Rumors swirled earlier in the day about the possible departure of a key sales executive, Keith Block, but that topic didn't arise during the conference call. The Wall Street Journal that Block has in fact left Oracle.

"The market was starting to speculate on that news and was driving the [stock] price down," said Gartner analyst Bill Hostmann. "For the shareholders they wanted to get it out there as quickly as possible. There was no reason to wait until Thursday."