Oracle posted a disappointing fourth quarter due to stronger US dollar and a slowdown in the sales of new software licences.
Revenues declined 5% to $10.7bn in Q4, from $11.32bn reported in the same period last year. The company said total revenue would have been increased 3% without the strengthening of the US dollar.
Net income declined to $2.8bn, or $0.62 per share, compared to $3.6bn in last year’s corresponding quarter.
Oracle’s total software and cloud revenues for Q4 declined 6% year-over-year to $8.4bn. Cloud software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service surged 29% to $416m.
Hardware systems revenues dropped 4% to $1.4bn and services revenues saw a 4% decline to $899m.
For the existing fiscal quarter, Oracle estimates earnings of between 56 cents to 59 cents a share in constant currency, with revenue growth of 5% to 8%.
Oracle CEO Mark Hurd said: "Coming into Q4, we forecast selling $300 million of new SaaS and PaaS annual recurring revenue.
"We dramatically beat that forecast by selling a cloud industry all-time-record amount of $426 million of new SaaS and PaaS business. That is a year-over-year bookings growth rate of over 200%.
The company expects to book between $1.5bn and $2bn of new SaaS and PaaS business this fiscal year.
Earlier this year, Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd stated that the company plans to move 95% of its products to the cloud by October.
Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz said:"We sold an astonishing $426 million of new SaaS and PaaS annually recurring cloud subscription revenue in Q4.
"We expect our rapidly increasing cloud sales to quickly translate into significantly more revenue and profits for Oracle Corporation. For example, SaaS and PaaS revenues grew at a 34% constant currency rate in our just completed Q4, but we expect that revenue growth rate to jump to around 60% in constant currency this new fiscal year."
Oracle executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said: "We expect to book between $1.5 and $2 billion of new SaaS and PaaS business this fiscal year.
"That means Oracle would sell more new SaaS and PaaS business than salesforce.com plans to sell in their current fiscal year – the only remaining question is how much more.
"Oracle’s planned SaaS and PaaS revenue growth rate is around 60% in constant currency; salesforce.com has a planned growth rate of around 20%. When you contrast those growth rates it becomes clear that Oracle is on its way to becoming the world’s largest enterprise cloud company."
