Oracle stock sinks despite earnings beat

“Our highly profitable multibillion-dollar Fusion and NetSuite Cloud ERP applications businesses grew revenue 33% and 21% respectively in Q2,” Oracle Chief Executive Safra Catz said in Thursday’s announcement. “These two strategic cloud-applications businesses are major contributors to Oracle’s increased operating earnings and consistent earnings per share growth.”

Oracle did not provide a third-quarter forecast with its earnings results, but Catz typically provides guidance in conference calls. Oracle plans to hold a conference call Thursday afternoon at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

Oracle stock sank more than 1% in after-hours trading immediately following the release of the results, after declining 0.5% to $59.43 in the regular session. Shares reached record highs in October, but took a dive after another software giant, SAP SE SAP, +0.02%, issued a warning about its sales and profit; the stock price had recovered to roughly the levels before SAP’s warning before Thursday afternoon’s report.

Overall, Oracle stock has increased 12.3% in 2020, as the S&P index SPX, -0.13% has gained 13.7%.