Why Is Oracle Credit Suisse's Top Mega-Cap Pick?

Credit Suisse's Philip Winslow maintained an Outperform rating for Oracle Corporation ORCL, with a price target of $50. The analyst rated Oracle as the Top Pick “among the mega-cap stocks in our coverage.”

Analyst Philip Winslow believes that the company is well positioned to benefit during the back half of FY16 and into FY17 from:

1. The adoption of Oracle Database 12c in the In-Memory Option
2. Oracle's cloud applications and PaaS increasing traction and boosting revenue growth

“Oracle often adds new features to its database as extra-cost add-on options, and the uptake of these incremental features typically occurs when customers upgrade from the prior releases. Although customers have historically been slow to adopt other add-on options, we expect an accelerated adoption cycle for the In-Memory Option than past add-ons as customers migrate to 12c R2,” Winslow wrote.

This will drive incremental license revenue growth for Oracle during the latter part of FY16 and through FY17, which would offset a part of the negative near-term impact on reported license revenue from the increased uptake of Oracle Cloud's Database-as-a-Service offering, the analyst mentioned.