Spend now, Pay later capex plans

My capex and free cash flow quip for the day is….

Microsoft has the operating cashflow to cover its capital expenditure plans.

Oracle hasn’t and less so when Oracle needs to borrow money to fund its proposed strategy.

And keep in mind that it’s Debt is already amounting to 4 times more than its EBIT.

But I wonder if those capex plans can really be ‘owned’ by ORCL’s when it’s the lender’s money providing it so.

While over that the other enterprise software giant (SAP), their EUR 20 billion capex plans are more so based around its ‘cloud offering, rather than an AI hyper-scaling race. Incidentally, they are spacing out this ‘spend’ over 20 years.

Easy-peasy when you’re cranking out operating cash flow of EUR 8 billion and have EUR 2 billion of net cash on the balance. I’m thinking “how wonderfully sensible and German!”.

Speaking of cash flow, Nvidia’s free cash flow of $84 billion equates to a free cash flow yield (FCF) of below 2%.

Salesforce.com and BP plc’s FCF yield is 10%.

April 30, 2026