Oracle is the one stock in this group that everyone probably knows. Note that the company will continue its decade-long record of rapid and unbroken growth. The growth simply will be a bit slower. A lot of investors assume that when problems crop up they are going to persist for at least several quarters and probably get worse. That s true more often than not, but we think Oracle is likely to escape the curse.
Management is excellent and has met difficult challenges before.
Further, the company s huge installed base provides a way to leverage the sale of new products particularly those designed for electronic commerce. On the cover of last year s annual report is the name Oracle and, in larger type, the words The Internet Changes Everything. That should tell you what management is thinking and we believe they are right. To this was added an Internet file system and then Release 11, an elaborate suite of business applications designed to run on corporate intranets. This is partly a result of hot competition and partly due to a general slowdown in business software.