Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s net worth increased $1.3 billion overnight, after the company’s third quarter earnings report led to an increase in the firm’s stock price.
Although the company reported only moderate successes for their third quarter, the stock price jumped 3% in response to the report on Tuesday before the market’s closing bell. Ellison, who owns nearly 1.2 billion shares (roughly 27% of Oracle), passed Mark Zuckerberg overnight to become the world’s sixth richest person.
Both billionaires hold the majority of their wealth in their companies’ shares, meaning that market fluctuations play a major role in changes to their respective net worths.
Zuckerberg, who saw his own net worth increase by $100 million at Tuesday’s market close, is currently worth $48.3 billion. Ellison’s impressive day lifted him to $49.4 billion, which comes after a year in which Oracle saw a significant drop in it’s stock price, which dropped Ellison’s net worth by over $10 billion.
Oracle, which is the second largest software company in the world after Microsoft, specializes in database technology and cloud engineered solutions for businesses. Although the firm’s overall revenue fell 3% in the third quarter, its cloud computing business has seen a 40% increase in sales, which potentially is the cause of the market’s positive response.
Both Zuckerberg and Ellison have signed The Giving Pledge, a philanthropic effort headed by Bill Gates which encourages the world’s wealthiest individuals to give away the majority of their wealth to charitable causes. Zuckerberg plans to give 99% of his Facebook shares away as his part of the pledge. Ellison also plans to give away “at least 95% of [his] wealth to charitable causes.”
Tom Ciccotta writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta.