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Who is the oracle of Delphi when it comes to
Oracle
(ORCL)
?
Not The Business Press Maven who, it should be noted, was last seen
teasing Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, for pontificating about the need for all-consuming focus in merging his sack of newly acquired parts while sitting on a yacht with a basketball court, preparing for his involvement in the America’s Cup.
And though it pains me to put myself in harm’s way, let me also remind you that I poked good snarky fun at the way Ellison called his acquisition strategy “innovative” when it looked more like he was taking the common tack of buying up everything that wasn’t nailed down the moment natural growth began to slow.
Well, business journalism is a human enterprise, and sometimes The Business Press Maven is one dumb human.
Oracle
reported a blowout quarter Tuesday, with revenue up 30% and earnings of 13 cents a share. Excluding items, earnings of 18 cents were 2 cents above consensus estimates.
And as if to defy me further, its applications business — the focus of the brunt of the acquisition activity — did really well, just as Commodore Ellison said it would.
But never one to make a mistake only once when twice will do, The Business Press Maven does want to draw your attention this morning to an otherwise positive
just across the wire from
Business Week
, which does urge a soupcon of caution.
Don’t forget, the article urges, noting the chest-thumping of Oracle executives (who doesn’t gloat when he hath proved The Business Press Maven wrong?):
Oracle spent $20 billion to get into such a strong position in the application business. Even with the big deals squarely in the rearview mirror, there are questions about whether the momentum will last. And although several Wall Street analysts ... agree that the company is taking share from SAPSAP, it's unclear how much. After all, the two are pretty much competing in every single deal, so every win could be considered a market share gain.
A pivotal moment in the well-being of the current market came when the business media ended its delusions about the
intentions.
As wrong as I (may) have been about Oracle, I was right as rain on how badly the business media was misreading FOMC minutes. They kept saying that the Fed was done raising rates when you didn’t even have to read between the lines to see that it wasn’t.
But this morning, I have good news in the form of no spread between perception and reality in articles about what the Fed might do today.
Take this item from the
Associated Press
at 7:48 a.m. EDT:
Fed Expected to Keep Rates Steady
.
True ‘dat, as they say. Though inflation can not be declared dead yet, there are no red-hot signs of it, and housing and oil are dogs headed downward.
The business media and reality are one. Be a buyer.
But not of
Hewlett-Packard
(HPQ)
.
The story that can’t get any more strange just did.
The New York Times
this morning that the company may have at least considered the possibility of placing spies in newsrooms.
They could have acted as clerical employees or custodians, the latter (picking up after newsroom mongrels) ranking as perhaps the most undignified post in the history of the spy trade.
The larger, more serious point, however, is that Hewlett-Packard currently should be thought of as an onion: endless layers can be peeled back, and it’s smelly.
Stay clear until there is a full accounting.
Talk about things at H-P taking peculiar turns: I was just made aware of this item this morning, so I have no way of confirming whether it is still on as scheduled. But at tonight’s
Bay Area Council’s 61st Annual Dinner
, featured speakers slated to appear include
New York Times
Executive Editor Bill Keller … and increasingly infamous Hewlett-Packard board/spy director Patricia D. Dunn. Insert your own bugging device joke here.
Al Gore’s crowning achievement in life may be to have the worst timing of any public figure, and his kooky mojo continues today.
are out that Gore’s
Current TV
will announce a joint venture with
Yahoo!
(YHOO)
, which raised question marks on Tuesday with surprisingly troubled sales guidance.
In fairness to Yahoo! and the former next president of the U.S., Yahoo! did only see advertising slip in two segments.
These segments, auto and financial, were probably undergoing some cyclical weakness, and the fact that Yahoo! has grown up enough to be vulnerable to such weakness should be reflected in its multiple but seems — at this stage, at least — to be no cause for panic.
But apparently
Reuters
, which gets all good and snide for no good reason, thinks otherwise. ”
Big media touts Internet plans
,” it says in a scolding headline, “even as Yahoo! slips.”
Apparently, at a previously scheduled conference Tuesday, big media companies such as
Walt Disney
(DIS)
,
Viacom
(VIA.B)
and
Time Warner
(TWX)
had the temerity (note the sarcasm) to talk about their plans to use the Internet to deliver content.
Look — and this has been true from the start: Anyone who sells the Internet as the savior of any stodgy old big-media company should be marketing boy bands in River City — er, Mason City, Iowa.
But there’s no reason to give up on modest little strategies just because Yahoo! reported a modest little disappointment. And with that, I need to go cry in my coffee over my own private Oracle debacle.
A journalist with a background on Wall Street, Marek Fuchs has written the County Lines column for The New York Times for the past five years. He also contributes regular breaking news and feature stories to many of the paper’s other sections, including Metro, National and Sports. Fuchs was the editor-in-chief of Fertilemind.net, a financial Web site twice named “Best of the Web” by Forbes Magazine. He was also a stockbroker with Shearson Lehman Brothers in Manhattan and a money manager. He is currently writing a chapter for a book coming out in early 2007 on a really embarrassing subject. He lives in a loud house with three children.