HEXUS.sharewatch: Oracle up on better than expected forecast

As we head into 2011, with the global economy still far from back to full health, it comes as a pleasant surprise whenever a company beats expectations with its quarterly earnings. Oracle was one such company last week, doubling the euphoria by issuing a better than expected forecast. Its share price benefitted as a consequence.

Total revenues were $8.6 billion, which was up 47 percent on the same quarter a year ago. Oracle forecast revenue of $8.5 and $8.8 billion for the next quarter, with analysts expecting more like $8.4 billion.

Oracle also took the opportunity, when announcing its results, to goad two of its biggest competitors. "Sun's new SPARC Supercluster computer shattered the world record for database transaction processing performance by running 3 times faster than IBM's fastest computer, and a stunning 7.5 times faster than HP's best ever database performance," said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. "Our new generation of Exadata, Exalogic and SPARC Supercluster computers deliver much better performance and much lower cost than the fastest machines from IBM and HP."

RIM, which isn't on our list, also beat expectations, leading to a generally optimistic vibe in markets at the end of last week. This didn't seem to extend to semiconductor companies, however, with ARM, Intel and NVIDIA all down for some reason.