Comdex: Ellison Warns On 2Q, Picks New Fight With MicrosoftComdex: Ellison Warns On 2Q, Picks New Fight With Microsoft

LAS VEGAS--Larry Ellison's press conferences now dispense entirely with prepared remarks and get right to the juicy part: Larry talking.

Oracle shareholders may have wished he hadn't. At a press conference at the Comdex trade show Monday, Oracle chairman and CEO Ellison told reporters the company's earnings wouldn't match last year's second-quarter net income of 11 cents per share for the period, ending Nov. 30. Second-quarter earnings will come in at 9 or 10 cents per share, Ellison said, and his unexpected warning sent Oracle shares (ORCL-Nasdaq) tumbling Tuesday, finishing the day down 88 cents, or 5.7%, to $14.52, amid a broadly higher market.

Ellison began his press conference by striding to the stage, microphone in hand, sitting on a chair, and declaring: "Whatever you want to talk about." Besides Oracle's earnings, other topics included the Microsoft antitrust settlement (they got away scot-free, he says) and his meetings with government officials to discuss national ID cards ("I can't get into that").

Finally, someone asked Ellison about the purported purpose of the press conference--a version of Oracle's 9i Application Server, released this week, that includes a built-in E-mail server. Oracle says companies should connect their Microsoft Outlook E-mail clients to Oracle's app server and store their mail messages in its Oracle 9i database, instead of in Microsoft Exchange. Oracle's E-mail server speaks the industry-standard Internet Messaging Access Protocol, also spoken by Exchange.

"There's nothing wrong with Outlook. ... It came free with my computer," Ellison says. "If it doesn't bother the Justice Department, it doesn't bother me." But Ellison's theme of the day was that Oracle's database is "unbreakable." Oracle says one company, Dutch network consulting firm Landis ICT Group, has already migrated Exchange Servers to Oracle 9i.

But Microsoft group manager Barry Goffe laughed off Oracle's announcement as a publicity move. "I could get my friend in high school to build a IMAP server," Goffe says.

Between picking a new fight with Microsoft and delivering an impromptu earnings warning, Ellison's performance kept everyone on their toes. Says Jeremy Burton, Oracle senior VP of marketing: "Larry likes Comdex."