Shares of Oracle Corp. sank 8.4% in premarket trade Tuesday, after the software company’s fiscal third-quarter results prompted downgrades by Wall Street analysts. The company reported late Monday profit that beat expectations but sales that missed, amid disappointing growth in its cloud computing business. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Brad Reback cut his rating to hold, after being at buy since at least June 2015, saying the “lackluster” results come in face of strong results from other software companies, including Microsoft Corp. , Salesforce.com Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. . He said even Oracle’s profit beat was driven largely by a lower-than-expected tax rate. KeyBanc Capital’s Monika Garg downgraded Oracle to sector weight from overweight. Garg said the transition to the cloude is taking “much longer to play out” then expected, after a third-straight quarter that cloud results and guidance has disappointed, and as execution risk has increased given “larger cloud competitors are growing faster.” The stock has rallied 14.9% over the past 12 months, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 has run up 26.8% and the S&P 500 has gained 14.3%.
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