(Reuters) - Oracle Corp beat third-quarter revenue and profit estimates on Thursday, as the business software maker benefited from demand for its cloud services and licence support business.
Oracle has been aggressively pushing into cloud computing to make up for a late entry to the fast-growing business that helps companies move away from the traditional and costlier on-premise model. This includes a string of purchases such as NetSuite.
The company has successfully moved some of its existing customers such as U.S. wireless carrier AT&T Inc to its cloud services.
Revenue from Oracle's cloud services and licence support, its biggest, rose 1 percent to $6.66 billion.
The company posted net income of $2.75 billion (2 billion pounds), or 76 cents per share, in the three months ended Feb. 28, compared with a net loss of $4.05 billion, or 98 cents per share, a year earlier. It recorded a $6.9 billion charge in the year-ago quarter due to the U.S. tax reform.
Operating expense fell 2.3 percent to $6.22 billion.
Total revenue dipped 0.6 percent to $9.61 billion, but beat analysts' average estimate of $9.59 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Excluding items, the company earned 87 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 84 cents per share.
(Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Maju Samuel)
