 |
Also: Facebook agrees to alter its service after a European inquiry, and holiday shopping and home sales increase economic confidence. Oracle shares fell as much as 14.6 percent in Wednesday trading after reporting Tuesday that its sales and income in ...
FILE - This Sept. 26, 2011 file photo, shows the Oracle SPARC SuperCluster at a... (Paul Sakuma)«1»Today: Oracle (ORCL) shares fall as much as 14.6 percent after an earnings report that failed to live up to expectations, and other tech firms and the Nasdaq index suffered, too. Also: Facebook agrees to alter its service after a European inquiry, and holiday shopping and home sales increase economic confidence.
Oracle's stock tumbled hard Wednesday after Tuesday's earnings report, and competitors, other tech companies and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index joined them for the downward ride.
Oracle shares fell as much as 14.6 percent in Wednesday trading after reporting Tuesday that its sales and income in the quarter that ended Nov. 30 didn't live up to projections put forth by the Redwood City software company or outside analysts. The company's forecast for the current quarter also came in under analysts' projections.
Oracle is considered a bellwether for the technology industry, as its differing fiscal year leads to earlier reports than other companies and its core business of selling database programs and other commercial software, along with high-end computer hardware, shows the willingness of other companies to spend. On that front, Oracle's weak 2 percent growth in new software licenses seemed to signal tough times across the industry.
"(Oracle's performance) is indicative of some pullback in general enterprise IT spending," Josh Olson, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co., told Bloomberg News.
The Nasdaq fell as much as 2.2 percent, even as the two other major indexes held relatively steady with small gains and losses. Oracle's two biggest rivals, IBM and SAP, fell 3.1 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively; smaller competitors fared poorly as well, with San Francisco-based Salesforce.com falling 5.1 percent, and Palo Alto-based Tibco Software declining 6.6 percent. Even Wall Street newcomer Jive Software, the Palo Alto social-networking enterprise software company that has been gaining steadily since its IPO last week, fell 6.3 percent.
Even companies that don't directly compete with Oracle, but offer services to companies for which they're likely paid out of the same budget, suffered. Palo Alto-based enterprise virtualization company VMware declined 9.9 percent, and open-source firm Red Hat dropped 4.9 percent.
After an extensive investigation into Facebook's privacy settings and other aspects of the offerings from the world's most popular social network, European officials have requested changes, and the Menlo Park company has agreed.
Facebook agreed to more clearly notify European users that its 'Tag Suggest' facial recognition service was enabled when they upload photos, rework its policies of retaining and deleting private data and reduce the amount of information collected about people who are not logged into Facebook, the Associated Press reported.
The changes would also take effect in the United States, with a couple of exceptions, including the enhanced notification in its facial-recognition service for tagging uploaded pictures, which is expected to be EU-only.
"Facebook has committed to either implement, or to consider, other 'best practice' improvements recommended by the data protection commissioner," the company said following the announcement of the report. "Meeting these commitments will require intense work over the next six months."Gifts for the economy:
While only one of the three major stock indexes is on track to increase for the year, other economic indicators are showing strength as we near the end of 2011.
The holiday shopping season is shaping up to be bigger than last year, with sales since the end of November rising 2.5 percent year-over-year, according to ShopperTrak. And online sales have exploded, with a 15 percent increase so far this year, according to comScore. And all of that is before the rush of the last few days before Christmas.
"Despite all the nervousness about the economy, it will be a decent Christmas," Arnold Aronson, managing director of retail strategies at consulting firm Kurt Salmon, told AP.
And existing home sales rose 4 percent last month, according to the National Association of Realtors; along with Tuesday's report showing increased building, the sector of the economy most thoroughly destroyed by the Great Recession seems to be starting a comeback.
Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.
Shoppers turning to e-gift cards during the holidays as more retailers offer themIconic Yahoo billboard taken downFacebook agrees to change policies after European auditOracle stock nose-dives after earnings report falls short of projectionsSan Jose to Tokyo flights to board soonMicrosoft says 2012 CES tech show will be its lastBiz buzz: Mission West considers putting itself up for saleTech ticker: