ORACLE JOINS MICROSOFT, HP; BOOSTS STOCK BUYBACK

San Francisco
The Economic Times

Oracle Corp has nearly doubled a plan to buy back shares of its stock, joining a handful of corporate giants who have made similar moves even as most companies struggle to conserve their cash.

A month ago, Microsoft Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co and Nike Inc put in place buyback plans for $53 billion of their shares at a time when most US companies are slowing such repurchases to hoard cash over liquidity fears.

Oracle said on Monday that its board of directors had authorized the repurchase of another $8 billion worth of the business software maker's shares on top of an existing plan to buy back $9.3 billion in shares.

Share buybacks, which the company can elect to do from time to time, offsets the dilution to earnings that results from employee stock option and share purchase plans. By reducing shares outstanding, such programs have the effect of boosting reported earnings per share when the company reports results.

The company set no timeline for the buybacks. Shares of Oracle, which closed 6.7 percent higher at $18.16 in regular session trading on Nasdaq, rose 1 percent to $18.35 in extended trade following the expanded share repurchase announcement.