Oracle shares fell more than 4% in pre-market trading,as CEO expects to push more money to cloud efforts

Oracle shares fell more than 4% in pre-market trading.

OracleORCL,-1.19%on Tuesday reported fourth-quarter earnings of $4.03 billion, or $1.37 a share, on sales of $11.23 billion, up from $10.44 billion a year ago. After adjusting for stock-based compensation and other effects, Oracle reported earnings of $1.54 a share, up from $1.20 a share last year. Analysts on average expected adjusted earnings of $1.31 a share on revenue of $11.02 billion.

For the full fiscal year, Oracle totaled $40.48 billion in sales, up 3.6% from its previous fiscal year. Oracle revenue had declined 1.1% and 0.8% in the past two years, respectively, and sales have declined four times in the past six years overall. The growth rate for the 2021 fiscal year is the second-best for Oracle since the end of the 2012 fiscal year.

Earnings also increased for the full year, though much of the gains in earnings per share are a result of massive share repurchases. Oracle repurchased $20.9 billion in stock as the COVID-19 pandemic raged in the past 12 months and has now spent more than $76 billion in the past three fiscal years purchasing its own stock.

For the new fiscal year, Chief Executive Safra Catz predicted that revenue growth will continue but said Oracle will begin funneling more cash into its cloud business. The software provider expects to push $4 billion into capital expenditures to increase its competition with Amazon.com Inc. ,Microsoft Corp. and others.