Oracle Corp rode a worldwide wave of growth to surpass fourth quarter financial expectations and reach 50% revenue growth, its highest in six years according to analyst Morgan Stanley & Co. That figure excludes the effects of six percentage points of negative currency conversion and resulted in fourth quarter revenues at $1.46bn and year-end revenues up 42% at $4.2bn (CI No 2939). The Redwood Shores, California-based company faired best in the Americas, with 59% growth, followed by Asia Pacific, with 47%; then Europe with 35% for the fourth quarter. Server products sales increased 49%, applications kit shot up 73% and tools rose 13%, the analyst said. For the full year, large deals over $500,000 accounted for 30% of revenues, up 1% from last year. Oracle remains Morgan Stanley’s only strong buy in the enterprise software arena. What’s behind Oracle’s rising figures? The analyst attributes growth to the company’s thriving database business and its one-stop shopping strategy for tools, database, applications, middleware and consulting. Another growth factor – Oracle represents 80% of SAP’s new sales, despite the fact that R/3 has been ported to Microsoft SQL Server and Informix. Oracle had $810m in cash at the end of the quarter, up from $710m last quarter. Capitalized software was down year over year by $2m. Expect a slow first quarter for Oracle, warned Morgan Stanley, as the company’s sales force undergoes its annual territory adjustments and retraining exercises.
