Oracle saw its total revenues fall once again as it posted its fiscal 2016 Q2 earnings results, but the database giant can take encouragement from substantial growth in its cloud business that helped the company to beat out Wall Street analyst’s expectations.

The Redwood City, California-based giant posted total revenues of $8.9 billion for the quarter, six percent less than the $9.5 billion it raked in during the same period one year ago. Even more concerning is the company’s net income of $2.19 billion, which amounts to 12 percent decline from the $2.5 billion it made one year ago. That led to earnings per share of $0.63, which on the bright side was just ahead of Wall Street’s expected $0.60 per share.

The best news of the day came from Oracle’s cloud department, where revenues hit $649 million, a 26 percent increase from the same quarter last year. However, Oracle’s cloud boost was tempered by a 16 percent decrease in its on-premise hardware revenues, which totaled just $1.12 billion for the quarter.

Nonetheless, in what is rapidly becoming the norm for Oracle’s earnings calls, co-CEOs Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, as well as CTO and chairman Larry Ellison, all sought to play down the slump in on-premise revenues and focus on the company’s sterling cloudy growth.

“We are still on-target to sell and book more than $1.5 billion of new SaaS and PaaS business this fiscal year,” Ellison boasted. “That is considerably more SaaS and PaaS new business than any other cloud services provider including Salesforce.com.”

“We’re very pleased with our non-GAAP EPS of $0.63, beating the mid-point of guidance by 4 cents despite a stronger-than-expected currency headwind,” added co-CEO Safra Catz.

Oracle’s executives were less keen to talk about the drop in on-premise revenues, though they did point to the “strong headwind” regarding the U.S. dollar exchange rate, which they said, was impacting the company’s bottom line.

With the numbers out the way, Ellison used the call as an opportunity to introduce a new board member to the company’s shareholders. The CTO said that former Intel president Renee James had been appointed to the board with immediate effect following a unanimous vote.

“She will bring a unique perspective and tremendous depth of experience and knowledge of the technology industry to our board,” said Ellison, adding that the appointment means Oracle’s board of directors now consists of 13 members.

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