By Juby Babu
(Reuters) -Oracle beat estimates for quarterly results and on Monday forecast second-quarter revenue growth above estimates, boosted by growing demand for its cloud offerings, sending its shares up more than 9% in trading after the bell.
The Texas-based company’s move into the cloud computing market is showing promising results and it is starting to close the gap with market leaders Microsoft (NASDAQ:) and Amazon (NASDAQ:) Web Services.
Oracle (NYSE:) Cloud Infrastructure remains strong and continued demand for cloud computing is expected, especially in AI applications.
“Oracle reported a good quarter with 8% constant currency growth and slightly better than expected earnings. The company continues to benefit from a strong cloud business and is investing further in that business,” said Gil Luria, senior software analyst at DA Davidson.
The company also announced a partnership with AWS, Oracle Database@AWS, which gives customers access to Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Exadata Database Service within AWS and to the general availability of Oracle Database@Google Cloud.
With the partnership, Oracle “expands its deep database capabilities across Microsoft Azure, Google (NASDAQ:) Cloud and AWS by making it easier for customers to connect data across clouds and applications – and drive new revenue opportunities,” said Rebecca Wettemann, CEO of research agency Valoir.
Oracle’s cloud services revenue rose 21% to $5.6 billion in the first quarter.
Revenue for the quarter ended Aug. 31 was $13.31 billion, compared to analyst estimates of $13.23 billion, according to LSEG data.
Excluding items, the company earned $1.39 per share, above estimates of $1.32 per share.
Residual performance obligations (RPO), the most popular measure of booked revenue, rose 53% to $99 billion in the quarter.
For the second quarter, Oracle expects revenue to grow between 8% and 10%, with the midpoint above analyst estimates of 8.72%.
