Oracle awarded co-founder Larry Ellison and its newly minted co-CEOs stock option packages with a combined grant-date value of $988 million in fiscal 2026, a year that saw its cloud business boom and shares post a 38% total return. By the time the fiscal year ended on May 31, every one of those options were underwater.
The decline is unsurprising, given Oracle stock’s volatile year and the fact that the options were priced near the peak. Oracle, alongside other mega-cap tech companies, has been racing to finance and build data centers while splashing out $55.7 billion in capital last fiscal year along the way. On Friday, Oracle stock closed at $137, down 53% in the past 12 months. The company’s proxy statement published on Friday marked the decline among all three packages, noting that their awards “had no intrinsic value” at fiscal year end. The strike prices on the options, meaning the price at which the options can be cashed in, are higher than the current price of Oracle’s stock.
