Oracle’s stock moves higher on surging cloud infrastructure revenue growth

Oracle Corp. comfortably beat first-quarter expectations today, driven by strong growth in its cloud infrastructure business, and that boosted its stock by about 4% in late trading. The database giant reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $1.92 per share. That was a lot better than expected, as Wall Street analysts were looking for earnings of just $1.74 per share. Revenue for the period rose almost 30% from a year earlier, to $19.35 billion, surpassing the analyst consensus estimate of $19.14 billion. All told, Oracle posted net income of $4.68 billion in the quarter, up from $2.93 billion in the same period one year ago. For the current quarter, Oracle said it’s targeting earnings of between $1.85 and $1.93 per…