Oracle’s Larry Ellison Sells More Stock

On June 23, Ellison used options that he had been awarded earlier to buy 1.75 million Oracle shares for $52.7 million, or $30.11 a share. He then sold the same number of shares that day for $208 million, at an average price of $118.79 each.

Ellison’s stock ownership remains at 1.15 billion shares, according to a form he filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. His Oracle stake is more than 40%, making him the company’s largest shareholder.

The stock options had been set to expire on July 1.

Oracle didn’t respond to a request to make Ellison available for comment.

The sales came on the heels of similar transactions between June 20 and June 22 that also saw Ellison exercise stock options, and then sell $640 million of stock. Those were his first sales in two years.

Ellison hasn’t managed Oracle for fir some time. Barron’s has noted that while Ellison often overshadows CEO
Safra Catz,
she is most responsible for transforming the software company into a cloud and AI player. Catz brought Oracle’s traditional enterprise-software customers online to the company’s cloud-computing business, which now competes with

Amazon.com

(AMZN),

Microsoft

(MSFT), and

Alphabet

(GOOGL).

Inside Scoop is a regular Barron’s feature covering stock transactions by corporate executives and board members—so-called insiders—as well as large shareholders, politicians, and other prominent figures. Due to their insider status, these investors are required to disclose stock trades with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other regulatory groups.

Write to Ed Lin at [email protected] and follow @BarronsEdLin.