![Oracle reports quarterly earnings](https://static.seekingalpha.com/cdn/s3/uploads/getty_images/450874642/image_450874642.jpg?io=getty-c-w750)
Justin Sullivan
Shares of Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) on Monday withdrew more than 5% in extended trading, after the company’s FQ1 2024 report showed a slowdown in cloud revenue, while revenue exceeded expectations.
ORCL stock fell 5.3% to $120.05 after business hours.
For the three months ending in August As of August 31, 2023, the Austin, Texas-based company earned $1.19 per share on revenue of $12.45 billion. Analysts had expected $1.15 per share on revenue of $12.47 billion.
Quarterly Oracle cloud revenue (ORCL) was $4.6 billion, up 29% year-over-year at constant exchange rates and significantly lower than the 55% year-over-year growth in FQ4 2023.
Breaking down revenue performance, revenue at ORCL’s cloud services and license support unit (the largest) rose 12% year-over-year to $9.55 billion. That offset an 11% year-over-year decline in constant currency in the cloud license and on-premise license unit. Other units: hardware $714 million (-8% y/y), services $1.38 billion (+1% y/y).
Shares of Oracle (ORCL) had hit an all-time high in the days following its FQ4 2023 results in June, as Wall Street had cheered the company’s cloud growth. Analysts have also praised the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), such as generative language models, in terms of cloud services.
Oracle (ORCL) co-founder and current Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison continued to emphasize the importance of generative AI in the latest quarterly report, saying it could even be the “most important new computing technology ever.”
“As of today, AI development companies have signed contracts to purchase more than $4 billion of capacity in Oracle’s Gen2 Cloud, double what we booked at the end of the fourth quarter,” Ellison said in a statement.
Oracle (ORCL) also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.40 per share.