Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) has managed what seems to be the impossible after Tuesday night’s earnings. The stock is back up to flat at $38.84. Its low Wednesday was $37.40, and the stock was below $37 briefly in the after-hours session after earnings Tuesday.
Source: courtesy of Oracle
It turns out that the analyst community is maintaining support for Oracle. No significant ratings changes have been seen. 24/7 Wall St. compiled a list of analyst calls to see what the outlook seems like ahead now. Some explanations are long, some are barely mentioned in detail.
These are the analyst calls we have seen so far on Wednesday.
FBR Capital Markets said that Oracle came up short in license revenues, but accelerated booking in the SaaS business. This speaks to its sales force expansion and move to the cloud to drive growth in the 12 to 18 months. The firm believes the company is headed in the right direction.
Canaccord Genuity said, “Respectable but unexceptional quarter against fairly easy comparisons.”
Citigroup maintained its Buy rating, but raised its price target to $44 from $39.
Jefferies maintained its Hold rating, but raised its target price to $38 from $37.
Merrill Lynch maintained its Buy rating and $44 price target. The firm said, “We view this pullback as a buying opportunity. Cloud bookings grew 60%+ (Fusion apps grew triple digits), and 30%+ organic, including 65 seven or eight figure deals.”
Morningstar maintained its HOLD rating.
Oppenheimer’s Brian Schwartz maintained a Perform rating after soft earnings. He said:
We believe anytime an earnings forecast is double the historical average spread and record-setting, such as 4Q’s set-up, it increases execution risk and suggests less model predictability, making it challenging near-term to reinvigorate investor interest or justify multiple expansion.
Credit Suisse maintained its Outperform rating with a $40 price target, and it remained on the firm’s Focus list. The Credit Suisse outlook was that Oracle stands to benefit from several drivers during 2014 and into 2015:
- (1) a lessening negative impact from changes to the sales force in FY2012 and FY2013,
- (2) the introduction of Oracle Database 12c,
- (3) increasing customer adoption of Oracle Fusion Applications,
- (4) the massive market opportunity for Engineered Systems.
S&P Capital IQ maintained its HOLD rating.
Stifel Nicolaus maintained its Buy rating on Oracle, and actually adjusted its price target up to $43 from $40 in the call.
Zacks said:
Oracle currently has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) (at Zacks). With no dividend hike depicted in the initial Q3 earnings announcement and plenty of competition from Microsoft, IBM, etc., it would appear there is little to sustain its share price at or near 52-week highs, at least for the time being. That said, Oracle is not particularly expensive at 12x forward earnings, it does seem to be staying competitive in the cloud space, and sooner or later enterprises are going to start buying hardware again.
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