Oracle Corp. (ORCL)

This company is going to get eaten by open source alternatives. Today's earnings miss is not entirely due to weakness in corporate IT spending -- rather, I think we are seeing the beginning of the end for Oracle.

Now that MySQL and PostgreSQL are fully backed by Sun and IBM respectively, the last shoe has dropped for Oracle's database business.

In the meantime, their middleware products are under pressure on three fronts -- Microsoft's .NET is a superior alternative for those who don't mind vendor lock-in, Sun's J2EE takes the other side of the big-enterprise market, and ad-hoc open source frameworks are sneaking in everywhere else.

Goodbye Oracle. You will not be missed.

Far and away the leader in the high-growth Linux database market (80% share) and growing rapdily in applications. Stock is already priced as if all the recent acquisitions are doomed to failure.

This company is one of 62 listed on the BetterInvesting Growth Screen in January 2008. It met 4 criteria: it is projected by Value Line to double earnings in the next five years, has actually doubled earnings in the past 5 years, is selling at price-earnings multiples (P/E’s) that are 110 percent or less of Value Line’s projected earnings growth rate and has a safety rating of average or better. It was listed in the March 2008 BetterInvesting magazine.

Acquisitions are working. Oracle bought itself sales opportunity within the acquired companies' customer base. It is more than just an increase in revenue due to the acquisitions. Customer who were hesitant to buy certain company's products fearing the longevity of the company are now willing to do so since Oracle is a financially strong companies. These doubts are no longer warranted. While this is happening, Oracle is targeting, marketing, and selling its products to these same customers.

Earnings are increasing, top notch products, buying competitors, all of this will propel sales & earnings going forward

Analyst downgrade? Are you joking? Software sales have been in-line quarter after quarter. Why would they miss now? Bad downgrade. Buy 50% more of your position and watch as the analyst upgrades the stock in the next 2-3 months.

Oracle has been fairly flat since 2000. It grow about 18% in 2006, and in 2007 had large growth in 3rd Qtr. Companies upgrade to new Versions about every 5 to 6 yrs. It looks like Oracle is starting to incease in value again. Don't expect growth and stock splits like in the 90's, but the stock may be $24 to $25 shr by end of year, and will probably increase in value about 15% next yr.

It's too bad I couldn't pick Oracle back in January when it was horrendously undervalued because no one believed the PeopleSoft and Siebel acquisitions would work out. Thankfully it's still moderately undervalued and has tremendous potential to grow sales and increase margins.

Oracle's goal is to be the number one or two information service provider in as many industries as possible, so you will continue to see little acquistions like i-flex, G-Log, ProfitLogic and Retek. Think GE but with one easy to understand business model.

Tip: new license sales get a lot of press, but those are low margin and are very lumpy. The more important barometer of Oracle's success quarter to quarter is license renewal rates. So far, it seems that Siebel and PeopleSoft customers are locked in.

Giant in it's field. Along with strategic partnerships, has positioned itself to profit extensively from the forthcoming RFID explosion. I actually called this one 6 months (and $6 PPS) ago. It wasn't a quick profit play (and still really isn't), but steady growth makes this a longer term winner.

There is no growth left in this pig, ever. And they're too large to get bought out. Oink, oink.

Leader in Database software and done well on the mergers of resent past.

Oracle has their hands on everything in the software and service business. They have grown almost 30% over the last 12 months and will continue to grow in the future. They currently only control 16% of the potential in this industry will gain another 20% totalling 36% of this market cap over the next 5 years. Thats 36 million dollars in revenue epectations over the next 5 years.

Tech stocks are the place to buy right now .. from Sept to Dec is the hot time for these stocks. Oracle's Q4 2006 revenues were up 25% compared to prior year. Liscense sales have grown 83% (including acquisitions for Q1 07).

The Darth Vader of the software industry. Sure they are powerful, but you won't be hooking up with any chicks with strange hair-dos admiring this company. My logical take is that no SW people who have truly great minds would want to seriously work for Oracle.

The tide is turning. They have proven they can manage the acquisitions without much of a fall out on the customers front. Big question is, can they truely integrate all the acquired companies OR will it remain a portfolio companies of some sort a.k.a CA. Oracle has a decent chance of retaining bulk of the acquired customers atleast for next couple of years

ACQUISITION AND NEW PRODUCTS

If most of the people at NASDAQ say it's going to go up, it's probably going to go up (consensus is $25 within one year.)

I am just going to call an upswing with this one, and soon.

With consolidation in the ERP industry, Oracle will continue to grow through acquisitions, albeit slowly, for the near term.