Oracle is in course to make Larry Ellison the world’s richest man
economist.comI always find it strange that the “wealth” of people like Larry Ellison is based on the public market price of their companies. He owns 42% or Oracle, and so there is no way that he could realise that value at current market rates. Oracle has more debt than it has assets, and a significant proportion of that debt has been used to implement a stock buy back, putting cash in Larry’s pocket and increasing his ownership share of the company, and therefore his nominal wealth. If the company can keep borrowing it could buy back more of the stock giving him majority ownership of a company that would technically be worth less than nothing, and become the richest man in the world.
Wizardry!
(I know that’s not how valuation of companies like this works, but even so…)
The debt is collaterallised on the assets of the company.
The debt servicing will require income which, which would have been taxed, except that payment of interest is pretax. Therefore, the buyback is beneficial because of the tax savings.
according to yahoo finance the company has a 10 day volume of 16.7 million shares with 2.7 billion shares outstanding
if larry has 1.1 billion shares it would take a few months to unwind that position without much market impact
if he wanted it done faster he would have to pay more though
Do u really think the price would stay stable while the CEO sells of his whole stake?
He would have to sell slowly to get liquidity at a stable price. Which means he would have to file some forms that says he is selling before he can finish, which means he would have to come up with a narrative that's convincing the market that the company is still worth market price.
I'd say It's not impossible but quite unlikely that he can sell it all at current market price.
Not specifically talking about Larry, but large blocks of stock are purchased all the time by a private investor. If someone likes the share price of Oracle times the number of shares owned by Ellison, they could wire Larry the money and he offloads the shares in a single transaction.
Given the right market and regulatory timing, I think an acquisition by one of the largest US techs could pass and be for a bit more than the stock price, though it would probably at least partially be in the merged stock that he would still have to unwind.
> During the company’s latest quarterly earnings call on June 12th the septuagenarian rhapsodised youthfully about artificial intelligence (AI) and the latest cloud-computing technology.
The joy of writing about the rich while ignoring society struggles.- The Economist
Oracle is one of those companies like Microsoft which many in the tech industry wrote off years ago.
Neither one qualified for the illustrious FAANG acronym.
Ideally, when these things happen people would examine their blindspots.
Get rid of fb, enter Microsoft and Oracle
MAANGO
Who is this "many" you speak of? And why are you chiding the hype machine for not including Oracle in its acronym?
Put aside the online rags trying to grab eyeballs and look at investors. My RIA has been using Oracle in portfolios for decades: Oracle has been sitting quietly in my portfolio for over 25 years, just doing its thing being a solid stock and paying dividends. There are many other blue-chips out there that focus on providing a reliable product instead of being some sexy risky growth stock that grabs all the media attention.
I’m still writing Oracle off. It might be profitable but it’s not influential or innovative, and because of the later it will eventually die.
I'm less sure about that. Back in 2007 or so, our company was gobbled up by Oracle. Part of that process, I was the propeller head they sent with the suites to be screened by Larry. Very first question: Why you wearing a suite? He knew our Java app, knew the space, and really asked good questions. One of the more intimidating interviews I've ever done.
The nature of Oracle is they are willing to evaluate if things are working or not. They build in house, they buy where they think they have a gap. The two units will be kept somewhat separate while they compete. Eventually there will be just one. To the outside world, it is a bit of a WTF on the overlapping product list. You see the same sort of competitive, aggressive nature with their Sales folks. Hunters, not farmers. What I don't see Oracle doing is pulling a Rooster.com. They likely will figure out the 'next big thing' by making sure there is a market for it, building internally and then buying up the talent that flew just a tad too close to the sun - and make something that gives a maintenance stream. When you see them doing it, you can bet it has hit the point where it will be profitable for them.
All companies will eventually die. I'm not writing Oracle off, as they don't care about innovation at all. They care about those governmental and corporate contracts that innovative companies shun.
The world is big enough for both to exist.
Actually you're right. I shouldn't say die.
Oracle will fade into obscurity sooner. Like Tivoli or Lotus or Sun.
Absolutely. I am sure their goal is to be another IBM. The less they have to spend on stuff such as R&D the better.
Or IBM?
Richest man?
This is a violation of the well-known rule, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison".
"Larry, you don't need any more money" - Steve Jobs
(https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-larry-ellison-201...)
>Jobs responded by saying, "I think if I went back to Apple and didn't own any of Apple, and you didn't own any of Apple, I'd have the moral high ground."
>Ellison's response: "Steve, that's really expensive real estate, this moral high ground."
I still have vivid memory of this reading it 10+ years ago. It paints so much character to Steve as a person. Which is mostly considered as an Ass Hole on HN post 2014.
A righteous asshole is still an asshole. But I always thought of Jobs as more like a good coach; he might be demanding and perhaps even tempestuous at times, but people chose to work with him because he drove them and their team to produce.
Rolls eyes.
Oracle is such a monstrosity of a company, it constantly shoots itself in the foot and makes bad decisions because of their enterprise-licensing-DNA.
Every time I read a story about Oracle doing well I have to check the source and am extremely suspicious.
Only cream and bastards rise, and I'm not sure about the cream.
Tech is like a septic tank. It's the really big chunks that rise to the top.
Troll Proposal:
Make an SQLite add-on that accepts Oracle SQL and configuration. Enhance, with verve.
There is the "orafce" Postgres extension; presumably it's pretty popular and well maintained since AWS RDS Postgres includes it
> Oracle is *on course to make Larry Ellison the world’s *third-richest man
Every time I see these articles I smile to myself.
Do people seriously think these guys are richer than Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud? Or Vladimir Putin? They have nation states at their disposal. Golden palaces. Large armies. National oil and gas industries under their control.
Their wealth and power is so obscene it’s hard to even quantify.
I honestly think such lists and media attention to some or another private person who owns a big chunk of a highly valued publicly listed company is a distraction. It's designed to keep the public's attention from the reality of the old fashioned monarchies that still rule over half the world's population. All the ink in the world can't change the fact that Russia and China are ruled now as they were in the 9th century: top dog calls the shots and ices enemies.
At these scales "wealth" becomes almost impossible to quantify in any meaningful way. These lists gather some rather arbitrary metrics and combine them into a single number. Comparison only makes sense within a narrow field, comparing Musk, Bezos, etc. is somewhat reasonable as their wealth is mostly the value of their companies multiplied by their ownership percentage.
Comparing the Saudi regent to an american buisiniess man in networth seems quite meaningless.
Can't agree more. Imagine you own a resource that every one on the planet needs. Pretty much everyone on the planet is your customer. You have a monopoly. Little to no competition. You control the prices. No need to pay taxes. You are the government, the police and in some cases even the religion.
Ellison can't beat that.
> They have nation states at their disposal
Owning an island inhabited by people gets him close. His only mistake was being born in wrong country. General mindset is the same.
Crushed it... and many people in the process.
Better him than Elon, at least. Ellison is smart enough not to constantly show himself as a buffoon in public.
Good lawyers. Good company.
on* course