Thursday, March 28, 2019

Amazon Stock Is Finally Breaking Out

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock sat out most of the rally over the past few months. However, it wasn’t alone. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL, NASDAQ:GOOG) also didn’t join the rally, leaving many to wonder what was causing the hesitation. However, over the past few days, we’ve seen a big rally of Amazon stock, signaling that its slumber may be coming to an end.

Is now the time to buy AMZN stock?

Investors first have to ask themselves if they like the company or if they like the stock. Bullish investors who are purely looking to trade Amazon stock are late. Those who were prepared came into this week long and are now raising their stop-losses and locking in some gains.

However, if investors like the company, it doesn’t hurt to wait until the stock’s technicals are becoming more bullish. For investors in that camp, there are plenty of reasons to like Amazon stock.

Amazon Stock Is a Juggernaut

The best thing about AMZN stock may have been its recent cheapness. Until recently, the shares were almost 20% off their highs, and they stayed there for several months. That gave investors a chance to gobble up Amazon stock while it was on sale.

But I understand that the valuation of AMZN, as it always has been, is insane. AMZN, however, is not a traditional company and therefore it is not bound by traditional valuation metrics. I know strict, traditional investors will have a field day with that “exception to the rule” explanation, but it’s true. Some investors’ unwillingness to acknowledge such exceptions has kept them from buying the market’s biggest winners, like Amazon and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX).

You didn’t have to hold these names for 20+ years or buy shares during their IPOs to reap massive gains. We knew what AMZN and NFLX were all about ten years ago and could have made a massive amount of money going long AMZN stock and NFLX stock. In the last decade, Amazon stock has surged “just” 2,420%, turning $10,000 into a quarter-million dollars, while Netflix has jumped almost 6,000% in the same time frame.


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Even over the last five years — when each company’s long-term, non-cyclical opportunities had already become clear — AMZN stock and NFLX have returned about 375% and 500%, respectively. And given all of Amazon’s opportunities, owning Amazon stock is worthwhile.

Its e-commerce unit has considerable revenue and is already well-known, but its other units are garnering attention, too. Its cloud business, Amazon Web Services, has become one of the most dominant in the industry. Given its huge popularity, its ad business has also become quite attractive. It likely obtains annual cash flow of $10 billion from Prime membership fees, and its Whole Foods acquisition gives Amazon a presence in the grocery sector.

Trading AMZN Stock

chart of Amazon stockchart of Amazon stock
Click to Enlarge From a trading perspective, the time to go long Amazon stock has come and gone. That opportunity presented itself last week before the stock’s $80 move. It’s now prudent to trim positions in Amazon stock and raise stop-losses.

For longer-term investors, AMZN stock is looking much better, now that it has exceeded its 200-day-moving average. It will look even better if it can hold that mark after this fresh breakout.

If it can stay above that level, AMZN can begin the process of pushing higher again. Once it climbs over that $1,775-ish level, which kept AMZN in check in November and December, AMZN stock can really start to fly. The next level of interest would come into play near $1,850.

Remember, cloud names have been on fire, and Amazon has a significant cloud presence. For the past few quarters, management’s outlook has kept bulls at bay. However, AMZN stock is known for gathering momentum after big declines. Amazon stock fell almost 35% from peak to trough in recent month and, historically, has gone on to post big gains after those types of stumbles.

I have no reason to bet against AMZN over the long- term. I also have no reason to bet against it in the short-term if it stays above the 200-day.

Bret Kenwell is the manager and author of Future Blue Chips and is on Twitter @BretKenwell. As of this writing, Bret Kenwell is long AAPL, GOOGL and AMZN.

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Kickstarter Versus 'Crypto' ICOs: Are Traditional Platforms Having The Last Laugh?

&l;p&g;&l;img class=&q;dam-image getty size-large wp-image-1136282550&q; src=&q;https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/dam/imageserve/1136282550/960x0.jpg?fit=scale&q; data-height=&q;575&q; data-width=&q;960&q;&g; Initial Coin Offering (ICO) image reflecting business. financial, Internet innovation and technology concept. (Photocredit: Getty)

&a;nbsp;

Crowdfunding, which is a project or venture funded&a;nbsp;typically&a;nbsp;by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, has been around for many years. And, with the growth of the Internet, so too have the amount of Internet-crowded platforms. And, with the rise of crypto-backed Projects they have taken on a new dimension.&a;nbsp;But the $64 billion question is which funding route and medium should you choose?

If the project fails to reach its funding goal set at the outset, it is usually dropped from the fundraising platform and the pledges are returned to the backers. According to&a;nbsp;Fundly.com, the global transaction value in the crowdfunding segment amounted to $34 billion.

The mother of all crowdfunding platforms is &l;a href=&q;https://www.kickstarter.com/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Kickstarter&l;/a&g;, which launched back in 2009 and has received almost $4 billion in pledges from 15.5 million backers to date. Of course, there are many other crowdfunding platforms, some which are specific to countries such as &l;a href=&q;https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/demohour&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Demohour&l;/a&g; in China and &l;a href=&q;https://www.wishberry.in/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Wishberry&l;/a&g; in India.

Yet something more interesting&a;nbsp;has&a;nbsp;seemed to enter the world of crowdfunding, making it a little more crowded.

With the invention of&a;nbsp;Blockchain -&a;nbsp;or Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to give it its full name&a;nbsp;- and the subsequent birth of its by-product, cryptocurrency, a new kind of crowdfunding or community fundraising was soon to be born.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, released around a decade ago in 2009, and is still the king of&a;nbsp;&l;a href=&q;http://coinmarketcap.com/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;coinmarketcap.com&l;/a&g;, but was followed soon after by many other coins and tokens. Today there are thousands of cryptocurrencies.

Every coin and token has their own proposition and blockchain-based solution to offer the world, with most solutions decentralized, mirroring the desires of the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakomoto. Decentralization creates a much more secure environment&l;strong&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/strong&g;industry pundits argue, as opposed to centralized systems, which are easily hacked into and manipulated.

&l;strong&g;Initial Coin Offerings&l;/strong&g;

It was in 2013 was when a new kind of crowdfunding took off, also known as the Initial Coin Offering or ICO, helping many cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects raise money through selling their coins or tokens. It allowed many people to participate in the growth of those projects. ICOs have also been known by many other names, including ITOs (Initial Token Offerings), TGEs (Token Generation Events) and more recently - the new kid on the block - Security Token Offerings (STOs), which some argruing &l;a href=&q;https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2019/03/08/after-cryptos-winter-icos-growing-less-but-maturing-with-shift-to-stos/&q;&g;could be a real game changer.&l;/a&g;

&l;img class=&q;dam-image getty size-large wp-image-1094243062&q; src=&q;https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/dam/imageserve/1094243062/960x0.jpg?fit=scale&q; data-height=&q;573&q; data-width=&q;960&q;&g; Security Token Offering (STO) sign with wooden letters and gold coins in front of it. (Photocredit: Getty).

&l;strong&g;Crowdfunding Scams&l;/strong&g;

Kickstarter and other traditional crowdfunding platforms have had their fair share of &l;a href=&q;https://www.geektime.com/2017/04/19/these-kickstarter-scammers-took-the-money-and-ran-the-full-story-and-tips-on-how-to-avoid-being-a-victim-of-crowdfunding-fraud/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;scams&l;/a&g;. A University of Pennsylvania professor, Ethan Mollick, found in 2015 that that 9% of projects on Kickstarter failed to deliver rewards as promised, with a &l;a href=&q;https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/15/will-you-lose-out-if-you-back-a-venture-on-kickstarter&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;stated conclusion&l;/a&g;&a;nbsp;that:&a;nbsp;&a;ldquo;Ultimately, there does not seem to be a systematic problem associated with failure (or fraud) on Kickstarter, and the vast majority of projects do seem to deliver.&a;rdquo; This is only on Kickstarter, and there are &l;a href=&q;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding#Platforms&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;2,000 crowdfunding sites to choose from&l;/a&g;. These crowdfunding platforms can represent hundreds of projects, with the average amount raised for a single &l;a href=&q;https://www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/business/biggest-crowdfunding-scams-failures/#2&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;crowdfunding campaign standing at nearly $5,000.&l;/a&g;

This is markedly different than the average amount of funds collected by a single ICO during 2018 and is smaller than during the previous year, &l;a href=&q;https://cointelegraph.com/news/ico-market-2018-vs-2017-trends-capitalization-localization-industries-success-rate&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;standing at $11.52 million as against $24.35 million in 2017&l;/a&g;.

&l;strong&g;ICO Scams&l;/strong&g;

The total amount raised by ICOs in 2018 was almost $11.4 billion, against little more than $10 billion during 2017, with a mere 13%. Of these amounts, it is estimated that in 2017, &l;a href=&q;https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-study-says-80-percent-of-icos-conducted-in-2017-were-scams&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;$1.34 billion&l;/a&g; of ICO funding was snaffled by scams. And, in 2018, &l;a href=&q;https://cointelegraph.com/news/research-reveals-17-billion-obtained-via-crypto-thefts-and-scams-in-2018&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;a minimum of $1.7 Billion disappeared in theft and scams.&l;/a&g;

From the very beginning of the ICO era, much of the funding raised which was not lost in scams went to projects that never completed, or even started. 2015 marked the beginning of a series of very newsworthy scams which took hold of the crypto-community, with some investors in this space losing not tens, but hundreds of millions of dollars.

For example, one ICO scam, &l;a href=&q;https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/pincoin-ico-crypto-exit-scam-dupes-32000-investors-in-660-million-heist/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Pincoin&l;/a&g;, duped some 32,000 investors and ran off with&a;nbsp;$660&a;nbsp;million in 2018, scamming some 32,000 people in the process, and &l;a href=&q;https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-280&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Arise Banks&a;rsquo; ICO&l;/a&g; was shut down by the &l;a href=&q;https://www.sec.gov/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;U.S. Securities &a;amp; Exchange Commisson&l;/a&g; (SEC), but not before investors gave over $4 million&a;nbsp;to the founder and CEO, Jared Rice, Sr.

Regardless of the scams in this space, there are still many well-known, prestigious projects, which have not only made a huge success of their ICO crowdfunding efforts, but have gone to stratospheric levels.

Examples of these &l;a href=&q;https://www.ethereum.org/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Ethereum&l;/a&g;, &l;a href=&q;https://lisk.io/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Lisk&l;/a&g; and &l;a href=&q;https://www.iota.org/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;IOTA&l;/a&g;. All of these projects, and more, started as crypto-crowdfunding based ICOs and have gone on to do exactly as they have promised, and more.

Many companies who do not have their own blockchain platform used Ethereum&a;rsquo;s proprietary blockchain to crowdfund, through the creation of smart contracts, or ERC20s.

&l;strong&g;Smart Contracts&l;/strong&g;

Smart contracts allow transactions to be undertaken without third parties, letting ICOs collect money from investors directly in exchange for being part of their fundraising efforts. Like Kickstarter or any other crowdfunding platform, ICOs also offer perks for investing, and sometimes unlawfully promise a substantial return on investment for participants&a;rsquo; investment.

Many people mused and even proclaimed that the ICO meant the death of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter,&a;nbsp;&l;a href=&q;https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/11/07/bye-kickstarter-icos-are-the-new-crowdfunding/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;as written in articles such as this one&l;/a&g;. Yet with the rise in ICOs, and in the proportional number of crypto-crowdfunding scams, the rise in legislation has now caught pace, seeing a record number of ICOs shut down or fined, with investors only sometimes lucky to see their money returned.

This increasing stance on legislation of crypto-crowdfunding has seen a rise in the number of regulated STOs, purported to be the next generation of ICOs, with the number of unregulated ICOs decreasing.

As explained by Aviva Ounap at&a;nbsp; crypto and blockchain marketing agency &l;a href=&q;https://www.saviidigital.com/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Savii Digital&l;/a&g;:&a;nbsp;&a;ldquo;STOs are more like the &a;ldquo;everyman&a;rsquo;s IPO&a;rdquo;, giving everyone the chance to invest in a company that has been approved by the SEC) to list their cryptocurrency as a security, and hold a &a;lsquo;stake&a;rsquo; in the company by holding those coins or tokens.&a;rdquo;

But&a;nbsp;even with the number of STOs hitting the marketplace, it is nowhere near the pace that ICOs hit the ground running. Data collated by &l;a href=&q;https://icobench.com/stats&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;ICObench&l;/a&g; shows a very significant decrease.

Projects looking to raise funds through an STO must now file specific regulations with the official, federally regulated body in the country that their company is registered.

In the case of the SEC in the U.S., you must also file if you are a foreign company who would like to sell tokens to US based investors. These Regulations offer an SEC compliant way to offer tokens which are classified as securities for investment purposes.

Depending on what company structure an entity has, and how much they are looking to raise, the correct papers must be submitted, costing time and money. Any mistakes, whether by mistake or on purpose, can lead to fines and even jail. No longer can someone on a whim throw up a site, sell their cryptocurrency for a stake in their project (whether real or scam) and run with it.

The U.S. has been the most aggressive in the legislation of crypto-related projects, with many other countries swiftly following suit.

Yet with the decrease in the number of ICOs, the number of &l;a href=&q;https://www.statista.com/statistics/310218/total-kickstarter-funding/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Kickstarter projects&l;/a&g; is on the rise&a;nbsp;gauging by the figures. At the last reported count this year,&a;nbsp;&l;span&g;more than $4.06 billion had been pledged to projects on their crowdfunding platform.&a;nbsp;&l;/span&g;

According to&a;nbsp;&l;a href=&q;https://www.statista.com/statistics/310218/total-kickstarter-funding/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Statista.com&l;/a&g;: &a;ldquo;Kickstarter, which launched in 2009, is one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in the world, having launched over 412,000 projects and having received pledges worth more than $3.9 billion as of October 2018.&a;rdquo; And, this is slated to grow even more&a;nbsp;in&a;nbsp;2019, and beyond.

In a twist of irony, there is currently a project on the Kickstarter platform, which aims to educate the next generation of techies on blockchain and cryptocurrency.

&l;a href=&q;https://blogs.forbes.com/rogeraitken/files/2019/03/Kickstarter-Bob-the-BLOCKTRAIN-series-Kickstarter-campaign.png&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;&l;img class=&q;size-large wp-image-12367&q; src=&q;http://blogs-images.forbes.com/rogeraitken/files/2019/03/Kickstarter-Bob-the-BLOCKTRAIN-series-Kickstarter-campaign-1200x676.jpg?width=960&q; alt=&q;&q; data-height=&q;676&q; data-width=&q;1200&q;&g;&l;/a&g; Bob the BLOCKTRAIN! series with Kickstarter logo and campaign banner. (Source: Savii Digital).

This is namely,&a;nbsp;&l;em&g;&l;a href=&q;https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1726286913/bob-the-blocktrain-the-series?ref=nav_search&a;amp;result=project&a;amp;term=Bob%20&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Bob the Blocktrain: The Series&l;/a&g;&l;/em&g;, which only launched&a;nbsp;this week (March 16 2019)&a;nbsp;on Kickstarter, and is aiming to create an animated series covering the topics of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in a fun yet educational way, and looking to raise a mere &a;pound;9,000&a;nbsp;(c.$11,880). There are benefits for supporting the project, which are detailed on the Kickstarter page.

According to the&a;nbsp;&l;a href=&q;https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1726286913/bob-the-blocktrain-the-series?ref=nav_search&a;amp;result=project&a;amp;term=Bob%20&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Kickstarter page&l;/a&g;, they already have a successful book,&a;nbsp;&l;em&g;Meet Bob the Blocktrain&l;/em&g;, and &a;ldquo;thought the natural next step would be a cartoon series of Bob and his friends, the Nodes, on their adventures through the magical and mysterious Blockchainland,&a;rdquo; according to Ounap in London.

They are making this series in English and Chinese to start with, but venture has revealed that they know &a;ldquo;that this educational series will teach children of all ages about the applications of blockchain and get them ready for the next wave of technology. &a;ldquo;This series will probably benefit many adults, too, who need to understand what blockchain is, what it is used for, and even what cryptocurrencies are and how they are used,&a;rdquo;&a;nbsp;their page states on Kickstarter.

Regardless of the method of crowdfunding, there is now a world of opportunity for potential backers to spread their investments and increase the sizes of their portfolio. Investing in&l;strong&g;&a;nbsp;&l;/strong&g;such&a;nbsp;projects is no longer&a;nbsp;just&a;nbsp;the preserve of&a;nbsp;the rich. With crowdfunding, it is now an everyman&a;rsquo;s world. More power to your elbow.

&l;/p&g;

Thursday, March 21, 2019

KKR & Co Inc (KKR) Sees Significant Increase in Short Interest

KKR & Co Inc (NYSE:KKR) was the recipient of a large increase in short interest in the month of February. As of February 28th, there was short interest totalling 13,549,086 shares, an increase of 30.6% from the February 15th total of 10,378,172 shares. Approximately 2.7% of the company’s shares are sold short. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 7,191,365 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 1.9 days.

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. ValueAct Holdings L.P. increased its holdings in shares of KKR & Co Inc by 2.0% in the 4th quarter. ValueAct Holdings L.P. now owns 50,700,000 shares of the asset manager’s stock valued at $995,241,000 after purchasing an additional 1,000,000 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc bought a new stake in shares of KKR & Co Inc in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $1,027,380,000. Jackson Square Partners LLC grew its stake in shares of KKR & Co Inc by 8,686.8% in the 3rd quarter. Jackson Square Partners LLC now owns 22,946,175 shares of the asset manager’s stock valued at $625,742,000 after buying an additional 22,685,031 shares in the last quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of KKR & Co Inc by 6.9% in the 4th quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. now owns 17,520,941 shares of the asset manager’s stock valued at $343,935,000 after buying an additional 1,124,564 shares in the last quarter. Finally, BlackRock Inc. grew its stake in shares of KKR & Co Inc by 1,718.7% in the 3rd quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 11,093,462 shares of the asset manager’s stock valued at $302,519,000 after buying an additional 10,483,481 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 72.85% of the company’s stock.

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KKR has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Morgan Stanley set a $22.00 price objective on KKR & Co Inc and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a report on Friday, January 4th. Deutsche Bank cut their price objective on KKR & Co Inc from $25.00 to $23.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, November 16th. ValuEngine downgraded KKR & Co Inc from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday, November 16th. Zacks Investment Research downgraded KKR & Co Inc from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, January 9th. Finally, Goldman Sachs Group downgraded KKR & Co Inc from a “conviction-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, January 4th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating and nine have assigned a buy rating to the stock. The stock presently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $30.11.

Shares of KKR opened at $24.16 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $12.89 billion, a PE ratio of 12.52, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.07 and a beta of 1.66. KKR & Co Inc has a fifty-two week low of $18.30 and a fifty-two week high of $28.73. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.94, a quick ratio of 1.09 and a current ratio of 1.09.

KKR & Co Inc (NYSE:KKR) last issued its earnings results on Friday, February 1st. The asset manager reported $0.55 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.49 by $0.06. The company had revenue of $541.58 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $489.48 million. KKR & Co Inc had a return on equity of 6.86% and a net margin of 48.08%. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $0.45 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts expect that KKR & Co Inc will post 1.78 EPS for the current fiscal year.

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, February 26th. Stockholders of record on Monday, February 11th were issued a $0.125 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Friday, February 8th. This represents a $0.50 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.07%. KKR & Co Inc’s dividend payout ratio is 25.91%.

WARNING: This article was first posted by Ticker Report and is owned by of Ticker Report. If you are reading this article on another publication, it was stolen and reposted in violation of US & international copyright and trademark laws. The original version of this article can be accessed at https://www.tickerreport.com/banking-finance/4224828/kkr-co-inc-kkr-sees-significant-increase-in-short-interest.html.

KKR & Co Inc Company Profile

KKR & Co L.P. is a private equity and real estate investment firm specializing in direct and fund of fund investments. It specializes in acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, credit special situations, growth equity, mature, mezzanine, distressed, turnaround, lower middle market and middle market investments.

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Monday, March 18, 2019

Oracle (ORCL) Q3 2019 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Q3 2019 Earnings Conference CallMarch 14, 2019 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Welcome to Oracle's third-quarter 2019 earnings conference call. Now I'd like to turn today's call over to Ken Bond, senior vice president.

Ken Bond -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Oracle's third quarter fiscal-year 2019 earnings conference call. A copy of the press release and financial tables, which includes a GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation and other supplemental financial information, can be viewed and downloaded from our Investor Relations website. On the call today are Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, and CEO Safra Catz, and Mark Hurd.

As a reminder, today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, including predictions, expectations, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking. Throughout today's discussion, we will present some important factors relating to our business, which may potentially affect these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are also subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today. As a result, we caution you against placing undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, and we encourage you to review our most recent reports, including our 10-K and 10-Q, and any applicable amendment for a complete discussion of these factors and other risks that may affect our future results or the market price of our stock.

And finally, we are not obligating ourselves to revise our results or publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Before taking questions, we'll begin with a few prepared remarks. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Safra.

Safra Catz -- Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Ken. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll first go over Q3 results before moving on to guidance. I'll then turn the call over to Mark and Larry.

As in prior quarters, I'll review our non-GAAP results using constant dollar growth rate, unless I say otherwise. Total Cloud Services and License Support revenue for the quarter was $6.7 billion, up 4% in constant currency, and now accounts for nearly 70% of total company revenue, largely recurring revenue. As in past quarters, we're seeing robust double-digit growth rates for total cloud revenue in all regions, with especially strong growth in Asia Pacific. In terms of product categories, ERP grew in the mid-30s and the verticals grew in the high 30s.

Our software business, which is the totaling of Cloud Services and License Support revenue with Cloud License and On-Premise License revenue is 82% of total revenue and it grew 3% in constant currency. Our software business has remained extremely stable and resilient as we have made the transition to faster-growing SaaS business that entailed trading nonrecurring upfront license revenue for recurrent long-term subscription revenue. Through adoption of autonomous database and OCI, we're now shifting the focus for our infrastructure business to the cloud. As a percentage of our total software business, cloud is now more than double what it was just three years ago and provides us with the ability to accelerate overall software revenue growth as this mix shift continues.

GAAP applications total revenue were $2.8 billion, up 7%, and GAAP infrastructure total revenue were $5.1 billion, up 2%. The gross margin for Cloud Services and License Support was 86%, essentially the same as last year with continuing improvement in SaaS gross margins, stability in software support growth gross margins and continued investment in Oracle cloud infrastructure. Once our cloud business is at scale, I expect our gross margins will go significantly higher. Total revenue for the quarter was $9.6 billion, up 3% from last year.

Non-GAAP operating income was $4.3 billion, up 5% from last year, and the operating margins was 44%, up from 43% last year. This quarter last year was greatly impacted by the change in the U.S. tax book, so comparing the GAAP numbers is not very meaningful after pre-tax income. The non-GAAP tax rate for the quarter was 20%, up from 16% catch-up rate last year, and non-GAAP EPS was $0.87 in USD, and up 12% in constant currency.

This quarter, the GAAP tax rate was 11% and GAAP EPS was $0.76. Operating cash flow over the last four quarters is $14.8 billion. Over the last four quarters, capital expenditures were $1.6 billion and free cash flow was $13.2 billion, down 1% due to timing differences of tax payments and working capital items. We have more than $40 billion in cash and marketable securities.

The short-term deferred revenue balance is $8 billion, up 5% in constant currency. The remaining performance obligations, or what I'll refer to as contract backlog, will be in the Q, and is now $31.5 billion, of which approximately 62% will be recognized as revenue over the next 12 months. Since we remain committed to returning value to shareholders through acquisitions, internal investments and a return of capital with stock repurchases and dividends, this quarter, we repurchased 206 million shares for a total of $10 billion. Over the last 12 months, we repurchased 728 million shares and reduced the absolute shares outstanding by nearly 16%.

And the Board of Directors increased the quarterly dividend 26% from $0.19 to $0.24 per share. Turning to currency. I expect the strengthening U.S. dollar will continue with a currency headwind of 3% for Q4 revenue and a $0.03 headwind to earnings per share.

OK. So with that, let me turn to the guidance. So for Q4, total revenues are expected to grow 1% to 3% in constant currency and zero to negative 2% in U.S. dollars.

Non-GAAP EPS in constant currency is expected to grow between 15% to 19%, and be between $1.08 and $1.12 in constant currency, so we will deliver double-digit non-GAAP EPS growth for fiscal year 2019. Taking into account the $0.03 currency headwind, non-GAAP EPS for Q4 in USD is expected to grow between 12% and 16%, and be between $1.05 and $1.09 in USD. My EPS guidance assumes a base tax rate of 20%. However, onetime tax events could cause actual tax rates for any given quarter to vary from our base tax rate, but I expect that in normalizing for onetime tax events, our tax rate will average around 20%.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Mark for his comments.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Safra. Thanks. Solid quarter for us, from top to bottom. Total revenue was up 3% in constant currency with Cloud Services and License Support, up 4% and EPS 12% -- plus 12% in constant currency.

In our apps ecosystem, we continued our momentum, growing at 7%, and that was an acceleration for us, and over $11 billion in trailing 12-months revenue and 92% of that is now recurring. We continue to grow revenue faster than market, and we have an enormous opportunity ahead of us in ERP and HCM. In terms of SaaS revenue and bookings, Fusion apps were up 35%. By the way, our overall ERP and HCM annualized SaaS revenue is now $2.8 billion, and that's up in the mid-20s.

Turn to Fusion apps, 35% up, Fusion ERP with -- revenue was up 47% organically. NetSuite revenue was up 28%. Bookings were up actually even higher in the mid-30s. Our vertical revenue was up 38%, and our annualized revenue in the verticals is now over $800 million.

I'm going to read you a quick quote from IDC, and I have to read it precisely or I'll get cards and letters. So let me just make sure I do this exactly as it's written. "Per IDC's latest annual market share results, Oracle is the No. 1 enterprise applications vendor in North America based on market share and revenue, surpassing Salesforce.com and SAP." We've seen this momentum building, so this is not any surprise to us, but I think it's always better when you can see it in real numbers from somebody other than us.

Let me switch briefly to infrastructure. Our GAAP tech ecosystem is $21 billion on a trailing 12-months basis and Q3 was up 2%. In Autonomous Database, our momentum continues to build. We now have 4,000 new trials that were added in Q3 alone, nearly 1,000 paying customers.

We're adding many new customers and we're seeing great pull-through and with 20% of our autonomous data warehouse trials also using analytics. We now have over 35 referenceable customers and we expect to be greater than 100 soon. Cloud and customer revenue was up triple digits for the fourth consecutive quarter. So overall, a solid quarter, as we hit our revenue targets and saw a 12% EPS growth.

The strength of our bookings growth along with climbing renewal rates gives me the confidence that our cloud apps business is only going to strengthen from here and going forward, given the visibility we have into the revenue backlog, which Safra touched on a bit earlier. Looking forward, I do expect FY '20 revenue growth will be higher than FY '19. And EPS this year will be certainly -- grow double digits, as Safra mentioned. I'm going to give you a few customer wins as well, try to give you a flavor for what happened in the quarter for us.

Now most of these didn't affect our revenue, most of these obviously are all really bookings that occurred in the quarter, but I thought I'd give you some context about some people in our user base as well as outside our user base. So for example, Tromp Group in the Netherlands E-Business Suite migration; MasterBrand Cabinets in the U.S. in E-Business Suite migration; thyssenkrupp in Germany in E-Business Suite migration; Willis Towers Watson E-Business Suite migration. I gave you those, just a few of those examples.

Those are core, sort of, E-Business Suite, Black & Veatch was another one engineering company, core, sort of, E-Business Suite customers as we see this acceleration of our user base move into the cloud. Got a couple PeopleSoft ERP migrations, Amica Mutual in the quarter, Depaul University. And then a slew of wins again. And I referenced that a lot of the ERP user base that's out there today is outside of our user base or even our traditional on-premise competitor from, if you will, the old days.

ON semiconductor, nice win in the quarter. Packaging Corporation of America, again, outside of our user base for the quarter. Eaton, leather manufacturer. [Inaudible] in the Netherlands.

I could go on, which, in the sake of time, I won't, although I mentioned Ashford Hospitality. These are, again, outside our user base that are brand-new customers to Oracle in the area of ERP. In HCM, Abu Dhabi Airports; ADT; Alorica; BLOM BANK; Great Canadian Gaming. We had a really nice win in the company called the Nova Healthcare.

This again was not inside our user base. These were attritional Lawson customer, where we actually get multipillar ERP back-office and HCM connected together. So anyway, I'll stop there in the sake of time, but just to really, again, very impressive set of customers and a good mix of net new logos as well as movement from our user base. We had a pretty good quarter and it was some really quality names on the platform side.

Fair Isaac, Generali insurance services in Italy; JOANN Stores; Trans Italia; Unicorp, I mean some really nice beginnings of what you're seeing as we move toward Gen 2 cloud and Autonomous Database. I did want to make a couple of quick comments in our growing relationship with The Gap. So it was a global retailer. It's, I think, most of you know with revenue of greater than $16 billion, and we've been working with The Gap in their transformation to what's really a multi-cloud environment but using many, many Oracle Technologies, may include really everything we got SaaS, PaaS, delivering innovation, reliability and scalability at every turn.

And as part of even the things they're using in the private cloud, those are all really enabled by Exadata, and we're really thrilled to be Gap's strategic partner in their efforts to spin up their new retail brands and stores faster. And so that's the few quick wins for the quarter. So overall, good solid quarter for us on the income statement side, but also in the quality of these bookings that we're describing or that I have been describing. And with that, I'll turn it over to Larry.

Larry Ellison -- Chairman and Chief Technology Officer

Thank you, Mark. Oracle's future rests on two strategic businesses: cloud applications and Cloud Infrastructure. The growth in our cloud applications business has been driven by our Fusion Suite and NetSuite. Both the Fusion Suite of applications and NetSuite are growing very, very rapidly, and Mark gave you the numbers.

As the names imply, both Fusion and NetSuite are integrated suites of applications, including sales, service, human resources, financials, supply chain and manufacturing applications. No other cloud services provider has such a comprehensive suite of applications covering both the front office and the back office. Most customers want their cloud services provider to make their applications work together. Customers do not like to be responsible for the complex process of integrating lots of different applications, running on lots of different vendors' clouds.

We think our integrated suite approach to the cloud applications business is a primary reason for the very rapid growth in our cloud applications market share. The introduction of our Gen 2, a highly secure infrastructure, featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database has been very well received. During Q3, we had nearly 1,000 paying Autonomous Database customers and over 4,000 active trials. Our infrastructure technology is highly differentiated from AWS.

Each one of our cloud computers has a separate security processor and memory to insulate customers from intruding upon each other. And it also makes our cloud control code inaccessible by customers. No other cloud services provider offers this kind of protection across their entire public cloud. The Oracle Autonomous Database is the only database that can respond to a security threat by automatically patching itself while it's still running your application.

No downtime is required. No other database has this capability. Oracle Technology leadership in cloud infrastructure and database plus our market leadership in cloud applications makes us very optimistic about our future. I'll turn it back to you, operator. 

Questions and Answers:

Ken Bond -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Operator, if we could move to the Q&A portion of the call, please?

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Heather Bellini with Goldman Sachs.

Heather Bellini -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mark. I wanted to ask a question of you. Last month when we were together at our tech conference, you reiterated that fiscal second half '19 sales growth would accelerate on a constant-currency basis versus the first half, and I'm not trying to be nitpicky but I think it doesn't look like it's accelerating much.

So I was just wondering if anything changed. And I also wanted to ask about fiscal '20, which you've just mentioned that fiscal '20 constant currency growth would be higher than fiscal '19. I guess what I'm wondering is should we be thinking that that constant currency growth acceleration that you're referring to for fiscal '20 is similar to the type of acceleration on the second half of fiscal '19? Or could it be more meaningful? Thank you.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

Yes. So let's go back to it. I think '19 will grow faster than '18. Second half is, whatever adjective is around it, grow faster than first half.

FY '20, faster than '19. When you're getting underneath at what are the drivers, at a big level, first, our growing businesses are becoming a bigger part of our total than our other businesses. So as an example, just one example, cloud ERP gets bigger, hardware gets smaller, obviously, those have offsetting effects. In addition, we have the things that attach with that, for example, our consulting services business now in on-premise has been declining, but our cloud consulting is inclining as does our overall bookings.

So as a result, these just offset each other. Within it, clearly, I've given you the numbers on certain parts of our apps as the example of ERP and HCM, which are just growing substantively. Larry's comments about Autonomous Database are two huge drivers of growth as we go forward. So I think all of those statements, '19 versus '18, second half, first half, '19 to '20 are all where you're going to see acceleration of top-line growth in CD.

Operator

Your next question comes from John DiFucci with Jefferies and company.

John DiFucci -- Jefferies and Company -- Analyst

Thank you. So your aggregate results have been, I guess, relatively steady might be the right way to characterize it. And during this period, I think investors really appreciate the share buybacks and the dividend, nice dividend increase this quarter. I guess, I want to sort of follow on with that line of thinking, Mark, and this uptick in fiscal '20.

You talked a lot about your cloud apps and we get a lot of information on that, but can you talk a little bit about what extent the database options might be a driver to some of that revenue acceleration? And how big is the middleware business at this point?

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

I'll start. I'll let Larry comment also a bit on the trends. I think, first, just when we get into on the database side, I mean, the big move here is to autonomous. I think we try to give you some numbers of the level of interest.

The level of -- the increased in interest coming from even Q -- end of Q1, early Q2 into Q3 was just substantive. It won't show up in our revenue numbers yet, but I'm talking about in terms of trials and people testing, and now, frankly, people buying. And what we've even seen is -- what's really nice, somebody buying something for as small as 15, 20, 25K as their first move into Autonomous Database, and actually even within the quarter making a second purchase that turns into 200K, 250K, these are really encouraging early signs for us. And then to the point that you bring up, we just don't get the database, we get analytics, we get other services that come with it.

So as we continue to convert trials into real usage, real usage into expansion, this becomes a core key driver as we move forward. I'll let Larry follow on with other parts of the options.

Larry Ellison -- Chairman and Chief Technology Officer

Yes. As people use Autonomous Database in the public cloud, they typically got and buy the multitenant option and the Real Application Cluster option, which are required options for Autonomous Database. So there's no question that the introduction of Autonomous Database and the consumption of Autonomous Database as that accelerates, will increase the license purchases of those two options.

John DiFucci -- Jefferies and Company -- Analyst

And just the second part of my question, you used to talk about middleware and how it was -- on-premise middleware stuff wasn't growing all that -- or is declining. I'm just curious, can you tell us even just roughly how big that is at this point? Because Mark, you sort of alluded to some of these other businesses that weren't growing or getting smaller and smaller.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

We never break that out, John. So to my knowledge, unless -- I'm not going to break -- I'm not going to start breaking that today. But clearly, middleware is moving, if you will, from, like everything else, from on-premise into the cloud. We've got a full suite of services in the cloud, but we're not going to break it out into a discrete business today.

Larry Ellison -- Chairman and Chief Technology Officer

Yes. I can tell you a couple of parts in middleware are doing quite well. I mean I think it's a mixed story. I think analytics are doing very well in the cloud as Mark mentioned, 20% of Autonomous Database goes up with analytics and John, we had a very good quarter.

John DiFucci -- Jefferies and Company -- Analyst

Thank you.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

One last point while -- since we did do a little bit of that. Security is faster growing businesses as we can have within the context of the middleware business as well. So again, the problem, middleware, it's not a thing. It's multiple products within it.

Some, like many things we've talked about, many things growing fast and things declining simultaneously.

John DiFucci -- Jefferies and Company -- Analyst

It's great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Phil Winslow with Wells Fargo.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my question. I just want to build on John's question there about the reacceleration ahead of us in database. When I think about what really differentiates Oracle and cloud, it's the Gen 2 OCI that we continue to get increasing positive data points on but then also adding autonomous platform on top of it.

And so my question is with the TOMS data warehouse being out for a year and the transactional processing being out since August. How should we be thinking about those two kind of combined to the reacceleration on top of ACI? And you mentioned the 1,000 customers and 4,000 trials, what is actually the driver of people shifting over? Is it speed? Is it cost? Is it performance? Just some more color on that would be great, so timing and then why.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

I'll let Larry start.

Larry Ellison -- Chairman and Chief Technology Officer

OK. All right. So the driver is many different things. Some of our customers were stunned that they can get a database up and running in five minutes.

So we've been collecting references and studying the 1,000 customers and the 4,000 trials, and what they find encouraging about the Autonomous Database. Certainly, we'll call it productivity improvements. The fact that they can go from not having a database, not having a hardware, literally log on to our cloud, create an instance, get -- move their data and be up and running and doing the useful things in five minutes is proving to be a shock to a lot of our customers. So getting things up and running quickly.

Productivity has been a very big issue. We've got one customer who's done a series of tests, they were an AWS user, and I know we have these ads that promise cut your AWS bill in half. They found that we were running 11.5 times faster than they were running in AWS, and they cut their bill by 80%. So that's -- and these are university researchers, so they're very, very cost sensitive and they felt it was worthwhile making the move just because we were much less expensive.

Autonomous Database was way less expensive than Redshift or Aurora at Amazon. Some people, they had an existing data warehouse and with just the compatibility, being able to take an existing data warehouse, not spooling up a new one in five minutes, but taking an existing data warehouse, lifting it and shifting it over. So we're seeing all three of those use cases. Productivity -- motivators, I should say.

Productivity, compatibility and cost, all driving the usage of Autonomous Database.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

So I'd say that we've never had a release in the database area where we could actually talk to a CEO about what was in the release and the CEO would go, I completely get it. I mean it's not like we're talking about partitioning or something like that. When you talk about the fact that this database patches itself, our customers at the CEO level now understand what a patch is. They understand why it's so important, why it's so strategic.

They, in many cases, have to discuss it with their audit committees. And the fact that now patching goes from a problem to where they pass that to us and it gets done instantaneously, we have many customers who said, if this thing did nothing but that, I would migrate to Autonomous Database. If the fact that -- you add to the fact to Larry's point that this database tunes itself, creates all its own index, is it actually it's labor less and can you reapply talent to another area. If it did nothing but that, it would be valuable.

If it did nothing but give you better security and give you pricing performance, and so this is a release that the reason you're seeing the trials and the level why you hear our enthusiasm the way it is, is the customer response is just extremely high because it just makes business sense. This isn't something sold five levels down or four levels down in the order. This can be sold at the top of the company, if you will, at the CEO level. So it's why it's such an exciting release test because at this point it has so many business benefits to our customers as opposed to maybe the fact that you would think of traditionally many of our benefits being, if you will, technical.

It's different explaining to a CEO what multitenant is and what in-memory is than frankly the benefits I've just described.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Well, knowing how much we spend on patching, I've got a lead for your CRMs with them.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

I'll stop -- I won't get too specific into your situation, but you're a good use case with a -- a very large bank with a tremendous amount of Oracle that, frankly, in many ways, done a fantastic job, but still has a window that has to be closed. And this -- in terms of patch deployment, then this is one vehicle to -- certainly, a vehicle and the only vehicle I'm aware of to get that done.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Well, if Safra can give me some coentertainment for that reference, that will be great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays.

Raimo Lenschow -- Barclays -- Analyst

Hey. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to go back to the apps ecosystem. Mark, can you talk about NetSuite because that's accelerated again this quarter.

And obviously, just wondering, like look, when we talked about a few quarters ago, it was like we tried to bring it over 20, but now we're in the high 20s, was there anything special going on? Or is that kind of -- is there anything in terms of new run rate that we need to be aware of?

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

Well, I mean, as I've said on multiple calls in a row, they've been doing very well. I mean, this started tremendous acceleration we have last Q4 when their bookings growth was over 70%. And you're just beginning to see that turn into now revenue. So I believe the new rate is sustainable.

And I actually think we can do better. And our strategy has been very simple, and -- but I know I've said it before, but it's been, frankly, no more complicated than adding salespeople internationally and domestically. We've done both to, if you will, localize the product for more countries. We've done many new countries that we've now released.

In addition to that, we've been building out more verticals, what we call SuiteSuccess, where we actually bundled in the implementation with what we sell. And that's very, very popular with our customers. And so I think the team has also done a marvelous job executionally. And it's -- I know I say my comments pretty quick, but as much as the revenue grew in the quarter, our bookings actually grew faster than the revenue.

And so we're very excited about NetSuite. We have been excited about NetSuite, and I think that we'll continue to perform. And I actually think we can do better than even what I've just described today.

Raimo Lenschow -- Barclays -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Turits with Raymond James.

Michael Turits -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Good evening. So you've been seeing accelerating growth in cloud, ERP and HCM and other areas of cloud. Is that growing -- accelerating enough and becoming a big enough piece of the business that we can now start to see an acceleration in the cloud business overall, which has had some other headwinds.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

I mean, I guess I'll start. As I said in my comments, ERP and HCM are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our business. I mean, today, our annual SaaS revenues, ERP and HCM is approaching $3 billion. It's growing sort of mid-20s.

And I think it's going to get nothing but better than better. Again, I don't want to get too positive. Only in the context that we're beginning to see acceleration in some key parts. So we're very focused on our competitors by brand and by industry.

We deploy our sales force against those brands and against those industries as well as into our own user base. And the reason I read the references the way I read them was so you get a flavor that both our own user base is beginning to move in bigger numbers as well as the fact that we get competitive. Remember, most of that user base is not sitting with us or our traditional on-premise competitor. So yes, I mean, clearly it's a point to what I made earlier, and I'll stop after this to say that our growing businesses are becoming bigger and bigger, and you start putting the growth rates I'm describing on numbers like $3 billion, and you can do your own math.

And so we're very confident, and feel very good about our position in those businesses.

Michael Turits -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Thanks, Mark. And if I could a follow-up quick one for Safra. Safra, you managed to keep capex low even with the OCI investment, any reason to expect a change in that trajectory? Will we be spending more capital?

Safra Catz -- Chief Executive Officer

No. I'd say it should be very similar this next quarter to this past quarter. And for the year, it's basically the same. Just a little bit less than last year.

So that's kind of what we're looking at. Of course, if there's a huge opportunity, we may push the gaps a little more. But you have to understand that our SaaS operation is really, really coming and we're getting enormous economies of scale there. That's why the margins keep improving, and so we're able to sort of do it all within the same investment envelope so far.

Michael Turits -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Thank you, guys.

Operator

Your next question comes from Mark Moerdler with Bernstein Research.

Mark Moerdler -- Bernstein Research -- Analyst

Thank you very much for taking my question. I'm going to do something I haven't done in a while, I'm going to take a bit of liberty and ask two questions. The first is for Safra. You talked a bit on the call about cash flow, which has grown double digits, but was down roughly 1%, and you gave some color on the call, but can you talk a little bit more about the underlying factors here? Was timing or your definition of when you recognize cash flow having an impact? Are there other things that are impacting that cash? And then I have a follow-up for more.

Safra Catz -- Chief Executive Officer

I mean there are two things going on. If you look just at the quarter, it's nothing but cash collections, timing of cash collections. Nothing more really than that to focus in on. If you look at year to date, which you may look at in one of the other schedule, it's that and some tax payments.

And that's really the two things going on. So nothing special going on. It happens every once in a while. If you look back previous years, you will see that, and it's a very Q3 thing, frankly because, by then, we're collecting up a lot of previous quarters' bookings -- billings, excuse me, so that's really it.

Nothing special.

Mark Moerdler -- Bernstein Research -- Analyst

Then as a follow-up to Mark, given some color on the Autonomous Database, like can you specifically discuss the types of workloads that are driving adoption of autonomous, and especially new clients, for -- autonomous revenue clients to the Oracle Database?

Safra Catz -- Chief Executive Officer

Larry?

Larry Ellison -- Chairman and Chief Technology Officer

I think the question police ought to get you for announcing you're going to ask two questions as opposed to just doing it.

Mark Moerdler -- Bernstein Research -- Analyst

Sorry, Mark. I said I'd be polite about it.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

Yes. No, that was very thoughtful. Larry, you want to start in on that one?

Larry Ellison -- Chairman and Chief Technology Officer

Sure. I mean, there are a lot -- database does a lot of different things. The researchers that I mentioned earlier that are moving from AWS for a big cost savings, they're doing a combination of machine learning and computer vision to look at tissue samples and detect anomalous cells. Cancer based kit are using computers to diagnose cancer and then that's a combination of machine learning and the Autonomous Database.

And that's an all new application. So there are several people that are coming in with all new applications in the cloud. Especially the ones moving from AWS. Then there are traditional on-premise customers, who are simply taking one of their millions of Oracle databases, there are millions of these things out there and just lifting one of those databases either transaction processing and the associated application, either transaction processing application or a data warehousing application, just lifting it intact, moving the data over and moving the application over to compute, moving the data over to Autonomous Database, and running the same exact thing in the cloud.

They're experiencing, sometimes shocking performance improvements also. I know we have one customer that moved from on-premise into the cloud and the cloud system ran many times faster than their on-premise system. Then there are customers that are moving new -- existing big Oracle customers that are moving new development. The new applications that they're developing from developing them on-premise, they move test and development into the cloud.

And they are the ones that, again, the general reaction there is they're much, much more productive getting running. It's much cheaper to do test and development, much more responsive, much more productive to move test and development from their on-premise infrastructure to the cloud infrastructure. So online transaction and processing, lifting and shifting applications, data warehousing lifting and shifting, test and development, moving from AWS, there are lots of different use cases.

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

Just a couple of quick follow ons, one, I'm doing this off the top of my head, Mark, but I'm roughly right. 20% of our customers in autonomous data warehouse or in Autonomous Database right now are net new to Oracle, we did not have them before, net new. And 80% are in our user base, roughly 70%, 75%, there's net no competition at all and the transaction is simply, as Larry described, a migration. 75% are actually into the LOB as opposed to IT, which I look at is very good news as well.

So we've got a lot of underpinning improving dynamics -- in my opinion, they're improving dynamics, in terms of net new customers in addition to moving of our database and certainly analytical data warehousing is probably the biggest individual driver of anything we've got.

Mark Moerdler -- Bernstein Research -- Analyst

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Operator

And your next question comes from Brad Zelnick with Credit Suisse.

Brad Zelnick -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Excellent. Thanks so much. My question is for Mark. Mark, as we think about the traction you're seeing in cloud ERP and where the demand is coming from, there's the massive on-premise install base opportunity, but I think some might not appreciate that more than half of the market is the long tail of niche legacy vendors that most people haven't even heard of.

Can you just give us a sense for your success in displacing that long tail? How much you think you're participating there versus the more usual suspects?

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

By the way, I think that's exactly right, what you said. So I think it's common thought that the ERP market on-premise is dominated by two vendors: Oracle and the company from Germany. And those two vendors together have less than 50% of the market. We have more Fortune 500 customers, for example.

They have many big customers, but the blizzard of implementations -- or there's a blizzard of companies that have the more than 50% market share, 54%, 55%, most of them have moved into private equity. They're not even public companies. They're on their second or third term through private equity. They've got no migration plan to the cloud.

They've got 2G -- I could go on and on with all of these. And that's why as I mentioned earlier, we actually line up our development resources and our sales resources, very focused on these competitors. They would have names like, I mentioned a couple like McCormack & Dodge, if you've heard of them. IBM, believe it or not, actually has got an old ERP system.

There's a company called Deltek, I mean, there's a company called Lawson, a company called ETHICA, there's tens and tens of these to your point, and these are old, old pieces of code. These need to move. They need to move to a more modern platform and they are, perhaps, as attractive as any other market. And in fairness, our user base actually knows our cloud roadmap.

They actually have confidence in our R&D. They know we're going to be there to migrate them when they want to be there. They actually have less of a sense of urgency, in many cases, to move than the companies you're describing, Brad, because they're in much more desperate situations without a roadmap, without knowing how they're going to get from here to there, knowing their competitors are beginning to move. So we have as much success today, and if you ask one of our salespeople, would you rather have one of these competitive territories where you're going after one of these niche vendors? Or would you rather have an E-Business Suite territory? Many of our salespeople say give me that competitive territory because there's an absolute need to move as quick as you can.

So yes, it's an incredibly attractive market and it's why you hear us keep talking about it so much because the addition of fact is when we sell ERP, we continue to see an attach rate to HCM, and, frankly, an attach rate to even some of our other apps in the CX and front office area as well, so it's why we're so focused on that opportunity.

Brad Zelnick -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Awesome. Thanks for the color.

Operator

I will now turn the call back over to Ken Bond.

Ken Bond -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

OK, great. Thank you. A telephone replay of this conference call will be available for 24 hours. Dial-in information can be found in the press release issued earlier today.

Please call the Investor Relations department for any follow-up questions from this call, and we look forward to speaking with you. Thank you for joining us today. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for closing.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 46 minutes

Call Participants:

Ken Bond -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Safra Catz -- Chief Executive Officer

Mark Hurd -- Chief Executive Officer

Larry Ellison -- Chairman and Chief Technology Officer

Heather Bellini -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

John DiFucci -- Jefferies and Company -- Analyst

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Raimo Lenschow -- Barclays -- Analyst

Michael Turits -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Mark Moerdler -- Bernstein Research -- Analyst

Brad Zelnick -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

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Top 5 Financial Stocks To Invest In 2019

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Tuesday morning brought a bit of a letdown for the stock market, as major indexes pulled back from their big gains from before the holiday weekend. As of 11 a.m. EST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) was down 32 points to 25,851. Elsewhere, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) lost a fraction of a point to 2,775, but the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) rose 8 points to 7,480.

Earnings season has continued to give a largely positive reading on the U.S. economy, and certain companies releasing their latest financials today had some encouraging things to add. Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) issued their quarterly reports Tuesday morning, and although they're in very different industries, both showed signs of strength heading into 2019.

The big-box giant heads for the e-commerce world

Shares of Walmart jumped 3% after the retail giant released its fourth-quarter financial report. News from the Arkansas-based big-box retailer was good, with revenue growing 2% and adjusted earnings per share rising 6% from year-earlier levels. Comparable sales in the U.S. climbed 4.1%, accelerating from its 2.8% pace in the fourth quarter of the previous year on solid results from the company's namesake Walmart stores and its Sam's Club warehouse locations.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Invest In 2019: INTL FCStone Inc.(INTL)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Logan Wallace]

    INTL FCStone (NASDAQ:INTL) released its earnings results on Tuesday. The financial services provider reported $1.18 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the Zacks’ consensus estimate of $0.98 by $0.20, Bloomberg Earnings reports. INTL FCStone had a positive return on equity of 3.32% and a negative net margin of 0.02%.

  • [By Shane Hupp]

    INTL FCStone (NASDAQ:INTL) was upgraded by investment analysts at TheStreet from a “c” rating to a “b-” rating in a note issued to investors on Monday.

  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    INTL Fcstone (NASDAQ:INTL) and OTC Markets Group (OTCMKTS:OTCM) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, risk and profitability.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Invest In 2019: Argo Group International Holdings Ltd.(AGII)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Max Byerly]

    Lord Abbett & CO. LLC purchased a new position in shares of Argo Group (NASDAQ:AGII) in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund purchased 840,251 shares of the insurance provider’s stock, valued at approximately $48,230,000. Lord Abbett & CO. LLC owned approximately 2.49% of Argo Group as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    Argo Group (NASDAQ: AGII) and Stewart Information Services (NYSE:STC) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, risk, earnings, dividends, institutional ownership, profitability and analyst recommendations.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Barclays PLC raised its stake in Argo Group (NASDAQ:AGII) by 25.3% during the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 8,691 shares of the insurance provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 1,754 shares during the period. Barclays PLC’s holdings in Argo Group were worth $499,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Invest In 2019: First Bancorp(FBNC)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FBNC) has been assigned a consensus recommendation of “Buy” from the seven brokerages that are covering the company, Marketbeat Ratings reports. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have issued a buy rating on the company. The average 1-year price objective among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $41.50.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    Bank of New York Mellon Corp cut its stake in First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FBNC) by 2.5% in the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 193,183 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after selling 4,992 shares during the quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp owned about 0.65% of First Bancorp worth $7,903,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FBNC)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reaffirmed by analysts at Brean Capital in a note issued to investors on Monday.

  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FBNC) was upgraded by equities researchers at BidaskClub from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note issued to investors on Thursday.

  • [By Logan Wallace]

    First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FBNC) CEO Richard H. Moore purchased 1,250 shares of First Bancorp stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, September 19th. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $39.79 per share, with a total value of $49,737.50. Following the acquisition, the chief executive officer now owns 139,935 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,568,013.65. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Invest In 2019: SL Green Realty Corporation(SLG)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Max Byerly]

    Sterlingcoin (CURRENCY:SLG) traded flat against the dollar during the one day period ending at 9:00 AM Eastern on October 1st. In the last week, Sterlingcoin has traded 3.1% higher against the dollar. One Sterlingcoin coin can currently be purchased for about $0.0337 or 0.00000516 BTC on exchanges. Sterlingcoin has a market capitalization of $143,001.00 and approximately $0.00 worth of Sterlingcoin was traded on exchanges in the last 24 hours.

  • [By Max Byerly]

    Sterlingcoin (SLG) is a proof-of-stake (PoS) coin that uses the
    X13 hashing algorithm. It was first traded on September 21st, 2014. Sterlingcoin’s total supply is 4,241,006 coins. Sterlingcoin’s official Twitter account is @SterlingcoinSLG and its Facebook page is accessible here. The Reddit community for Sterlingcoin is /r/sterlingcoin and the currency’s Github account can be viewed here. The official website for Sterlingcoin is sterlingcoin.org.

  • [By Shane Hupp]

    Sterlingcoin (CURRENCY:SLG) traded down 0.7% against the dollar during the twenty-four hour period ending at 10:00 AM E.T. on September 8th. One Sterlingcoin coin can currently be bought for $0.0303 or 0.00000468 BTC on cryptocurrency exchanges. In the last seven days, Sterlingcoin has traded 26.6% lower against the dollar. Sterlingcoin has a total market cap of $128,686.00 and approximately $20.00 worth of Sterlingcoin was traded on exchanges in the last 24 hours.

  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Swiss National Bank lessened its stake in SL Green Realty (NYSE:SLG) by 13.9% during the 1st quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 315,900 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock after selling 51,200 shares during the period. Swiss National Bank owned 0.35% of SL Green Realty worth $30,589,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Top 5 Financial Stocks To Invest In 2019: 1st Source Corporation(SRCE)

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Joseph Griffin]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on 1st Source (SRCE)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    1st Source (NASDAQ:SRCE) was upgraded by stock analysts at BidaskClub from a “strong sell” rating to a “sell” rating in a note issued to investors on Thursday.

  • [By Ethan Ryder]

    Get a free copy of the Zacks research report on 1st Source (SRCE)

    For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

  • [By Stephan Byrd]

    1st Source (NASDAQ:SRCE) was downgraded by investment analysts at BidaskClub from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report issued on Thursday.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Short Interest in Spark Therapeutics Inc (ONCE) Decreases By 56.9%

Spark Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ONCE) was the recipient of a large drop in short interest in the month of February. As of February 28th, there was short interest totalling 2,487,319 shares, a drop of 56.9% from the February 15th total of 5,772,685 shares. Approximately 7.1% of the company’s shares are sold short. Based on an average trading volume of 5,623,886 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 0.4 days.

ONCE has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Credit Suisse Group upgraded Spark Therapeutics from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and decreased their price target for the stock from $48.00 to $44.00 in a report on Friday, November 16th. Raymond James reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Spark Therapeutics in a report on Monday, November 26th. William Blair reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Spark Therapeutics in a report on Monday, December 3rd. Cantor Fitzgerald set a $103.00 price target on Spark Therapeutics and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, December 3rd. Finally, Zacks Investment Research downgraded Spark Therapeutics from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, January 9th. Seventeen investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, five have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. The stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $77.26.

Get Spark Therapeutics alerts:

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Alliancebernstein L.P. grew its stake in shares of Spark Therapeutics by 38.3% in the 3rd quarter. Alliancebernstein L.P. now owns 531,184 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock valued at $28,976,000 after buying an additional 147,158 shares during the period. MetLife Investment Advisors LLC lifted its position in Spark Therapeutics by 55.2% in the 3rd quarter. MetLife Investment Advisors LLC now owns 22,426 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock valued at $1,223,000 after acquiring an additional 7,972 shares in the last quarter. Trexquant Investment LP bought a new position in Spark Therapeutics in the 3rd quarter valued at about $881,000. Elk Creek Partners LLC lifted its position in Spark Therapeutics by 107.6% in the 3rd quarter. Elk Creek Partners LLC now owns 215,728 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock valued at $11,768,000 after acquiring an additional 111,820 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Bank of Montreal Can lifted its position in Spark Therapeutics by 1,045.4% in the 3rd quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 3,253 shares of the biotechnology company’s stock valued at $177,000 after acquiring an additional 2,969 shares in the last quarter.

Shares of ONCE opened at $113.92 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.09, a current ratio of 10.71 and a quick ratio of 10.36. The stock has a market capitalization of $4.33 billion, a PE ratio of -53.99 and a beta of 2.06. Spark Therapeutics has a one year low of $34.53 and a one year high of $114.20.

Spark Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ONCE) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, February 19th. The biotechnology company reported ($1.75) EPS for the quarter, missing the Thomson Reuters’ consensus estimate of ($0.86) by ($0.89). The firm had revenue of $13.15 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $26.76 million. Spark Therapeutics had a negative net margin of 121.78% and a negative return on equity of 14.66%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 47.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned ($1.63) earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Spark Therapeutics will post -4.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

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Spark Therapeutics Company Profile

Spark Therapeutics, Inc focuses on the development of gene therapy products for patients suffering from debilitating genetic diseases. Its products include LUXTURNA (voretigene neparvovec), which is in Phase III clinical trial for the treatment of genetic blinding conditions caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene; and SPK-CHM that is in Phase I/II clinical trial for the treatment of choroideremia.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Tarena International (TEDU) Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Image source: The Motley Fool.

Tarena International (NASDAQ:TEDU)Q4 2018 Earnings Conference CallMarch 11, 2019, 9:00 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Q4 2018 Tarena International Inc., Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and answer session. (Operator Instructions) I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today March 12, 2019.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ms. Lei Song. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Lei Song -- Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Hello everyone, and welcome to Tarena's fourth quarter 2018 earnings conference call. The Company's earnings results were released earlier today, and are available on our IR website, ir.tedu.cn, as well as our newswire services.

Today, you will hear opening remarks from Tarena's Founder, Chairman and CEO, Mr. Shaoyun Han followed by our Chief Financial Officer, Dennis Yang, who will take you through the Company's operational and financial results for the fourth quarter 2018 and give guidance for the first quarter and full year of 2019. After their prepared remarks, Mr. Han and Mr. Yang will be available to answer your questions.

Before we continue, please note that the discussion today will contain certain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Tarena does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law.

Also, please note that some of the information to be discussed includes non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G. The US GAAP financial measures and the information reconciling these non-GAAP financial measures to Tarena's financial results prepared in accordance with US GAAP are included in Tarena's earnings release, which has been posted on the Company's IR website at ir.tedu.cn.

Finally, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call is available on Tarena's Investor Relations website. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Shaoyun Han, Tarena's Founder, Chairman and CEO. Mr. Han will speak in Mandarin and Mr. Yang will translate.

Shaoyun Han -- Chief Executive Officer

(Foreign Language) Thank you Lei and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter 2018 earnings conference call.

(Foreign Language) I am very pleased to report that our net revenues in the year of 2018 increased year-over-year by 13.5% to reach RMB2.2 billion. The fourth quarter revenue contributed RMB615 million which is consistent with in the same period last year.

During this quarter our key programming education business has once more achieved rapid growth, in both student enrollment and revenue recognition. We enrolled 15,233 students during this quarter. The total K-12 business recognized revenue of RMB67 million and received cash of RMB159 million during this quarter, both of which achieved a year-over-year increase more than 300%. For our adult education business we saw a rapid growth year-over -year in student enrollment where our university partnerships, which contributed to an acceleration of enrollment growth in overall adult education business achieving year-over-year increase of 6.3% reaching student enrollment of 36,394.

Meanwhile we continuously improve the profitability of underperforming centers as well as optimize the staffing structure which led to improvement in many efficiency indicators.

(Foreign Language) 2018 was a year of achievement for both new and the traditional business. Also it's very challenging year for us. I would like to present 2018 performances by the following three areas and I'll share with you our 2019 plan.

(Foreign Language) Let's look at retail channel first new revenue (ph). In 2018 the Company operational cost has increased, which resulted in a decrease in profitability. The main reason was that we opened more than 40 centers in 2017, many of which were impacted by market economy and IT training market environment and did not meet our expectations in 2018. We have closed or merged underperforming centers in the second quarter to respond to the unfavorable market conditions. At the same time we continuously optimize the cost structure staffing structure and acquisition channels.

These matters significantly lower the number of nonperforming centers. In addition we also put a lot of efforts to improve teaching quality, which led job placement result even better. Based on the recent business data six month post-graduation job placement rate growth improved to 97% and the employment speed also improved. We gained widely recognition from our students with good teaching service quality which helped us to recruit more students through student referrals.

(Foreign Language) In 2019 our retail business report some recovering profitability. Operating KPI were not limited to contract revenue and contract profits. It also emphasized on operating cash flow to encourage cash collection and to improve operating efficiency. We believe that our retail business will regain its profitability gradually.

(Foreign Language) For university training, 2018 is a year of transformation and capital investment for our university partnership business. With support from government policy encouraging cooperation between schools and companies we successfully explored a featured program business model that schools provide teaching venues and academic credit flexibility, while Tarena provides faculty resources and builds teaching facilities. Both parties operate the teaching -- training center together on campus. Different from joint major programs the enrollment of featured program is up to student's decision and does not need government approval.

In 2018, we have established featured program partnership with more than 100 universities and we have built more than 100 learning centers on campus. Upon completion of the centers we expect to have steady new student enrollment in coming years.

(Foreign Language) Student enrollments through the featured program business model will become a main driver for our adult business growth. In 2018, we recruited approximately 20,000 students through this model. The students are currently in their first year or second year. However, our training is provided in the graduation year. Therefore the corresponding revenue is going to be postponed to be recognized in the year of 2020 and 2021. So the university business net revenue grew -- lagged behind its enrolment growth and also lower than the operating costs increases which brought losses of the university channel business in 2018.

(Foreign Language) Looking forward into 2019 university channel business is going to bear fruit. From 2019 there will be revenues contributed from the students enrolled in a year of 27 university programs. We will also enroll more students in their final year on campus. We believe that these measures will significantly reduce losses from university business.

(Foreign Language) Let's move on to Kid business 2018 is a year of rapid growth for our Kid's Education business. By the end of 2018 after adding 118 new Kid centers in the year we operated 148 learning centers covering 53 cities. Kid's business recorded a full year net revenues of RMB176 million and the total cash received from tuition fees were RMB455 million, achieving more than 400% year-over-year growth.

(Foreign Language) Looking forward into 2019, Kid Education Business is going to enter in period of steady growth. We plan to open about 80 new centers and expect to receive cash of more them RMB850 million, with a 100% annual growth. At the same time we're going to improve existing learning centers' operational efficiency. The KPIs for core management team will include both business growth achievement and profit target completion. We are confident that these changes will gradually improve profitability of Kid centers.

(Foreign Language) To sum up through the adjustment optimization and the investment in 2018, Tarena is entering a period of steady development. Our operation will focus on profitability improvement.

(Foreign Language) With that I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Dennis Yang to discuss quarter operational updates and financial results and outlook for the first quarter 2019 and the full fiscal year.

Yuduo Yang -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Han, and hello everyone on the call. First of all, I'm very pleased to see the higher than expected results in our Kid's Education Business. We believe that in the Kid technology education will become widely known in China, forming a huge market with significant potential and rapid growth. The market size of Kid's programming education in China is expected to reach approximately RMB40 billion in the next three years, with a CAGR of over 50%. In this quarter Tarena's Kid Education Business delivered outstanding results in student enrollment, centers lay out, course development, revenue contribution on the profitability growth for older standards. The student enrollment in Kid Education Business continued the rapid growth, achieving over 300% year-over-year increase, reaching 15,233.

The Company will continue the investment in Kid's Education Business. We newly built 31 centers for our Kid Education in the quarter. By the end of the fourth quarter the Kid Education Business reached 148 centers. On top of that there are also 20 shared learning sites from adult education business, which provides additional classrooms. Our Kid Education Business expanded into 53 cities by the end of this quarter. According to this quarter's financials, Kid Education Business has made greater contributions to the Group.

On one hand the cash received from enrollment reached RMB159 million this quarter, achieving a 400% year-over-year growth and representing approximately 27% of Group's total cash received. On the other hand this quarter net revenue under US GAAP reached at RMB67.2 million for our Kid's business taking around (ph) 11% of the total. We believe the contribution from Kid Education Business will continue to grow in the future and we expect it will gradually become one core driver for Tarena's business growth.

In addition, in 2018 the Company gradually upgraded and improved the course system. We have built a complete Kid's programming course system suitable for kids aged between 3 and 18. The course system will be modified and perfected with more and more practical class experiences. We have also accelerated optimization in the center operation, improved business process standardization and served quality consistency, by which we won wide and positive recognition from our students and parents and made the business model of Kid Centers very replicable.

We will continue our investment in this field. With its extensive education experience in IT area and the solid talent reserve Tarena will be able to keep its leading position in Kid's programming education market by developing diverse courses to maintain its advantage with diversified course system, by standardizing operating procedures to improve the success rate of opening new centers by enhanced operational efficiency and increasing the number of students in schools to improve probability.

We know the recent changes in government regulation related to Kid's education industry. These policies encourage quality oriented extra credit from (ph) education business in order to promote young people's versatile development. Tarena's Kid Education Program consists of computer programming and the robot programming in its goal of quality-oriented courses. These courses focuses on cultivating kid's interest in information technology, programming skills and other standard skills. Therefore we believe that these policy changes are generally good for Kid's programming business.

With the greater importance of information technology and artificial intelligence skills, programming courses are becoming more attractive to young people. We believe this industry is going to experience high speed growth. The Company will keep investing in this area in the next couple of years in terms of new course research and development, network expansion as well as talent recruitment.

Looking to 2019, we expect to continue to expand in K-12 business. We plan to open a total of 80 Kid's Education Centers in 2019, targeting the student enrollment of approximately 80,000 with the tuition cash of RMB850 million. The rapid growth of K-12 education business is also bringing certain short term impact to the financial profit. However in our view it is normal that new business generates temporary financial losses during its rapid growth period.

We closely monitor the cash flows and the probability of each learning center. In general it takes about six months for a Kid Center to have a positive operating cash flow and reach accounting breakeven in about 1.5 years period. We've seen a healthy growth in Tarena's Kid's Education Business and we expect it will start to record the profit in about two years, along with more Kid's learning center become mature and profitable.

These initiatives require more investment and may affect the margin levels in short term, as new centers are still in the ramp up period before they breakeven. However given the broad market prospect and rapid business growth, K-12 business will provide a strong foundation for the companies to grow in future years.

In addition to Kid's Education Business, Tarena's adult education business achieved RMB549 million net revenues in this quarter, representing an 8.7% year-over-year decrease. The year-over-year decrease in student enrollment through retail channel was the primary factor affecting the revenue. The enrollment of adult education business as a whole during this quarter was 36,394, achieving a year-over-year growth of 6.3%.

Enrollment through retail channels delivered 26,802, with a year-over-year decrease of 7.3%, while enrollment through university channels reached 9,592 with a year-over-year growth of 81%. Partnerships with universities become a main driver for the growth -- of growth in student enrollment, through student enrollment. With university partnership model we established deep cooperation with universities. And we are able to have a long-term student enrollment with high volume which will help us to enhance enrollment efficiency and to reduce the student acquisition costs. In this way our adult education business will maintain a continuous growth.

Usually the courses last two to four years under university partnership model, and revenue recognition period is also lengthened accordingly. Certain tuition with signed contracts is to be recognized in later years when education service will be delivered. This results in a gap between the rate of enrollment and the revenue growth. In terms of course contribution in adult business, Python, Big Data and the Linux Cloud computing course have become popular, contributing a total of 5,953 students in this quarter, or 59% year-over-year growth.

We expect that artificial intelligence-related courses will continue to grow in the future. Responding to current market changes Tarena starts to develop continuing education courses to meet demand from the large number of people to upgrade their skills for future career advancement through taking professional training.

Looking forward in 2019 Tarena plans to meet the diverse needs from different groups of people through a richer curriculum system, so that it can be better cope with the fluctuations in the market cycle, achieving steady growth in adult education business. During this quarter the Company continues to emphasize on resources distribution at the same time we made efforts to optimize human resources to improve operational efficiency.

In this quarter the Company closed or merged a total of 12 adult learning center, and entered into new one -- one new city, Baoding. By the end of this quarter we operated 184 adult learning centers in 70 cities. Seat capacity at the end of 2018 was 56,585, which represent 0.7% year-over-year decrease. By optimizing the seat layout the seat utilization rate improved to 71.6% as compared to the utilization of 69.6% in the same period last year.

This quarter we are further optimizing sales and marketing team and saw improvement in enrollment efficiency. For example, the student acquisition cost per student of adult education business was RMB 5,861, which is the lowest of -- in the past four quarters. The improvement in seat utilization rate and sales per capita productivity mentioned above proved the effectiveness of center resources optimization strategy. We believe that this strategy will have positive impact to future profit recovery.

And now let me address some more key item in income statement. Firstly gross margin in first quarter declined by 19 percentage points, year-over-year to 53.7%. Such a decline in gross margins mainly due to the following reasons. First, K-12 business gross margin dropped by approximately 800 bps. The Company built up 100 Kid's Learning centers in the past 12 months and by the end of this year we operated 148 centers, most of which have not yet reached an ideal utilization level.

Current gross margin of K-12 business is significantly lower than the margin of our traditional adult training business. Second less revenue recognized from adult business during the quarter brought around 400 to 500 bps impact on achieved margin. Because of slow down in retail channel and the referral (ph) of contract revenue from a student under university partnership programs, the revenue of adult business in this quarter decreased by RMB50 (ph) million as compared with the net revenue in the quarter a year ago. We expect the GP margin recovery for both adult and Kid's business, when the Company takes profits first strategy for adult business, where we focus more on operational efficiency than business expansion.

Meanwhile we expect GP margin improvement in Kid business because more Kid's learning centers are operated for more than one year and those learning centers start to make a profit.

Now let's take a look at G&A expenses. For the fourth quarter the Company record bad debt allowances for doubtful account receivables of RMB52 million to reflect the difficulties in the collection of account receivables from 2017 students. The Company believes that receivable collectability risk around 2017 students have been largely covered by better provisions in our books.

As Mr. Han said cash flow improvement is one of the key performance indicators for our operational team in 2019. Center managers are encouraged to expedite tuition collections from students. As the Company maintains long term partnership with a group of loan providers in our view, relatively high risk of account receivables from 2017 students is an isolated case and won't change long term outlook of bad debt provision levels in our adult business.

Our non-GAAP operating loss in this quarter was RMB166 million lower than non-GAAP operating profit, RMB99.6 million in the same period last year. On one hand in the past years rapid expansion of Kid's education business, more than 100 new learning centers opened and 21 centers were added through acquisition, many of these learning centers are not in the mature and kind of loss making, which led to greater non-GAAP operating losses for the Kid's Education Business in this quarter. We believe that more Kid's Education Centers will start making profit along with the number of students in schools increases.

On the other hand there are non-GAAP operating losses, RMB29 million from adult education business. The reason of a year-over-year decrease in the profits was due to the significant decrease in the revenue from adult business, caused by the smaller number of student recruited through retail channels and additional market cost to achieve the higher enrollment as well as a greater amount of bad debt expenses to doubtful account receivables.

Looking forward to the first quarter 2019, we expect the total net revenue are between RMB395 million and RMB415 million, representing a decrease of 2.9% to an increase of 2.1% on a year-over-year basis. The Company also expects its net revenues for the full year 2019 to be between RMB2,430 million and RMB2,580 million, representing an increase of 8.5% to 15.2% on a year-over-year basis. So operator?

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Your first question is from Mariana Kou from CLSA. Please ask.

Mariana Kou -- CLSA -- Analyst

Hi, good morning management. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions. First one is about the Kid's business. I noticed that I think at as of end of 2018 we are covering about 53 cities. So just wondering what's our strategy there for the Kid's business, are we are looking to kind of do it more of a wider network? Was this going deep into existing cities because I think some of the leading players in like K-12 type children businesses, they are covering a similar range of cities, but definitely got a lot more like hundreds of centers. So just a bit of more thoughts on that would be quite helpful in terms of how we think about margins, operating revenues et cetera from an operational angle.

And a kind of -- more of a -- a little bit followup on the Kid's businesses. If you could also help us understand the breakdown on GP -- because I think just know you shared a bit on the margin driver at Group level but if you could help us get a bit more clarity on the GP margins between those two business -- like adult and K-12 for Q4, because I think Q3 there were some disclosures on the cost of revenues for kids so, we could kind of calculate that adult business was more in the 70s percentage, and K-12 was at a loss level for GP. But if you could help us kind of get some clarity on Q4 margin for those would be helpful.

And I guess lastly is just on the outlook for the full year and also kind of going forward for revenue, do we just expect this more of a high single-digit to low teens revenue growth to be the level that we should be thinking about in the next few years? Thank you.

Shaoyun Han -- Chief Executive Officer

(Foreign-Language) Okay Mr. Han, addressing Miriana's first question about our future Kid's business expansion plan, the Kid's business for Tarena actually leverage our human resources from adult business. As you may know that we operated our adult business in 70 cities. So out of 70 cities we are very quickly to expand our K-12 business in 53 cities. But look if we look into 2019 we plan to focus on first tier cities and those provincial capital cities. So well, we don't expect to expand our K-12 business into more new cities in 2019.

Yuduo Yang -- Chief Financial Officer

So Mariana second question is on margins of K-12 business. I can share with some data, but beware of those data are mostly based on our management report that K-12 gross margin, non-GAAP gross margin about in Q4, about minus -- no, sorry gross profit negative 90 million. So the GP margin about minus 29%.

In terms of operating -- non-GAAP operating losses, which was RMB137 million for the first (ph) quarter, K-12 business. So based on our forecast in the future we would -- if we look per learning center on the K-12 -- K-12 per learning center, we are expect the high teens or low 20s, margin level when the learning center can mature. So this is also the long term perspective, from management perspective for K-12 business.

But considering we have a big portion of the K-12 learning centers operated not reached to the mature level, so we expect still loss making from K-12 business, but we are -- we expect the operating losses from K-12 business will -- getting narrow over the future quarters and you will see those the net operating losses getting narrowed happening over the quarter in 2019. Mariana?

Mariana Kou -- CLSA -- Analyst

Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from Alex Xie from Credit Suisse. Please ask.

Alex Xie -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

HI, management. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly I would like to ask about our adult business. So after closing down the 12 underperforming learning centers in the fourth quarter, how many learning centers are still underperforming in the adult learning center network? How many are we planning to close, say in 2019? And my second question is about the K-12 business. So for the overall K-12 business when do management expect the business to reach breakeven, yeah, thank you?

Yuduo Yang -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you. Alex for the two questions. Your first question, talk about how many non-performing adult learning centers as of now. I -- in my view there are no more than 10 learning centers are still loss making or non-performing. So we about to further optimize those learning centers. However if that optimization doesn't happen, the good results we will continue to -- consider closing those learning centers, 2019.

Your second question about the K-12 business breakeven, as I mentioned that you will see that our operating losses from K-12 business getting narrowed in 2019. I expect we will see the quarter -- quarterly K-12 breakeven in 2020. So sooner or later in 2020 and 2021, our current expectation -- our current forecast shows that 2021 is the first year the K-12 business could be profitable.

Alex Xie -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from Johnny Wong from Jefferies. Please ask.

Johnny Wong -- Jefferies & Co. -- Analyst

Hello. Good morning, management, and thank you for taking my call. My question is in regard to the traditional adult business. I recall that we had a strategy of hiring more sales people to try to increase the sell-through rate of inquiry. But it seems that I think in the fourth quarter our adult enrollment, I believe it probably decreased on a year-to-year basis, especially on the retail side. Can you let me know what the -- how the strategy of increasing the sales force is going, and whether or not we need to rethink about that strategy? Thank you.

Yuduo Yang -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Johnny for the question about our sales strategy. We initially planned to recruit more salespeople to enhance our sales team to drive enrollment, but at the same -- but the overall IT industry saturated recently. So it's pretty challenging for Tarena simply to recruit more people to drive the enrollment. So we -- in doing that we try to focus more on profitability. So we make some changes in our strategy that we try to make more profits over to keep the business expansion.

Shaoyun Han -- Chief Executive Officer

(Foreign Language) Mr. Ham added that the sales people per learning center actually increased -- increases in the past quarters, but we downsized or closed the centers. So we have a chance to -- we have a chance to downsize the overall sales team in Q3 and Q4.

(Foreign Language) From the general sales and marketing costs for students in our adult business we've already seen some positive changes and the decrease of those per student acquisition cost.

Johnny Wong -- Jefferies & Co. -- Analyst

Thank you.

Yuduo Yang -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. I'm sorry, that I need to make a correction that addressing the Alex's question about -- just now, regarding the K-12 breakeven I would say, 2020, we'll see the quarterly breakeven -- sorry. Yeah, 2020, I should say in the 2020 it's likely that we -- we have seen quarterly breakeven for K-12 and 2021, it's likely that we'll see full year breakeven.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We don't have any other questions as of the moment. Presenters please continue.

Yuduo Yang -- Chief Financial Officer

Okay, thank you, operator. If there are no further questions at present we would like to conclude by thanking everyone for joining our conference call. We welcome you to reach out to us directly by emailing at ir.tedu.cn. Should you have any questions or requests for additional information, we encourage you to visit our Investor Relations site at ir.tedu.cn. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen that does conclude our call for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.

Duration: 53 minutes

Call participants:

Lei Song -- Investor Relations

Shaoyun Han -- Chief Executive Officer

Yuduo Yang -- Chief Financial Officer

Mariana Kou -- CLSA -- Analyst

Alex Xie -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Johnny Wong -- Jefferies & Co. -- Analyst

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