Oracle reports flat growth as cloud segment booms

As a late-comer to the increasingly profitable cloud segment, Oracle has yet to make more than a minor dent, and this quarter appears to be another demonstration of mediocrity.

The company stopped reporting its cloud business revenues as a standalone during last year, so it is difficult to give a complete picture, though total revenues tell a part of the story. Total Revenues were $9.6 billion, down 1% year-on-year, though once constant currencies are applied the boost was 3%. Combined with a outlook which promises a range of 0% growth to negative 2% (1% to 3% growth in constant currency), its not necessarily the prettiest of pictures.

This is not to say Oracle is in a terrible position, the company is still profitable, and the growth prospects of the cloud segment encourage optimism, but it is not capturing the fortunes of its competitors.

Despite the heritage and continued influence of this business, perhaps we should not be surprised Oracle is not tearing up trees today. Back in 2008, CTO and founder Larry Ellison described the technology industry as the only segment “which is more fashion driven than women’s fashion”, suggesting cloud was nothing more than a passing fad.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but after this condemning statement about the embryonic cloud industry you can see why Oracle is reporting average numbers while others are hoovering up the cloud cash. Despite this late start, in 2016 Oracle felt it had caught up, with Ellison declaring “Amazon’s lead is over” during an earnings call.

While executives can make all the claims they like, reeling off various customer wins and pointing towards heritage in the technology industry, the numbers speak for themselves. Oracle is not profiting from the cloud bonanza in the same way competitors are.

Alongside the effectively flat revenue growth, Non-GAAP net income in Q3 was down 8% to $3.2 billion, while the merged cloud revenues and license support unit grew, it was only by roughly 1.1%. When you consider AWS, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Alibaba are all quoted numbers which are notably higher than this, it does paint a relatively gloomy picture.

Recent data from Synergy suggests revenues for 2018 passed the $250 billion across seven key cloud services and infrastructure market segments, operator and vendor revenues, representing a 32% increase year-on-year. Oracle will of course not be applicable for all of these segments however the overarching cloud trends are incredibly positive.

That said, perhaps the most damning piece of evidence is these numbers met analyst expectations. The team should be applauded for this fact however, it does suggest the analyst community no-longer consider Oracle a front-runner in the technology world. If the estimates are mediocre when the ingredients for success are so abundant, it doesn’t make for the most positive perception of one of yesteryears heavyweights.