Bulked-Up Oracle Gets Tested

SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle(ORCL), which has bulked up through a high-impact acquisition program, is riding a wave as a mature provider of integrated business software.

But maturity can often be the foe of spectacular stock growth.

When the software database giant reports first-quarter financial results later Thursday, most Street expectations call for the company to meet expectations in what is a seasonally weak quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial are expecting earnings per share, excluding items, of 21 cents on revenue of $4.34 billion.

For many investors, the attraction of business clients to Oracle's multilayered software "stack" is a reason to keep the faith.

"We continue to believe that Oracle's acquisition strategy and its ability to offer the most complete enterprise software stack is allowing it to take market share from some of its traditional competitors," wrote Friedman Billings analyst David Hilal. His company makes a market in Oracle.

The company's primary competitor in business software is SAP(SAP), which on Wednesday unveiled its Web-based suite for the first time. Oracle already delivers its Siebel CRM software over the Web, but both companies have been challenged to step up with subscription-based offerings by Salesforce.com(CRM) and privately held NetSuite.

The recent spotlight on a strong financial performance by SAP is no small part of the sentiment surrounding Oracle's results. Last month, Germany-based SAP said it posted quarterly revenue growth of 10%, while its business-application market share rose nearly one full percentage point.