Oracle CEO Mark Hurd takes leave for health reasons

Oracle posts flat revenue, but claims emerging technologies are growing

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd is taking a leave of absence for "health-related reasons", the vendor announced alongside its quarterly numbers.

In an open letter written by Hurd and addressed to Oracle employees, Hurd confirmed that his request for leave was accepted by the board.

"As you all know, Larry [Ellison], Safra [Catz] and I have worked together as a strong team, and I have great confidence that they and the entire executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we will showcase at the upcoming OpenWorld," he said.

Hurd was hired by Ellison in 2010, soon after departing HP, after an investigation found he had not violated the company's sexual-harassment policy, but had submitted inaccurate expense reports.

At the time Ellison chastised HP over its decision.

Reports said that Hurd has reduced his number of public appearances over recent months, with Bloomberg claiming Oracle has "grappled for months over the disclosure" of his illness.

Hurd's responsibilities will be split between Ellison and co-CEO Safra Catz.

Ellison said: "Oracle has an extremely capable CEO in Safra Catz and an extraordinarily deep team of executives, many with long tenure at Oracle.

"Safra and I will cover Mark's responsibilities during his absence with support from the rest of our strong management team."

Catz added: "Mark was extremely engaged with the business through the end of our just-completed Q1, but now he needs to focus on his health."

Oracle also announced its Q1 results, with revenue flat year on year at $9.2bn (£7.5bn) for the three-month period ending 31 August 2019.

Oracle saw sales decline in areas from which it is turning away, with hardware sales dipping 10 per cent to $815m.

But the vast majority of Oracle's revenue is grouped together as ‘cloud service and licensing support'.

Sales in this category account for over two thirds of Oracle's total sales and rose three per cent year on year to $6.8bn.

On an earnings call Katz, Ellison and Hurd insisted that Oracle is seeing growth in all the areas it sees as crucial to its success.

Ellison said: "Hot new products like autonomous database, Fusion Cloud application suite, and NetSuite are selling really well and that's very accelerating. They're doing extremely well.

"Quite frankly, we have some other product lines that we're quite naturally downsizing, like some… hardware. There are some old on-premise, software products that aren't really doing well.

"There are some of our businesses that are not, if you will, hot. But the good news is, the hot businesses are now bigger than the not-so-hot businesses, and that's determining our future."