Jason Wood on Oracle's quarter

Jason presents a buy-sider's interpretation of Oracle's earnings announcement.

In many ways, Oracle's earnings release and conference call was atypical. Usually the company is fond of very detailed press releases and long conference calls chock full of details that were often meant, in my view, to obfuscate an inescapable fact; they were losing a lot of share to SAP.

Well this quarter, it was just the opposite. The textual component of the press release was only a bit more than one page, and the conference call was equally short as Larry, Safra and Chuck were in different locations so they limited Q&A to three analysts (the 'lucky three' being Jason Maynard -- CSFB, Peter Kuper -- Morgan Stanley, and Heather Bellini -- UBS).

Although Oracle appears to be backing up its rhetoric with results, the conference call was not without controversy. Larry Ellison took pains to attack SAP but made some bold proclamations that will be hard to back up with any evidence.