BRUCE FRANCIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Weakened but not crippled by the contraction in tech spending, Oracle slightly edged out profit expectations. Oracle earned 15 cents a share, a penny better than the estimate. But revenues of over $3.2 billion were less than the Street expected. Analysts said cost-cutting helped them squeak past estimates.</s>BOB AUSTRIAN, BANK OF AMERICA SECURITIES: We know they had to work extremely hard to get to these results. So, cost control, you know, two thumbs up. The question that investors always have relates to growth, and we pay mostly for growth, not for cost control.</s>FRANCIS: Oracle rode the dot-com bubble on the way up, trumpeting itself as the software that runs the Internet's top company. New business there has dried up, and the company's more traditional Fortune 500 clients are far less willing to spend these days. As a result, Oracle's earnings were a full 83 percent below last year's, and the stock has lost about two-thirds of its value since its all time high. Analyst Chuck Phillips says right now Oracle is only for patient investors.</s>CHUCK PHILLIPS, MORGAN STANLEY: The fundamentals aren't improving yet at the rate the stocks were appreciating over the last month or so. So they're going to bounce around until we get some clear signs that the economy is stabilizing and that the growth will return.</s>FRANCIS (on camera): Oracle saved the best news for its conference call, telling analysts that the last quarter may have been the bottom and that spending will start to improve if not return to normal. Oracle credits tax cuts and fed rate decreases for restoring the confidence of customers in the economy. Europe, though, is going to take longer than the U.S. to show some improvement. Bruce Francis, CNN Financial News, New York.
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