Oracle's Ellison Predicts Growth Will Return Next Year

Oracle(ORCL Quote) CEO Larry Ellison said the current recession would end in 2002, and that when it does, his company would boast operating margins of up to 50%.

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"I personally think we'll see growth next calendar year. I think [the recession]'s going to last a year to 18 months," Ellison said. "I don't think that will be much different than the 11 or so other recessions we've seen since World War II."

Yet apart from the recession's duration, Ellison said the U.S. was currently in "uncharted territory" and that this recession was different from others because deflation, not inflation, was the biggest threat. "This is a very unusual time, it's a different kind of recession," Ellison said.

But he said that when things did turn around from a macro perspective, his company would be more profitable than ever before. Repeating his often-made claim that Oracle saved $1 billion in one year using its own software, Ellison said that when the company achieves its next goal of saving $2 billion a year, its operating margins would rise from their current level of 33% to 40%. He then said that if Oracle can save $3 billion a year, he would give his investors 50% operating margins.

"I'm going to make a prediction that I'm probably going to get in trouble for," the brash billionaire CEO told a room full of reporters and analysts at the company's OpenWorld users conference in San Francisco. "When this thing starts going again, I think we'll have 50% margins."