Person
Oracle CFO since April, previously group finance chief at Schneider Electric.
Oracle's $988 million of options for Larry Ellison and his two co-CEOs carry strikes of $280 and $308, against a share price of $137. The 53% fall tracks a build that consumed $55.7 billion of capital and left free cash flow at minus $23.7 billion.
Reality
Almost all of Oracle's near-30% revenue growth came from the single segment that rents AI servers. The buildout behind it runs on debt, and the backlog it feeds is nearly half one customer's contract.
Reality
Oracle delivered more than 300,000 GPUs and 850MW of capacity in a single quarter, and its CFO says the vast majority of last quarter's new contracts came on prepay or bring-your-own-hardware terms that need no capital from Oracle.
Reality
Cloud infrastructure revenue more than doubled to $7.4bn and the contracted backlog reached $664bn, while the $28.5bn Oracle put into capacity in three months turned a record $23.1bn of operating cash flow into free cash flow of negative $5.4bn.
Perspective Coverage
7 publishersReality
An internal FAQ viewed by Business Insider pays departing Oracle staff four weeks of base salary plus one week a year, cancels unvested stock and ends corporate bonus eligibility. Salesforce accrues three weeks a year.
Reality
The company said in a filing that the money covers additional actions it expects to take. Roughly 92,000 of its 141,000 staff work outside the US, and collective cuts in the EU need consultation and written notice before anyone leaves.
Reality
Oracle spent $28bn on construction and equipment last quarter, which is $5bn more than a record quarter of cash generation. Customers renewing GPU capacity into 97.9 percent utilisation are paying about 20 percent more.
Reality
The $11.36bn of customer prepayments turned what would have been roughly $16.8bn of burn into a $5.40bn shortfall, and it moves the funding question from Oracle's balance sheet to the credit of the customers writing the cheques.
Reality
Crist Kolder projects 18.3% CFO turnover across 665 large-cap companies in 2026, the most since 2020. The more telling number is the average age of the new appointees: 48, down from 52.
Reality