software more valuable than oil
The tech industry's answer to this week's stock market roller coaster was delivered on Tuesday by the mighty Apple Inc.
Apple saw its stock price rise enough -- gaining more than 5 percent -- that it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil, as the most valuable company in the U.S., according to an Associated Press analysis of its market cap. (Exxon Mobile wound up the day slightly ahead of Apple.)
Most of the other major tech companies -- Intel, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard -- all finished in positive territory yesterday, as markets made up ground lost in the big sell-off on Monday that also hit oil prices and other commodities. Read more...