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Justin Sullivan / Getty Images- Oracle's shares lost as much as 6% on Thursday, after the company announced that its CEO, Mark Hurd, would be absent for health reasons.
- The announcement did not specify what health problems Hurd has nor what will be the duration of his leave. Company founder Larry Ellison and co-CEO Safra Catz will assume his responsibilities.
- Hurd has led the company through a stormy surge in cloud computing in recent years as the company sought to compete with industry giants, Amazon and Google.
- Watch the Oracle trade live here.
Oracle shares fell 6% on Thursday, after the company announced that its co-CEO, Mark Hurd, would be away for health reasons.
Company founder and technology chief Larry Ellison will take over Hurd's responsibilities alongside his co-CEO, Safra Catz. The announcement did not detail Hurd's health problems or when he would come back.
"Mark was extremely involved in the sector until the end of our first quarter, but Mark now needs to focus on his health," Catz said in a statement.
Hurd held the position of General Manager for five years and was responsible for organizing sales, advertising and Oracle software groups. He joined the company as president in 2010, after being managing director of Hewlett-Packard.
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The announcement was made at the same time as the first quarter financial results of Oracle. The company announced earnings per share of 0.81 USD, exceeding the estimate of 0.807 USD analysts. Revenues were not up to expectations, with Oracle reporting $ 9.22 billion, compared to $ 9.29 billion for analysts.
The company is turning to cloud computing, seeking to attack Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the lucrative sector. Hurd led the campaign and set the goal for Oracle to own 50% of the cloud application market. Salesforce and Workday are among the current leaders in the industry. The latest earnings reports have revealed a slowdown in sales as Oracle moves from traditional products to a relatively new sector.
Oracle has traded at $ 53.41 per share at 10:45 am ET Thursday, up about 18% since the beginning of the year.
The tech company has eight "buy" ratings, 23 "hold" ratings and four "sales" analyst ratings, with a stated price target of $ 56.19, according to Bloomberg data.
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