Despite posting a respectable 6% increase in net profits for the first quarter to $2.3bn, Oracle's share price tumbled on less cloud business being generated.
In addition, there was overall group sales growth of only 1% to $9.2bn, which was also behind market expectations. A lack of cloud visibility was frustrating for Oracle watchers with a reporting structure that merges Cloud Services and Licence Support as one, and Cloud and On-Premise licence sales under another segment.
This reporting structure was adopted at the end of the last financial year, but the lack of a clear cloud and on-premise divide in the figures is different from some of its rivals in the business software space.
The figures available clearly indicate a drop in cloud sales for the quarter. Cloud Services and Licence Support sales only grew 3% year-on-year. In the fourth quarter last year, this segment saw year-on-year 10% growth. Cloud and On-Premise licence revenue declined 3% this time.
In the first quarter last year, total reported cloud revenue rose 51% in a year, covering SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Oracle is facing an ongoing class action lawsuit relating to allegations over its cloud sales.
