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Tag: Albertson’s

  • Oracle Gets Boost From Barron’s Coverage of Company’s Cloud Business

    Oracle Gets Boost From Barron’s Coverage of Company’s Cloud Business

    Oracle’s stock has seen its best day in nearly a year on positive coverage of its cloud business by Barron’s, although some critics are not impressed.

    Oracle is the dominant company in the database business, and provides a range of middleware applications. The company has been working to gain a bigger portion of the cloud computing market, with mixed results.

    Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, a former Oracle executive, famously called Oracle Cloud “a disgrace.” The company has also faced a lawsuit claiming executives hid issues with Oracle’s ability to compete in the cloud market.

    On the other hand, Oracle has scored some significant winsagainst its larger rivals, gaining business from Albertsons, Humana, McDonald’s and Xactly. The company also poached 8×8 from AWS and saw Zoom use Oracle’s Cloud for its latest expansion.

    Barron’s featured an articled entitled: “Oracle Is Turning Into a Cloud Giant. Why Its Stock Is a Buy.” The article made the case that Oracle could leverage its existing software and services to help grow its cloud business, potentially becoming the next major cloud player.

    As a result of the coverage, Oracle stock rose 5%, it’s biggest single-day gains in nearly a year. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen if Barron’s optimism is warranted. As of 2018, Oracle doesn’t break out its cloud earnings in its quarterly reports, making it hard to judge just how well the company’s cloud business is growing.

    CNBC points out that Oracle only reported a 1.9% growth in revenue in its latest report, far short of the estimated 37% growth rate of the cloud market in 2019. Again, without knowing what role Oracle’s cloud business played in its quarterly results, it’s hard to get an accurate read on well its business is doing. At the same time, however, 1.9% is not an encouraging growth rate.

  • Oracle Scores Big Cloud Wins

    Oracle Scores Big Cloud Wins

    Oracle has scored some big wins as it takes on larger cloud rivals.

    AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud dominate the US cloud computing market. Oracle, IBM and others continue to fight for market share, leveraging their existing software, services and systems to gain cloud customers.

    Oracle has been making significant headway using this strategy. According to Reuters, Oracle has scored contracts with McDonald’s, Albertsons and Humana to move at least some of their business to Oracle’s cloud platform. In addition, Xactly has decided to move the majority of its work to Oracle’s platform.

    These are major contracts for one of the underdogs of the industry and should go a long way toward helping Oracle gain ground.

  • Safeway Sold for About $9.4 Billion

    Safeway Sold for About $9.4 Billion

    Safeway Inc., the second largest U.S. grocery store chain, said Thursday it agreed to be acquired by the supermarket chain Albertson’s, which is backed by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, for about $9.4. billion.

    Albertson’s offer price was $40 per share, which is a little upside overall from current market share prices. Safeway closed at the New York Stock Exchange at $39.47 Thursday.

    The deal merges Safeway with Albertson’s stores, creating a network of more than 2,400 grocery stores and 250,000 employees.

    No store closures are expected.

    Cerberus purchased Albertson’s and Jewel-Osco from Supervalu in early 2013 for $3.3 billion, and is pushing ahead with acquiring additional supermarket property with the deal with Safeway. The company’s off of $40 per share includes an offer of $32.50 in cash to shareholders, plus other distributions at an estimated value of $3.65 per share, and a distribution of stock in Blackhawk Network Holdings worth $3.95 a share.

    Black Hawk Networks Holdings is the gift card provider which Safeway traded off last year into a publicly traded company in an effort to streamline its operations.

    The deal reportedly indicates that Safeway will consider other offers superior to Albertson’s $40 per share deal for the next 45 days. Kroger, another supermarket giant, has been reported as a possible buyer.

    Safeway Inc. also made headlines Thursday afternoon after agreeing to pay $2.25 million to settle a consumer protection action suit in California. The company was fined for false adverting, pricing discrepancies, failing to honor coupons, and false claims of “locally grown” produce.

    According to the settlement, Pleasanton’s Safeway must “clearly and conspicuously disclose any inclusions, exceptions or limitations to any Safeway offers, coupons or discounts,” according to the settlement.

    The chain, which had revenues of $36 billion in 2013, will be managed under Albertson’s once the sales deal is complete.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons