Well, JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens’s assessment of Oracle’s business these past few months was about as wrong as wrong can be, wasn’t it? In early March, Walravens predicted the company’s February quarter would be an abysmal one. “Our due diligence suggests that the February quarter was, in some respects, the worst Oracle has experienced in over 15 years,” he said. “The tone of the commentary from our industry sources regarding new license revenue is the worst we have ever heard.”

Two weeks later the company posts better-than-expected results for that quarter and announces a dividend–its first ever. So much for Walraven’s worst-quarter-in-15-years prediction.

So what did the analyst have to say for himself in light of Oracle’s report? “It surprised me in almost every way,” he told MarketWatch. “[It] doesn’t square with what you hear from people in the industry.”

Well, it certainly doesn’t square with what we were hearing from you, Patrick…

Announced before the bell, the plans had a mixed effect on investors. In Microsoft’s case they pushed the company’s shares up nearly 4 percent in early trading. HP shares gained 1.6 percent before starting to head back down.

The deal, which has been approved by both companies’ boards, calls for Time Warner Cable to pay a hefty $10.9 billion one-time dividend to shareholders. As parent company, Time Warner (TWX) will pocket $9.25 billion of that payout.

It’s a flashy move for Time Warner’s new CEO Jeff Bewkes, who’s been hard pressed to reinvigorate the company’s stock price. “After the transaction, each company will have greater strategic, financial and operational flexibility and will be better positioned to compete,” he said in a statement. “Separating the two companies will help their management teams focus on realizing the full potential of the respective businesses and will provide investors with greater choice in how they own this portfolio of assets.”

That’s all well and good, but how does Time Warner plan to realize the full potential of a $9.25 billion payout? By buying a company or two, perhaps. “Our share of the special dividend will clearly enhance our financial flexibility,” Bewkes said during a conference call this morning. “… We’re looking at all of the usual uses of capital, including returning capital to stockholders, including disciplined acquisitions and including investing further in our business.”

The moves come at a time of growing institutional shareholder dissatisfaction with Comcast (CMCSA). The cable operator’s shares are down nearly 40% in the past year and off by 25% since it gave disappointing 2007 financial guidance in the fall. Suffice it to say, the company’s shareholders are not happy. In a Jan. 14 letter to Comcast, investment firm Chieftain Capital Management accused management of strategic missteps and called CEO Brian (son of Ralph) Roberts’s stewardship of the company over the past decade a Comcastrophe. “The management of this company and supervision by its board have been a ‘Comcastrophe’ for shareholders over the past decade,” Chieftain wrote. “We want and deserve the best CEO Comcast’s board of directors can find–and, based on his record, Brian Roberts is not it.”

Will the concessions Comcast has made to its shareholders silence calls for Roberts’s head? Perhaps. It’s tough to shout epithets at management when the company’s just posted a better-than-expected 54% jump in fourth-quarter net income and announced plans for its first dividend in nearly a decade.

At the time, it seemed the company had no intentions of settling, saying it would rather ship an altered version of Internet Explorer 6 that sidestepped the company’s patent. “We believe we have substantial grounds for reconsideration by the judge,” said Michael Wallent, a general manager in Microsoft’s Windows division. ” … [T]he idea that we would pay more than $630 million ($520.6 million in damages plus $111 million in interest) to get rid of a single mouse click on a small fraction of Web pages is not something that we’re entertaining.”

But after a few more years of pitched battle, Microsoft has apparently softened that stance a bit. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the two companies have finally resolved their differences. According to a letter to Eolas shareholders from COO Mark Swords, the companies settled the case last Friday.

Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed. That said, enough money seems to have changed hands to warrant a dividend of between $60 and $72 per share to shareholders.