I guess the pure strategic genius of the SC/MH is to boost stock with buybacks. So, as Cloud (and Oracle) continue on its decline (I'm predicting at an ever increasing rate now) the only cash will come from cutting headcount, expenses and chunking off real estate. Keeping the stock price high through buybacks is purely artificial but the financial people might still believe that actual Cloud revenues will materialize (some day.) Only a company with a strong dedicated workforce can overcome the enormous failures in Cloud execution such as Oracle's management have done. This low blow to the workforce will be unrecoverable and will decimate moral and confidence across the company.
"That per-share number needs to be taken with about $10 billion worth of salt grains, though, as Oracle admitted it repurchased that much stock in the quarter, about 203 million shares. It is the second consecutive quarter Oracle has repurchased $10 billion-plus, more than double the software company’s previous record for quarterly repurchases entering this fiscal year. Oracle is only halfway through its fiscal year and so far has totaled more than $20 billion in stock buybacks, a huge jump from its total spending of $11.5 billion on stock in fiscal 2018, an Oracle record at the time."