Despite beating EPS expectations (+71c vs +68c exp), ORCL shares are tumbling over 5% after hours following a top-line miss (Q1 $9.20bn vs $9.26bn exp).

Goldman said, before the results hit, that the company needed to have a "clean" earnings report and forecast to ease investor concerns about its change in reporting disclosure.

In terms of its segments, the company reported:

• Cloud Services and License Support revenues increased 3% year over year to $6.61 billion.

• Cloud License and On-Premise License revenues decreased 3% to $867 million.

• Hardware revenues decreased 4% to $904 million.

• Services revenues decreased 5% to $813 million.

The reaction to this cloud license disappointment is significant...

“Our channel checks suggest that Oracle is ‘losing people faster than [Oracle] can hire them’ and that customers continue to disapprove of Oracle’s sales tactics,” Pat Walravens, an analyst at JMP Securities, wrote in a note ahead of the release. These factors could have pinched the company’s performance, he wrote.

Oracle's Co-CEO Safra Catz proclaims confidently:

"We are off to an excellent start. That strong earnings per share growth rate increases my confidence that we will deliver on another fiscal year of double-digit non-GAAP earnings per share growth."

Oracle Co-CEO, Mark Hurd added:

"The vast majority of ERP applications running in the cloud are either Oracle Fusion or Oracle NetSuite systems. In the first quarter, we increased our market share as customers continued to buy Oracle Fusion ERP to replace their existing SAP and Workday ERP systems. The Oracle Fusion ERP customer count is now nearly 5,500, while the NetSuite ERP customer count is over 15,000. Virtually every analyst ranks Oracle as the market leader in cloud ERP."

Finally, we note that ORCL increased its authorization for buybacks by $12.0 billion.

As a reminder, the company is also facing a shareholder lawsuit filed last month, alleging that Oracle used strong-arm tactics to coerce customers into adopting its cloud products. The suit, seeking class-action status, also alleged the software maker deceived investors about how it had increased cloud sales.