Brokerages cheer Oracle's strong Q3 profit view
The company logo is shown at the headquarters of Oracle Corporation in Redwood City, California February 2, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith
(Reuters) - At least three brokerages raised their target prices on Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) on Friday, a day after the business software maker forecast third-quarter profit to be above Wall Street estimates.
Oracle is the best-positioned large-cap software stock heading into fiscal 2011 as its Exadata family of integrated software and hardware systems continues to accelerate, Evercore Partners said, raising its target price on the company's shares by $2 to $36.
On Thursday the world's No. 3 software maker reported a $2 billion pipeline of sales of its Exadata computers, up from $1.5 billion three months ago.
"Oracle's solid (second) quarter and meaningful upward revisions to estimates suggest that the company continues to benefit from a macro economic recovery, most notably in the U.S.," Susquehanna Financial said.
The brokerage, which raised its target price on Oracle's shares to $33 from $30, said the company's second-quarter gross margins were solid across software, hardware products, and services/subscriptions.
BofA-Merrill Lynch raised its target price on the stock to $36 from $34 and said only a fraction of Exadata customers have bought new licenses and they may buy additional licenses in future quarters.
Oracle recently released the Exadata X2-8 database appliance and has lately been vocal about its focus on the hardware side of the enterprise data center.
Oracle shares traded at $32.13, up 2 percent, on Friday morning on Nasdaq. (Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)
Credit: Reuters (www.reuters.com)
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