Oracle (ORCL)

He is seeing so many good reasonably cheap ideas out there. Earnings have doubled over the past 2 years but the stock price has gone nowhere and the stock got hammered on their earnings report. To him that is a “fat pitch”. None of their customers are going to leave tomorrow.

Large database and software provider. Last quarter was weak. There were some sales that didn’t close and Easter fell in the previous quarter. Have their own Cloud offering called Fusion, which should do well. Yield of 0.7%.

Last time around their earnings were a bit disapointing, which is when he bought it. Thinks the stock has room to grow. Thinks it will continue growing in the future.

(Market Call Minute) Has been underperforming. Prefers others.

(A Top Pick May 11/12. Up 16.82%.) They are behind on their Cloud and he doesn’t know why but it is very concerning and he has them on his Watch list. Sales are still pretty good. Hardware division has been the real problem for them. Still likes.

Has been a very acquisitive company. Made a ton of acquisitions throughout history and almost all of them have gone exceptionally well. Has grown its services and products very, very well. Cloud computing platform is growing very rapidly. Recurring revenues are very high. Trading at about 13X earnings. P/E ratio of 16.8 and a yield of 0.68%.

The only disappointing, slightly negative story is that there is still a lot of hardware dependency. Cloud side has been incredible but that area has a lot of competition with SAP AG (SAP-N). Very cash-rich. Over the last year they’ve been focusing on midsize emerging cloud switching delivery companies globally. He is a very minimal holder and wishes he had had a lot more. Over the next year, this is a company where you absolutely want to be.

(Top Pick Dec 14/11, Up 16.27%) Sold a few months ago. He was concerned with the revenue growth. Hardware side was a drag on the company. He switched to Qualcom.

(A Top Pick Sept 7/11. Up 18.85%.) Dominant business software. Really, really aggressive. Acquisitive. About a 3^rd of their sales is out of Europe and in spite of the tough times there, they continue to do very well. The developing world is expanding at a more rapid pace and this company is there for sure.