Oracle Corp’s shares couldn’t wait for the market to open on Friday to respond to the third quarter figures by storming up almost $4.875 to $41 from $36.215. The jump was something of a sigh of relief, because the figures had been awaited with much nervousness, but the numbers came in in line with analysts’ optimistic expectations. Growth of business was fairly evenly distributed among all of Oracle’s geographic regions, despite a 4% negative currency translation during the quarter. Oracle Americas reported revenue up 40%, Asia Pacific saw a 32% growth and even Oracle’s troubled Europe, Middle East & Africa territory turned in an increase of 28%, despite the widespread trepidation about its continued weakness, which caused Oracle shares to lose more than $3 in one day’s trading earlier this month. The company said the 32% surge in profit from operations in the quarter was down to the strong sales of its database software – and that is ahead of Oracle: stung by criticism that Informix Software Inc tends to bring major new products in on time while Oracle is prone to bring them in late, it repeated that the beta version of Oracle8 has now been shipped to test sites in 28 countries, and that it is on schedule to ship the final version by June. Applications turned in a storming quarter, rising 61%. Third quarter services business, which include Support, Consulting and Education, rose 41% compared with last year.
