Oracle profit beats expectations; boosts share buyback by $10 billion

(Reuters) - Oracle Corp reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and boosted its stock buyback programme by $10 billion, sending its shares up about 3 percent in extended trading.

Oracle, like other established tech companies, is moving its business to the cloud by providing services remotely through data centres versus selling installed software.

Total cloud revenue rose 39.5 percent to $735 million, accounting for about 8 percent of Oracle's total revenue.

Net income fell to $2.14 billion, or 50 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Feb. 29, from $2.50 billion, or 56 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, the company reported a profit of 64 cents per share.

Revenue fell 3.4 percent to $9.01 billion.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of 62 cents per share on revenue of $9.12 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

(Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)