Salesforce closed at $242.45 on October 19 and gained 30.2% over six months, versus 8.7% for the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, while Oracle closed at $129.59 after losing more than a quarter of its value over the same period. The article describes Salesforce’s customer records and workflows as hard to replace, with $14.4 billion of free cash flow in its last fiscal year, but notes slow growth, with revenue up 10.80% last quarter, and a deal announced October 20 to buy Braze for $5.66 billion. Its seat-based pricing could be a risk if AI agents take on work that staff used to do. Oracle grew revenue 29.60% last quarter at a 35.63% operating margin, supported by database support contracts, but its build-out of AI computing capacity carries debt equal to 251.72% of equity and levered free cash flow of negative $45.85 billion over the past year. The article adds that renting computing capacity earns a thinner margin than licensing software.
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