Oracle share prices dropped over nine percent following poor third-quarter earnings.

The firm’s total revenue was down one percent in Q3. Oracle missed expectations for the quarter. Company executives blame the poor showing on an influx in new sales staff that led to sales execution issues.

Oracle reported that total revenues for the quarter were down at just under $9bn. The company says it scored third quarter earnings of 65 cents a share. Analysts were expecting shares to gain slightly higher at 66 cents a share and revenues above $9bn for the quarter, according to Reuters.

Following the results, Oracle took a tumble on Wall Street. As of this writing company shares have dropped over nine percent. Shares are currently trading at $32.29.

During a call with investors, Oracle’ chief financial officer Safra Catz said the less than expected revenues were a result of a slew of recent hiring in Oracle’s sales division. According to Catz, new staff training required some of Oracle’s transactions to be pushed out into the next quarter.

Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, disagrees with Catz assessment. Moorhead told V3 that Oracle’s biggest issue is its inability to compete in key markets.

“I don’t see Oracle’s Q3 issues stemming from sales execution. Oracle has two primary issues. First, they aren’t competitive with industry standard x86 servers” Moorhead said.

“Secondly, they came late to the cloud party where most of the growth is coming from. They have a lot of ground to cover in the next few years to catch up with HP.”

Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison famously dismissed cloud computing as a fad in the early days of the platform. The firm has been playing catch up in the market ever since Ellison’s statement.

In the server market, Oracle has also lagged behind its competitors over the past few years. According to a recent Gartner study, Oracle fails to match IBM, Dell, and HP in overall revenue from server sales.