NEW YORK (AFX) - Database and data management software maker Oracle Corp. showed restraint in 2006, purchasing only a handful of smallish software companies. It's a sharp contrast from last year when the company indulged in a multibillion-dollar shopping spree which included the purchase of Siebel Systems.
Oracle started off the year with the acquisition of open source software maker Sleepycat Software in February, and in June bought sales and inventory management software maker Demantra Inc.
Just a month later, Oracle gobbled up TelephonyWork, a software infrastructure service provider for contact centers, and then it completed a tender offer for Portal Software Inc., maker of billing and revenue management software.
Toward the end of the year, Oracle moved on to bigger companies -- in November it announced plans to take over Stellent Inc. in a $440 million deal.
After all the mergers, Oracle still managed to find time to stir things up. In October it announced plans set up shop on Red Hat Inc.'s turf by offering maintenance services for Red Hat's Linux software products -- at discounts of at least 50 percent.
The furious acquisition streak seemed to help pad its bottom line, though -- in June the company posted a 27 percent spike in fiscal fourth-quarter income; in September it posted a 29 percent increase in fiscal first-quarter profit; and in December the company posted a 21 percent rise in fiscal second-quarter income.
And all that earnings growth helped the stock.
Shares sank to a 52-week low of $12.38 in February, but since then the stock has climbed roughly 39 percent to Thursday's close of $17.20. In November the stock hit a high of $19.75.
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