...SAN FRANCISCO (S&P Global Ratings) March 13, 2024--Enterprise software and cloud services provider Oracle Corp. reported earnings on Monday and by our estimate, reported gross leverage reached 3.4x, the same as S&P Global Ratings' adjusted net leverage. In our view, Oracle has achieved the leverage target it introduced with the Cerner acquisition. However, we would have expected management to acknowledge this milestone and potentially for buybacks to increase given its appetite for buybacks before Cerner, but the earnings call contained no mention of it and buybacks remained muted. As such, we believe it's possible the company may be managing to a more conservative definition of the metric. Share buybacks remained subdued in the quarter at $450 million, the ninth quarter of curtailed buybacks since the Cerner announcement. Now that the company can claim to have achieved its leverage target, share buybacks could increase but its capacity to do so may be limited by investment priorities....
