Oracle Corp. shares declined in the extended session Thursday after the enterprise software company forecast its outlook, after the company topped Wall Street estimates again amid a wave of stock buybacks.
Oracle shares ORCL, -0.02% , which had bounced up and down about 1% after hours before the outlook was announced, were last down 3%, following a less than 0.1% decline to close the regular session at $53.05, a penny shy of the stock’s all-time closing high. Over the past 12 months, Oracle shares are up 1.4%, compared with a 2.2% gain in the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.09% and a 1.8% rise in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.16% .
On the conference call, Co-Chief Executive Safra Catz said she expects a 3-cents-a-share currency headwind, resulting in expected adjusted earnings of $1.05 to $1.09 a share, on revenue that’s from 2% lower to flat, or $11.03 billion to $11.26 billion.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect fourth-quarter earnings of $1.05 a share on revenue of $11.14 billion.
Oracle reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $2.75 billion, or 76 cents a share, compared with a loss of $4.05 billion, or 98 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings were 87 cents a share, compared with 83 cents a share in the year-ago quarter, largely because of share repurchases: At the end of the third quarter, the company had 3.62 billion shares outstanding, compared with 4.12 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Oracle spent roughly $10 billion buying back shares for the third consecutive quarter, reporting repurchases of $29.89 billion in the past nine months. In the same nine-month period last year, Oracle spent less than $7 billion on share repurchases.
Previously: Oracle bought an earnings beat with share repurchases
Of the 33 analysts surveyed by FactSet, Oracle on average was expected to post adjusted earnings of 84 cents a share. Oracle had forecast 83 cents to 85 cents a share.
Revenue declined to $9.61 billion from $9.68 billion in the year-ago quarter. Wall Street expected revenue of $9.59 billion, according to 29 analysts polled by FactSet.
Oracle reported cloud services and license support revenues were $6.66 billion, while analysts expected $6.64 billion. Cloud license and on-premise license revenue came in at $1.25 billion, while analysts expected $1.24 billion.
