Larry Ellison, chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2017.
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Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison is almost $19 billion richer after the software maker he founded in 1977 forecast double-digit revenue growth for the fiscal year, lifting the stock to its sharpest rally since 2021.
Ellison owns about 1.15 billion Oracle shares, equal to around 42% of the company’s outstanding stock. With Wednesday’s increase, he now has a net worth of around $170 billion, according to Forbes, making him the fifth-richest person in the world and just behind Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
While Ellison has been out of the CEO role for a decade — he took up the title of chief technology officer in 2014 — he remains the leading figure at the company and still participates in quarterly earnings calls. On Tuesday’s call, following the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report, Ellison boasted about Oracle’s construction of data centers that can accommodate the increasing demand for generative artificial intelligence.
“We are literally building the smallest, most portable, most affordable cloud data centers all the way up to 200-megawatt data centers, ideal for training very large language models and keeping them up-to-date,” Ellison said.
Oracle shares soared 13% on Wednesday to a record $140.38, their best day since Dec. 10, 2021. Analysts at Bank of America, Barclays, Bernstein, JPMorgan and UBS raised their 12-month price targets on the stock.
Though quarterly profit and revenue fell short of Wall Street estimates, Oracle said it expects double-digit revenue growth in the new fiscal year, compared with an increase of 6% in the year that ended on May 31. Oracle said its database will become available on Google’s public cloud and that OpenAI will be able to use Microsoft’s cloud-based AI tools atop Oracle’s cloud infrastructure.
Ellison’s Oracle stake stands to increase. Later this year and next year, stock options granted to him in 2014 and 2017, when the stock price was considerably lower, will expire.
Ellison is known for lavish spending. He owned properties in California, Florida and the Hawaiian island of Lanai as of 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported. He has donated to political campaigns for decades, funded a sailing league, and is the owner of the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in California.
A close friend of Elon Musk, Ellison joined and then left the board of Tesla. He was reportedly planning to help finance Skydance Media’s proposed merger with Paramount Global. His son, David Ellison, is Skydance Media’s founder and CEO.
A file photo of Hiroki Totoki, Sony Group Corporation executive, delivering a keynote address at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, on January 6, 2025.
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Sony Group shares rose about 2% Wednesday in volatile trading after the Japanese conglomerate announced a 250 billion yen ($1.7 billion) share buyback and operating income beat estimates.
Operating income for the last three months of the financial year came in at 203.6 billion yen, beating mean analyst estimates of 192.2 billion yen, though it was down 11% from the same period last year.
In the earnings report, the Japanese-based electronics, entertainment and finance company announced a stock buyback of shares worth 250 billion yen.
Sony also provided details on a partial spinoff of its financial unit. The company plans to distribute slightly more than 80% of the shares of common stock of the spinoff to shareholders of Sony Group through dividends.
The financial unit will list its financial operation this year and will be classified as a discontinued operation in Sony’s accounting from the current quarter, the company added.
However, Sony’s outlook for the current financial year ending in March was lackluster.
The company forecasted its operating profit to rise a slight 0.3% to 1.28 trillion yen, after flagging a 100 billion yen hit from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Yet, Sony clarified that the estimated tariff impact did not reflect the trade deal made between the U.S. and China on May 12 and that the actual impact could vary significantly.
A Samsung Group flag flutters in front of the company’s Seocho building in Seoul.
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Samsung Electronics on Wednesday announced that it would acquire all shares of German-based FläktGroup, a leading heating and cooling solutions provider, for 1.5 billion euros ($1.68 billion) from European investment firm Triton.
Samsung said the acquisition would help it expand in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning business as the market experiences rapid growth.
“Our commitment is to continue investing in and developing the high-growth HVAC business as a key future growth engine,” said TM Roh, Acting Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics.
The acquisition of FläktGroup stands to bolster Samsung’s position in the HVAC market against rivals such as LG Electronics.
FläktGroup supplies heating, HVAC solutions to a wide range of buildings and facilities, notably data centers which require a high degree of stable cooling. Samsung said it anticipates sustained growth in data center demand due to the proliferation of generative AI, robotics, autonomous driving and other technologies.
FläktGroup has more 60 major customers, including leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech and food and beverage firms, and gigafactories, according to Samsung’s statement.
Samsung said in March that its HVAC solutions had achieved double-digit annual revenue growth over the past five years, and that the company aimed to boost revenue by more than 30% in 2025.