Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) reported third quarter revenue that missed forecasts, reflecting disappointing sales from its cloud business.
Shares in the business software maker fell more than 8% to US$47.70 in US pre-market trade.
Playing catch-up in cloud market
Revenue rose by 6.1% to US$9.77bn in the quarter ended February 28, below analysts’ estimates of US$9.78bn.
Cloud business revenue jumped 31.7% to US$1.57bn but fell short of market expectations of US$1.59bn.
Oracle has been playing catch up with Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) in the fast-growing cloud market.
In an effort to improve its offering and compete against Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company launched its autonomous database cloud last year.
Oracle's traditional software licensing business, which remains its largest, delivered a 4% increase in revenue to US$6.42bn.
The company reported a net loss of US$4.02bn, or 98 US cents per share, in the quarter, compared to a profit of US$2.24bn, or 53 US cents per share, a year earlier.
The loss mostly reflected a US$6.9bn charge stemming from the US tax reforms.
Excluding items, earnings came to 83 US cents, above analysts’ estimates of 72 US cents.