Hi Hardly,
By shareholder's equity in Oracle I guess you mean the cash on hand?
Definitely not; "Shareholders Equity" is spelled out in a section of every company's balance sheets. Shareholders equity is equal to assets minus liabilities, or put another way, total shareholders equity and liabilities equals assets. Sometimes, by coincidence, shareholder's equity may be close to the cash on hand figure.
I provided a link to Oracle's balance sheet in my earlier post, but you must have not looked at it, so here it is again:
edgarscan.pwcglobal.com
Shareholder's equity does not purport to measure the current value of the company. And as I also previously mentioned, more than likely many of Oracle's assets are worth more than what they are carried on the books at, but nevertheless, a balance sheet is a useful indicator regarding how the company has been doing in the past. Companies that have been really making a lot of money (and keeping it) show large shareholder equity values above and beyond paid in capital. Again, in Oracle's case, the entire shareholder's equity is 5.29 billion, but 4.84 billion of that is "paid in capital", hence my statement that paid in capital is a whopping 91.5% of shareholders' equity.
Regards, Huey |
