Wall Street Beat: As earnings season begins, tech looks stable

21.09.2012
With companies including Oracle, Tibco and Adobe issuing quarterly financial statements this week, earnings season is under way and despite mixed reports on the economy, confidence in tech appears to be stable.

Stocks on the Nasdaq Computer index rose in aggregate by Friday, closing out the week at 1724.13, about 12 points higher than last week's close As has been the case for most of the year, software remains a bright spot.

Oracle, which traditionally kicks off the earnings season for tech, on Thursday said that 5 percent year over year for the three-month period ending Aug. 31. This helped the company's profit rise by 11 percent to US$2 billion. Overall sales, however, dropped 2 percent to $8.2 billion. Hardware sales were a culprit, declining by 24 percent to $779 million in the quarter.

Canaccord Genuity technology analyst Richard Davis called Oracle's performance "a solid but unexceptional quarter." Oracle shares, meanwhile, ticked up by $0.21 to close at $32.41 Friday.

Middleware vendor Tibco on Thursday reported a solid quarter, with revenue for the three months ending September totaling $255 million and net income rising to $26.1 million. This compares to revenue of $229 million and net income of $23.5 million for the year-earlier period. Tibco shares Friday rose by $0.47 to close at $30.33.

Tibco sales are being fueled to a large degree by efforts on the part of enterprises to do real-time analysis of "big data," not only from customer data generated via mobile devices but also information transmitted via machines such as point-of-sale devices, said Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadivé in an interview.