Oracle is targeting pro-forma earnings per share of between $0.76 and $0.80 for fiscal 2006, following growth of between 22% and 28%, the company said. That exceeds Wall Street analysts’ expectations of EPS of $0.70.
For fiscal 2005, which expires in the middle of June, Oracle expects pro-forma earnings of $0.62, growing 24% – in line with analysts’ expectations.
Oracle announced the change in projected earnings ahead of its analyst day yesterday, where executives lead by chief executive Larry Ellison outlined plans for the New Year following last year’s successful $10.3bn purchase of enterprise applications rival, PeopleSoft.
Oracle’s event coincided with SAP AG’s fourth quarter and annual results [see separate story]. Ellison recently made it clear he viewed PeopleSoft as important in Oracle’s battle to compete for dominance of the ERP market against SAP.
Ellison used yesterday’s event to resurrect the specter of a BEA Systems Inc purchase. According to documents filed with a US court during Oracle’s PeopleSoft campaign last yaer, Oracle has considered making a purchase of BEA.
Depending on which industry analysts’ figures you subscribe to, BEA is currently the number-two vendor in the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server market, having been overtaken by IBM. Oracle has grown its own market share from a poor, single-digit also-ran slot during the last five years to a respectable third place position.
Ellison made it clear yesterday that he sees acquisition in application servers as one way to help Oracle’s drive to become market leader, and cement Oracle’s claimed status as the industry’s largest applications company. I’m quite convinced we’ll be number one, Ellison is reported to have said, although he did not mention BEA.
