Larry Ellison cancels $7.5bn Oracle share sale

On September 12, Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison announced that he has canceled his plan to sell 50 million shares of Oracle stock. No shares were sold under this plan, and Ellison stated that he has no further intentions to sell any of his Oracle stock. This decision came one day after Ellison had previously mentioned a trading plan that would have enabled him to sell up to 50 million shares of Oracle common stock.

In February, Oracle had announced its intention to raise $45 billion to $50 billion in 2026 through a combination of debt and stock sales. The company aimed to utilize the funds to build additional capacity for its cloud infrastructure and meet the growing demand from various customers, including AMD, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, TikTok, and xAI. As part of the current fiscal year, Oracle planned to raise $40 billion through debt and equity financing, which included the completion of a $20 billion stock sale in the first quarter.

A regulatory filing filed by the company on Friday revealed that restructuring costs, which are part of a plan that includes job cuts, would increase by approximately $700 million as Oracle navigates a challenging period for its stock. Oracle's shares experienced a significant increase of up to 7.8% on Friday following a $26 billion boost in its revenue backlog, which helped alleviate some concerns regarding its debt-fueled spending.

However, the stock later reversed course and closed about 2% lower than its previous value. Analysts attributed this price fluctuation to the anticipation that a recovery in cash flow would take some time to materialize. Despite this setback, positive first-quarter earnings and an improving balance sheet contributed to Oracle's shares recovering from a period of underperformance.