Afternoon Movers: Oracle, Microsoft, Sprint

Below are three stocks that saw significant price movements in Tuesday's trading session. Oracle ORCL: Oracle traded up more than 3% Tuesday after surpassing analyst estimates for fourth quarter results. Oracle reported an 11% increase in GAAP quarterly earnings per share to $0.69. The company also saw increases in revenues, software licenses, and operating cash flow. In a report published early Tuesday, Oracle unveiled a new management application used for budgeting. Oracle called this application Primavera Inspire. When commenting on fourth-quarter results in a statement, President and CFO Safra Catz said, “Our record-breaking fourth quarter featured several all-time highs for Oracle: new software license sales of $4 billion, total software revenue of $8 billion, total revenue of $11 billion, and EPS of 82 cents.” Catz also said, “For the fiscal year, we also set all-time highs for operating margins of 46%, and operating cash flow of $13.7 billion.” Microsoft MSFT traded up around 3% in Tuesday's trading session after the company unveiled a tablet Monday evening. The tablet, called Microsoft Surface, could compete with Apple's AAPL iPad, which has been dominating the tablet market. Increasing popularity in tablets could have a positive impact on Microsoft's new tablets segment. Monday, Microsoft stated that the tablet should be available in the fall. Sprint S traded up more than 1% after announcing that it will expand its Ethernet service nationwide. Tuesday morning, Sprint announced that it would expand Ethernet service to 143 markets domestically and 38 countries globally by the end of 2012. Sprint provides services for businesses and wholesale partners. Mike Fitz, Vice President for solutions engineering and converged services, noted Tuesday, “Today's IT leaders increasingly need services that help them reduce costs, simplify networks and enable greater flexibility and scalability for the future.” He added, “Fitz Sprint Ethernet access answers the call, while providing the bandwidth, speed and assurance businesses demand for connectivity and business continuity – backed by our industry-leading service-level agreements and delivered over an all-IP network.”