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Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman and technology chief, speaks at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on September 16, 2019.

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Oracle is having a moment.

For years, the database software developer lagged behind tech rivals in building cloud technology that met the demands of the modern-day enterprise. But that’s changing, and Wall Street is quite pleased with what it sees from Larry Ellison’s 46-year-old company.

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Oracle shares climbed 4.8% on Wednesday to $122.24, closing at a record for a fifth straight day and the eighth time this month. The stock is up 73% over the past 12 months, outperforming all large-cap enterprise tech stocks over that stretch other than Nvidia. The shares are up over 50% in 2023, which would mark the best year for shareholders since the dot-com boom of 1999.

The company got its latest boost this week after reporting stronger-than-expected earnings and revenue, prompting nods of approval from analysts. Goldman Sachs upgraded its rating on the stock to the equivalent of hold from sell.

Within hours of the earnings report, Bloomberg declared that Ellison had reached the No. 4 spot on its ranking of billionaires, his highest spot to date. He surpassed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

“Let’s give him credit where it’s finally due,” said Eric Lynch, managing director of Scharf Investments, which held $163 million worth of Oracle shares at the end of the first quarter, according to regulatory filings. “The upside case is finally coming through.”

The story that’s exciting investors these days? No surprise. It’s about artificial intelligence.

Prior to the latest rally, Oracle was largely viewed as a technology has-been rather than as an innovator. In the red-hot cloud market, it had lost market share to Salesforce in selling software to sales reps, and was a bit player in infrastructure as a service (IaaS), where Amazon, Microsoft and Google were leading the way. Oracle picked up significant business from TikTok and Zoom, but big names were mostly going elsewhere.

Now, Oracle is seeing accelerated growth thanks to the craze around generative AI, the technology that can craft images or text from a few words of human input. The company is a significant investor in Cohere, an enterprise-focused generative AI startup whose technology can power copywriting, search and summarization. 

Cohere is valued at over $2 billion and ranked No. 44 on CNBC’s 2023 Disruptor 50 List.

On the earnings call, Ellison told analysts that customers have “recently signed contracts to purchase more than $2 billion of capacity” on what Oracle calls its Gen 2 Cloud.

After its market cap fell below that of the younger Salesforce in 2020, Oracle reclaimed the lead over its longtime rival the following year, and now it’s not even close. Oracle is worth $330 billion as of Wednesday’s close, while Salesforce’s market cap sits at $204 billion.

Oracle is even growing faster, with revenue in the latest quarter increasing 17% from the prior year, compared to 11% growth at Salesforce.

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Cloud infrastructure revenue at Oracle surged 76% from a year earlier, surpassing growth of 55% the prior quarter. That’s one data point that analyst Kash Rangan and his Goldman Sachs colleagues highlighted in their upgrade.

The analysts said the acceleration is “a clear signal that Oracle’s advertised price/performance advantage vs. the hyperscalers is resonating with the market (both net new and existing customers), which should position the company for durable share gains despite its late entry into IaaS.”

Even with the cloud infrastructure growth, Oracle management called for no change to capital expenditures in the new 2024 fiscal year, which bodes well for free cash flow generation, the Goldman analysts said.

Like several enterprise-focused technology companies, Oracle started selling cloud-based versions of applications that clients had previously run in their on-premises data centers. The company expanded its reach with the $9.1 billion acquisition of NetSuite in 2016.

Rebuilding the guts of the data center was less straightforward, and Oracle quickly fell behind. In 2009, Ellison dismissed the rise of cloud-computing branding.

“Our industry is so bizarre,” he said. “You know, they just change a term, and they think they’ve invented technology.”

Ellison made a bad bet. Between 2010 and the end of 2020, not only did Oracle’s stock badly underperform Amazon, Microsoft and Google, but just buying an S&P 500 tracking index would have returned almost double what an investor would’ve have made on Oracle.

Oracle eventually came around to charging organizations for servers, storage and networking services based on how much they used, following in the path of the market leaders.

The company introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2015, nine years after the launch of Amazon Web Services’ foundational EC2 computing service. Then, in 2018, Oracle debuted its Gen 2 cloud portfolio.

In October Ellison said he thought Oracle had been copying rivals, so he canceled the existing cloud effort and pushed for a new approach. As organizations look for ways to reduce IT spending, Ellison on Monday told analysts that Oracle’s cloud database can be faster and cheaper than what’s available from AWS.

Lynch, whose Los Gatos, California-based investment firm took a stake in Oracle in 2011, recalled that people used to poke fun of Ellison for his earnings call routine of reciting the names of small-time operations that had signed up for Oracle’s cloud services. The company was still appealing to value-oriented investors because it had a strong balance sheet due to a huge roster of legacy clients, and boasted stronger profit margins than many of its peers.

Now Ellison can reel off big brands using his company’s cloud. Oracle called out Dollar Tree, Exxon Mobil, and Pfizer as cloud customers during its fiscal fourth quarter.

Lynch acknowledged that Oracle appears to be enjoying its position within the AI gold rush and said he doesn’t expect such high growth in cloud infrastructure to persist.

For the time being, Ellison can enjoy his company’s bragging rights in Silicon Valley at a time when so many high-profile and once high-flying neighbors are downsizing for the first time in their history. Oracle has had some layoffs but a smaller number.

On Oracle’s earnings call this week, CEO Safra Catz took a minute to express gratitude to the company’s customers and employees.

“Some of you are new, and many of you have been with us for years, in fact, even decades, and I think you all see that our best days are in fact ahead of us,” she said. Catz then thanked Ellison “for leading with brilliance, determination and vision and allowing us to all be part of this incredible journey, which is just getting started.”

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Apple’s 3-day loss in market cap swells to almost $640 billion

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Apple's 3-day loss in market cap swells to almost 0 billion

(L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook, Vivek Ramaswamy and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images

While the stock market broadly fared better on Monday than in the prior two trading days, Apple got hammered once again, losing 3.7%, as concerns mounted that the company will take a major hit from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The sell-off brings Apple’s three-day rout to 19%, a downdraft that has wiped out $638 billion in market cap.

Apple is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war, analyst say, due largely to its reliance on China, which is facing 54% tariffs. Although Apple has production in India, Vietnam and Thailand, those countries also face increased tariffs as part of Trump’s sweeping plan.

Among tech’s megacap companies, Apple is having the roughest stretch. On Monday, the only stocks to drop in that group of seven were Apple, Microsoft and Tesla.

The Nasdaq finished almost barely up on Monday after plummeting 10% last week, its worst performance in more than five years.

Analysts say Apple will likely either need to raise prices or eat additional tariff costs when the new duties come into effect. UBS analysts estimated on Monday that Apple’s highest-end iPhone could rise in price by about $350, or around 30%, from its current price of $1,199.

Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or the company could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share. Apple may also be able to rearrange its supply chain so that imports to the U.S. come from other countries with lower tariffs.

Apple declined to comment on the tariffs.

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Apple’s highest-end iPhone could see $350 price hike in U.S. on Trump tariffs, analyst predicts

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Apple's highest-end iPhone could see 0 price hike in U.S. on Trump tariffs, analyst predicts

A customer checks Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Plus (right) and Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Pro Max (left) series displayed for sale at Master Arts Shop in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Sept. 26, 2024.

Firdous Nazir | Nurphoto | Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs could lead Apple to raise the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max by as much as $350 in the U.S., UBS analysts estimated Monday.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is Apple’s highest-end iPhone on the market, and currently retails for $1,199. UBS is predicting a nearly 30% increase in retail price for units that were manufactured in China.

Apple’s $999 phone, the iPhone 16 Pro, could see a smaller $120 price increase, if the company has it manufactured in India, the UBS analysts wrote.

Shares of Apple have plummeted 20% over the past three trading days, wiping out nearly $640 billion in market cap, on concern that Trump’s tariffs will force the company to raise prices just as consumers are losing buying power.

“Based on the checks we have done at a company level, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the increased cost sharing will be done with suppliers, the extent to which costs can be passed on to end-customers, and the duration of tariffs,” UBS analyst Sundeep Gantori wrote in the note.

Apple, which does the majority of its manufacturing in China, is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war. China has a potential incoming 54% tariff rate — before new increases were proposed Monday. Smaller tariffs were also placed on secondary production locations, such as India, Vietnam and Thailand.

JPMorgan Chase analysts predicted last week that Apple could raise its prices 6% across the world to offset the U.S. tariffs. Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or it could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share.

If Apple were to relocate iPhone production to the U.S. — a move that most supply chain experts say is impossible — Wedbush’s Dan Ives predicts an iPhone could cost $3,500.

Morgan Stanley analysts on Friday said Apple could absorb additional tariff costs of about $34 billion annually. They wrote that although Apple has diversified its production in recent years to additional countries — so-called friendshoring — those countries could also end up with tariffs, reducing Apple’s flexibility.

After last week’s “reciprocal tariff announcement, there becomes very little differentiation in friend shoring vs. manufacturing in China — if the product is not made in the US, it will be subject to a hefty import tariff,” Morgan Stanley wrote.

Last week, the firm estimated that Apple may raise its prices across its product lines in the U.S. by 17% to 18%. Apple could also get exemptions from the U.S. government for its products.

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Elon Musk’s brother slams Trump tariffs, calls them ‘permanent tax on the American consumer’

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Elon Musk's brother slams Trump tariffs, calls them 'permanent tax on the American consumer'

Kimbal Musk, co-founder of The Kitchen Community, speaks during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, May 3, 2016.

Patrick T. Fallon  | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, took to the social network X on Monday to lambaste President Donald Trump’s tariffs, calling them a “structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.” He also said Trump appears to be the “most high tax American President in generations.”

“Even if he is successful in bringing jobs on shore through the tariff tax, prices will remain high and the tax on consumption will remain the form of higher prices because we are simply not as good at making things,” Kimbal Musk wrote on X, one of the companies in his brother’s extensive portfolio.

The younger Musk owns a restaurant chain called The Kitchen, is a board member at Tesla and a former director at SpaceX and Chipotle. He has also co-founded and invested in other food and tech startups, including Square Roots, an indoor farming company, and Nova Sky Stories, a creator of drone light shows that he bought from Intel.

Elon Musk is a top advisor to Trump, overseeing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an effort to drastically cut federal spending, largely through layoffs, and consolidate or eliminate agencies and regulations. However, his relationship with some key figures in the Trump administration has been showing signs of strain in recent days as the president’s sweeping tariffs have led to a dramatic selloff in stocks, including for Tesla, which is down 42% this year and just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk took aim at Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro, disparaging his qualifications in a post on X.

“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote, after Navarro told CNN on Saturday that “The market will find a bottom” and that the Dow will “hit 50,000 during Trump’s term.” It’s currently at about 38,200.

Musk also said that Navarro hasn’t built “sh—.” Navarro told CNBC on Monday that Musk is “not a car manufacturer” but rather a “car assembler,” dependent on parts from Japan, China and Taiwan.

Tesla was seeking a more moderate approach to trade and tariffs in a recent letter to the U.S. Trade Representative.

According to Federal Election Commission filings, Kimbal Musk this year has contributed funds to the Libertarian National Committee and Libertarian Party of Connecticut. In 2024, while his brother became the biggest financial backer and promoter of Trump, Kimbal donated to Unite America PAC, a group that markets itself as a “philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government.”

A representative for Kimbal Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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