Market briefing --- Matt (slow)
Oracle --- Bob (fast)
NYSE --- Deb (fast)
welcome to “world financial report.” i am matt nesto. oracle did it, announcing its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings as expected about an hour ago after the close. bob bowden has a follow-up on the story and has the oracle numbers, better than expected, right, bob?
>> that’s right, thank you, mr. nesto. the monumental fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report came for oracle, numbers were announced and shares responded in extended-hours trading with move nowhere. the headline number, oracle earning 19 cents last quarter compared to 16 cents a share from the same period a year ago and a penny a share better than the consensus analysts’ estimates of 18 cents. on revenue, oracle sold $3.08 billion worth of software and service last quarter, an increase of 9% from last year at $3.0 eight billion, revenue slightly exceeding estimates to the tune of 1.33%. one of the metrics is the so-called software licensing revenues, as oracle reported new software licenses revenue at 1.13 billion, compared to the number predicted by analyst bellini at 1.32, meaning this number was slightly behind what at least one analyst expected for software licensing. larry ellison attributed the licensing growth to the grid technology product, allowing clusters to work together as a single machine, and he said, “since introducing grid technology, our database new license sales have been growing at a rate of 15%.” one thing i wanted to bring you a couple of comments from the chairman, jeff henley, chairman of oracle, on the conference call, crossing the bloomberg professional service, saying mr. henley seeing pricing pressure in applications and that the applications market is fiercely competive and oracle is looking at multi-billion dollar acquisitions, still looking at other large acquisitions in addition to the possible peoplesoft acquisition, according to mr. henley. mr. henley, the oracle chairman, says that head count is up in the applications and database units of the company. checking oracle shares at this hour, now we see a move to the downside of 22 cents. oracle now at $11.49 a share. checking other software stocks to see if there is a reaction. microsoft shares, this is -- these movements are since the close of trading, a little more than an hour ago. microsoft shares down seven cents and right now peoplesoft and computer associates shares unchanged. matt nesto, back to you.
>> interesting, what a swing in a couple of minutes, the shares of oracle.
>> want to point out as we went on the air, we were talking about it before the show, no reaction. just now, perhaps because of the conference call, shares are trading down. >> absolutely. thank you very much. painting you a picture of the oracle story returning to the i.p.o. in 1986, this chart showing you that. the split of the cost basis is a wooden nickel at the original offer. you can see the exponential increase from the offering in 1986 to the high water mark coming in 2000, oppo. and i’ve circled that area there so we’ve better tighten up on that. that’s the last three years in a $10 to $15-trading range for the vast majority of that time, the stock bouncing between those prices and the decline year to date, the stock down 12% year to date and that will trigger a couple of other technical looks at the stock. this is a two-year chart. what’s interesting here as you can see, there was a series of increasingly higher high points. and an uptrend here, the year-to-date downtrend. what gets interesting is if you add―this is funky, so bear% with me, two standard deviation trend line. from the previous high point to here, that looks like a down trend to me, but when you work the math, you can see the stock is in an uptrend and worth noticing here, the bounce off the bottom of the low line. the stock technically, if you look at it from that standpoint, over the past 16 months or so, is indeed still in an uptrend.% -that said, microsoft is planning to sell its own anti-virus software, putting it in competition with symantec in the nearly $3 billion market for those products. an executive at microsoft says the program will likely be sold as a subscription system. microsoft bought assets of a romanian securities software maker last year and analysts say its $55 billion in cash would let it buy the expertise it lacks in anti-virus software or pretty much anything else it desired. currently semantec - symantec dominates the anti-virus software and network associates is ranked number two. few customers keep softwares updated and worms such as blaster and beagle crash computers. the closing numbers today, stocks were higher .4% for the dow, s&p 500 up .6% and the nasdaq, the best of the three, 1.3% higher. the volume, again, wanting to make its way in the headlines. less than average. we’re going on over three weeks there. the nasdaq down below―nearly% two-billion-share, the average% on the nasdaq waning as we% speak. and then the broader indexes here today also positive, particularly small cap shares up 2%. bonds on the rise here today. had to do with inflation data coming out. the core inflation rate, if you back out food and energy costs, the core inflation rate up 2%, .2% in may. and 1. 7% year on year, down from the previous month when core inflation hit a 15-month high of 1.8%.% it seems minuscule, but economists had been forecasting it could be worse and that would have given the fed reason to raise rates& -- and that’s why we saw the biggest gain in the bond today. at the same time, that hurt the dollar. virtually no change where their where we close in new york but the direction in new york for the dollar was down, yen, euro and pound higher against the greene back. stocks spent on the day on the plus side after the c.p.i. report but closed down 50 points off of the high for the dow. deborah kostroun has a wrap.
>> that’s right. at one point, the dow was up 93 points and closing up 45. the dow spent a good part of the day at 10, 400, a positive area. and disappointing that the nasdaq did not close above 2000. stocks closed higher and disappointing we weren’t on the best levels of the day. but inflation concerns eased after the c.p.i. report. greenspan adding to that, saying inflation is not a serious concern right now. so that also really helps out all this concern about inflation and really reversed the trend from yesterday as yesterday the concern was about inflation ahead of the report and treasuries with their biggest gains since january 2001. the yields on the 10-year going way down today after being about 4 .87%, about 4.68% in today’s session and gold stocks among the best performers, especially with the rise in treasuries, gold stocks perform willing today. in addition to gold stocks performing well, looking at the other stocks, nucor hitting a two-year high today. this is the biggest maker of steel using recycled metal, raising their profit forecasts for the second time this year. oil services also performing well. even though crude oil taking a hit. but tomorrow we’ll look at crude oil and the inventory reports we do each week as they are critical this time of year.
>> heads on the homebuilder lennar crossing the wire right now. second-quarter earnings per share $1.22. the thomson estimate was $1.16, which is better than expected. the revenue at $2.3 billion, as the estimate i don’t have handy but the stock is trading higher.
