Pacific Crest Concerned About Oracle's Financial Model Following Channel Checks

Pacific Crest Securities issued a report on Oracle Corporation ORCL highlighting the company after checks showed Oracle is gaining traction in the cloud.Currently, Pacific Crest rates Oracle as Sector-Weight while a price target is unavailable.

Brendan Barnicle and Trevor Upton, analysts at Pacific Crest Securities, wrote, "Oracle is seeing an acceleration in cloud, specifically in its SaaS and PaaS product line, which is likely to create uncertainty and inconsistency in its model during this transition. Therefore, despite a relatively attractive valuation, we see limited upside in ORCL from current levels."

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Increased Cloud Adoption

After talking with channel partners, Pacific Crest believes Oracle's customers are increasing cloud adoption due to improved usability and functionality. Furthermore, they see results from FQ2 as likely to be in line or to exceed expectations.

Pacific Crest also issued a survey which showed that CIOs who are Oracle's customers were more likely to increase their Information Technology budgets next year, another positive catalyst for the company. The analysts noted that while the weakening euro could hurt Oracle's profitability, of greater concern is the uncertainty of the company's financial model as customers transition services to the cloud.

Oracle closed Tuesday at $38.73, down 0.23 percent.