San Francisco - Enterprise software maker Oracle posted a 27-per-cent increase in fourth-quarter profit Wednesday, as income rose to 2.04 billion dollars, or 39 cents a share, from 1.6 billion dollars, or 31 cents, in the year-earlier period.

Based in Redwood City, California, Oracle said that it benefited from increases in international sales and rebounding US orders. It was aided by income from new acquisitions including the 8.5-billion- dollar purchase of BEA Systems. Fourth-quarter revenue climbed 24 per cent to 7.24 billion dollars.

For fiscal 2008, Oracle reported 22.6 billion dollars in annual revenue, passing IBM in overall software sales to rank as the world's second-largest software company, after Microsoft Corp.

Oracle said that sales of new software licenses, an indicator of future growth, gained 27 per cent in the quarter to 3.14 billion dollars. Sales of new business applications rose 36 per cent to 989 million dollars, while revenue from new licenses of database and middleware software climbed 23 per cent to 2.16 billion dollars.

Chief executive Larry Ellison said that Oracle had exceeded its five-year plan by delivering earnings per share at a compound annual growth rate of more than 26 per cent, compared with the goal of 20 per cent. (dpa)