By Investing.com — Shares in Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) rose sharply in premarket US trading after the group reported better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter results, driven by strong demand for its cloud business.
The Texas-based cloud services company also said it signed a strategic partnership with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services that will allow customers to access Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Exadata Database Service within AWS.
The announcement comes after Oracle previously said it had struck new partnerships with Microsoft-backed ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Cloud in a bid to extend the reach of its artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Oracle, which has already spent heavily on chips from AI-darling Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), is banking on ratcheting up its cloud business to counter stiff competition from rivals like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s Azure unit and AWS.
Speaking in a post-earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said Oracle’s database is “thriving,” adding that the cloud agreements it has reached “with Microsoft, Google, and AWS make it easier for our customers to run their Oracle databases in the cloud.”
Analysts at Bernstein praised the partnerships, predicting that they will lead to a “nice cloud revenue lift as well as growth acceleration” for Oracle. They added that Oracle remains a “defensive name to own” during a time of broader economic uncertainty.
Oracle posted adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.39 on revenue of $13.3 billion in the three months ended on Aug. 31. Analysts polled by Investing.com had anticipated EPS of $1.33 on revenue of $13.23 billion.
Total remaining performance obligation, a key measure of booked revenue, came in at $99 billion, up 53% compared to the year-ago period. Analysts at Barclays also noted that the figure increased versus the previous quarter, saying this “usually does not happen” in a typically “smaller” first quarter.
For its second quarter, the company projected revenue growth of 8% to 10%, topping analysts’ estimates of 8.72% at the midpoint, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters.
Catz, meanwhile, reiterated Oracle’s previously-stated gaol of posting full-year total revenue growth in the “double digits” and total cloud infrastructure revenue expansion at a rate faster than the prior year.
Yasin Ebrahim contributed to this report.