Oracle boasts quarterly rise in earnings

Oracle has topped its own predictions with second quarter earnings up by 15 per cent.

It announced its second quarter results for the fiscal year 2010 yesterday, which also showed revenues rising by four per cent to $5.9 billion (3.6 billion) and net income up by 12 per cent to $1.5 billion.

"We delivered results which were substantially better than we expected," said Jeff Epstein, chief financial officer for Oracle, in a statement.

"Our solid top line growth, coupled with disciplined expense management, was key in generating $8.4 billion of free cash flow over the last twelve months."

The company also took the earnings call as an opportunity to reinstate some positivity around its proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Oracle president, Safra Catz, said in a statement: "We expect the European Commission to unconditionally clear the acquisition of Sun in January."

"I want to thank all of our customers for the overwhelming support they have given us during this process."

The commission is set to announce the results of its inquiry into whether it is fair competition for Oracle to own both is database and Sun's MySQL on 19 January 2010.

This will be one of the last acts by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes before she changes roles on 26 January to become the Digital Agenda Commissioner.