🦔Oracle's 5-year credit default swap spread just hit a record 230 basis points, more than four times the broader investment-grade index at 55 bps. The spread has quadrupled in the past year and now exceeds financial crisis levels from 2008. For comparison, Turkey's sovereign CDS sits at 245 bps. Oracle is one notch above junk and the credit market is pricing it as a bigger risk than it was during the worst financial crisis in modern history.
My Take
Oracle's CDS is priced worse than 2008 and Ellison is still signing hundred-billion-dollar AI deals. I think he's operating on the assumption that Oracle is too big and too embedded in government IT systems to be allowed to fail. That may end up being true, but it's a bet that someone else covers the downside rather than a financial strategy.
S&P cut Oracle to BBB- in July and said they "underestimated the scale of the investments required." One more notch and Oracle is junk-rated. Every institutional fund with an investment-grade mandate would have to sell, and that's a forced liquidation Oracle isn't prepared for.
Half the backlog is OpenAI, which by its own pre-IPO numbers burns $278 billion more than it takes in through 2030. I don't think Ellison has a plan for what happens if S&P downgrades him and OpenAI can't pay on schedule at the same time. And I think both of those are more likely than the stock price assumes.
Hedgie🤗