NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- The most active stock reporting earnings the week of June 18 is Oracle ( ORCL).
Oracle is one of the world's leading suppliers of software for information management and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. Oracle trades an average of 29.4 million shares per day with a marketcap of $134.5 billion.![]() |
From a cost-to-earnings point of view of peers, Oracle is in the middle. IBM ( IBM) is trading for 11.67, Microsoft ( MSFT)at 9.56, SAP ( SAP) 16.1 and Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ) at 4.9. HP has its own set of problems impacting the price; however, the overall weakness can't help but spill over. Microsoft's chart is more impressive to me because at least it is still managing to hold onto a bullish price above the 200-day moving average. SAP is oversold and if Oracle beats earnings look for SAP to bounce higher. Oracle recently tapped into its $30 billion war chest and went shopping. Oracle entered into agreements to buy Collective Intellect and Virtue. Both companies support cloud-based social intelligence gathering and management. Oracle isn't the only one with the checkbook out and pen in hand. IBM recently finished the purchase of Tealeaf Technology. Tealeaf is a spin-off company from SAP. Amazon ( AMZN) and Microsoft are also in the cloud space and Amazon has recently increased their payroll, assumedly to step up enterprise level support for Amazon Web Services. Amazon and Microsoft have gone toe to toe with pricing and the storm clouds of a cloud price war are on the horizon. (Read my Amazon article addressing Amazon and its lofty valuation.) As long as Oracle can continue to execute, I like buying on dips and especially selling covered calls to hedge with. An investor considering Oracle may want to short put options before the earnings release to capture the elevated premium too. This article is commentary by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.