Oracle is a marketing company not a tech company

What the finance guys say

In an industry where transparency is important, and everyone is committed to improving it’s natural that some review of any outcome is expected. So, after some good quarterly and annual financial reports, there are inevitably Monday morning quarterbacks who will find nits to pick. These are distinctly different from the people forecasting doom and gloom for widows and orphans silly enough to tie their fortunes to a company’s stock prior to earnings announcements.

Part of Oracle headquarters.

Last week we saw the latter variety who advised selling Oracle stock in advance of the quarterly earnings announcement which turned out to be more than okay. I pity anyone who sold stock in advance of the announcement. Imagine hanging in there with a stock all quarter long only to lose nerve and jump ship at the last minute and to be wrong.

With the earnings posted, a Seeking Alphacontributor has analyzed them and advised us that good numbers are fine but Oracle isn’t so much a tech company as it is a marketing company and there’s something amiss about that in my mind.

For the record, in 2017 Oracle spent north of $6 billion on research and development for the first timeand it has been spending north of two billion in R&D each year since 2007. Lots of billions for a company with…