Oracle (ORCL) Earnings Expected Strong, But Worries About Sun Deal Persist

Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL) is expected to report strong fiscal-second-quarter earnings on Thursday, but the outlook for the company is troubled by worries about whether the European Commission will approve Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is expected to report strong fiscal-second-quarter earnings on Thursday, but the outlook for the company is troubled by worries about whether the European Commission will approve its acquisition of rival Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA).

Analysts predict that Oracle will earn 36 cents per share, on $5.7 billion in revenue in the quarter. That's up from 34 cents per share on $5.6 billion for the same period in the previous year.

There are conflicting reports about whether the SUN acquisition will go forward. Sources close to the Commission said on Thursday that there was small chance for approval. But industry sources said just the contrary, that the concessions that Oracle has made regarding the MySQL database, and other open source software, were sufficient to satisfy the competition authorities in Brussels. It is anything but sure that the acquisition will be approved.

Apart from the troubles over Sun, analysts said that Oracle's database business was improving, and that the applications business was steady, if lackluster. Outlook for the next quarter is positive.