Of all the tech companies with $100 billion-plus valuations that could conceivably bid for TikTok, Oracle (ORCL) – Get Report would probably rank near the bottom of the list in terms of ideal matches, somewhere between Intel (INTC) – Get Report and Accenture (ACN) – Get Report.
Nonetheless, according to CNBC, The Financial Times and Reuters, Larry Ellison’s company has held initial talks to buy TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in tandem with some current investors in TikTok parent ByteDance. CNBC also reports hearing from a source that Oracle-TikTok talks “have accelerated in recent days,” and that Oracle and Microsoft (MSFT) – Get Report, which is reportedly interested in buying all of TikTok, “are far ahead of any other companies that have expressed interest.”
With equity markets still in a buy-first-and-ask-questions-later mood when it comes to such reports, Oracle’s stock is up about 2% in Tuesday trading. One does have to wonder how many Oracle buy orders have been placed today through a brokerage named after a certain medieval English folk hero.
Oracle does in theory have an asset or two that could benefit from a TikTok acquisition. The company has marketing software and data offerings — they compete against offerings from the likes of Adobe (ADBE) – Get Report, Salesforce.com (CRM) – Get Report and SAP (SAP) – Get Report — that could benefit from the data TikTok has about the interests of consumers who use its platform, and which in turn could be leveraged to help companies better promote themselves on TikTok…
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