Oracle’s (ORCL) Growing but Can It Pay for the Buildout?

Yahoo Finance reported earlier this month, citing the Wall Street Journal, that Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) is in talks with Apollo and Goldman Sachs about paying for AI chips. Outside investors would fund a separate company that buys the chips and leases them to Oracle, so Oracle would not borrow directly. It is a lot of financial engineering for a company whose sales just grew 30% to $19.3 billion in its fiscal first quarter. But Oracle spent $28.5 billion on equipment in those three months, up from $8.5 billion a year earlier, and free cash flow came in at negative $5 billion. The question is whether Oracle can fund the demand it has already signed up for.