Oracle Corp has made a minor comeback with its third-quarter numbers, posting net income that rose 27% to $215.1m, or $0.22 per share, which beat the First Call consensus by $0.03. Overall revenue rose 27.4% to $1.75bn. Worldwide license and other revenue rose 14% year-over-year and the company points to 34% growth in server business revenues in the Americas region as the main reason. That comes as a relief to chief executive Larry Ellison who in January predicted a 25% increase in his efforts to quell fears about the slow death of database revenues. Meanwhile, worldwide service revenues, the largest part of the company’s business, rose 40.8% from last year’s quarter to $974.2m. The applications business saw 29.6% growth to $139.7m, still far short of the 50% that Ellison had hoped for. Geographically, the Americas reported a 43% growth rate, while Europe grew 21%. Asia- Pacific was still a sore spot, with revenues in the region down 12%. The company says it still believes the situation in Asia Pacific will continue to hit its results for some time. Oracle says without the impact of currency exchange, worldwide revenue growth would have been 33%. Nine-month net income fell 11% to $410.9m on revenue up 26.6% at $4.73bn. Earnings per share fell 10.9% to $0.41 for the nine months. The good news was especially welcome after last quarter’s disappointing results when the company missed expectations by $0.04 and its shares fell 29% the next day.
