What To Expect From Oracle's (ORCL) Q1 Earnings

Enterprise software giant Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) will be reporting earnings this Tuesday afternoon. Here’s what investors should know.

Oracle missed analysts’ revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $16.06 billion, up 14.2% year on year. It was a softer quarter for the company, with a slight miss of analysts’ revenue estimates and a miss of analysts’ billings estimates.

This quarter, the market is expecting Oracle’s revenue to grow 19.8% year on year, improving from the 6.4% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year.

Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Oracle has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates multiple times over the last two years.

With Oracle being the first among its peers to report earnings this season, we don’t have anywhere else to look to get a hint at how this quarter will unravel for data and analytics software stocks. However, there has been positive investor sentiment in the segment, with share prices up 2.7% on average over the last month. Oracle is down 2.6% during the same time .

When a company has more cash than it knows what to do with, buying back its own shares can make a lot of sense–as long as the price is right. Luckily, we’ve found one, a low-priced stock that is gushing free cash flow AND buying back shares.