Oracle’s Net Income Falls Short of Forecasts

Oracle Corp. said fiscal first-quarter profit rose 2% as new license sales grew at the slowest pace in more than a year, missing the company’s June forecast.

Net income in the period ended Aug. 31 rose to $519 million, or 10 cents a share, from $509 million, or 10 cents, a year earlier, Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle said. Sales rose 25% to $2.77 billion and missed analysts’ estimates.

New-license revenue rose 12%, short of Oracle’s prediction of as much as 25%. Oracle has spent $18 billion buying companies including PeopleSoft Inc. and Retek Inc. to spur sales.

Without costs related to the acquisitions, profit would have been 14 cents, meeting the 14-cent average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

From Bloomberg News

* Palm Inc., maker of the Treo smart phone, said fiscal first-quarter profit fell 7.2% to $18.2 million as costs including research and development rose. Net income in the period ended Sept. 2 fell to 35 cents a share from $19.6 million, or 38 cents, a year earlier, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said. Sales rose 25% to $342.2 million.

* PalmSource Inc., the Sunnyvale, Calif., maker of software for hand-held computers and mobile phones, posted a wider first-quarter loss as sales declined. The loss grew to $1.98 million, or 12 cents a share, from $165,000, or 1 cent, a year earlier. Sales fell 13% to $15.8 million, but exceeded analysts’ expectations of $14.7 million.