Software giant Oracle today reported fourth-quarter revenues were up 25pc to US$4.9bn. For the full fiscal year 2006, the company revealed that revenues were up 22pc to US$14.4bn, yielding a profit of US$3.4bn.
The company’s chief financial officer Safra Catz said that the company’s earnings per share is now 56pc. “That is well above our state goal of a 20pc average growth rate.”
The company’s president Charles Philips said that Oracle accelerated revenue growth across virtually all product lines and geographies. “Our applications business was especially strong with new licence sales growing 83pc including acquisitions and 56pc growth on an organic basis. At these very high growth rates, Oracle is rapidly increasing its share of the applications market.”
In the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, operations accounted for 33pc of Oracle’s worldwide revenues in 2006. New licence revenue grew 10pc compared with the previous year.
“This has been a good year for the region with growth across all lines of business,” commented Sergio Giacoletto, executive vice-president for EMEA.
Oracle founder and chief executive Larry Ellison revealed that the company’s database and middleware business grew 18pc in the fourth quarter and 9pc for the full year.
“We are growing faster than the overall database market because we are winning share from our competitors,” said Ellison. “The latest Gartner and IDC reports confirm that Oracle is increasing its lead over the number two database, IBM’s DB2, as more and more companies move their applications off of mainframes and onto Oracle database grids.”
By John Kennedy
