Shares of Oracle got creamed Friday, plunging nearly 8% after Cisco’s John Chambers spooked Wall Street with his dire-sounding warning about tech spending. In essence, investors are worried that Oracle’s exposure to the financial services industry could slam revenue and earnings over the next few quarters. However, an interesting analysis by Sanford Bernstein analyst Charles Di Bona, indicates that the news made Shares of Oracle got creamed Friday, plunging nearly 8% after Cisco’s John Chambers spooked Wall Street with his dire-sounding warning about tech spending. In essence, investors are worried that Oracle’s exposure to the financial services industry could slam revenue and earnings over the next few quarters. However, an interesting analysis by Sanford Bernstein analyst Charles Di Bona, indicates that the news made not be as bad as some investors fear. Di Bona figures that roughly 4% to 11% of Oracle’s total revenues may come from sales to the North American financial institutions. He has to estimate, because Oracle doesn’t break out its revenue that finely, but it’s likely that the actual number falls near the middle of that range, he says. Digging further, the analyst estimates that perhaps half of the spending represented by that revenue is non-discretionary or related to necessary upgrades and maintenance. If 30% of those discretionary purchases are eliminated, “we estimate Oracle would lose $200 million to 300M of revenue through the balance of FY-08,” he says in a note to clients. Before this week’s tech wreck sent everyone scrambling, Wall Street was expecting Oracle to post revenue of $21.4 billion, according to Thomson Financial, which means revenue would slip by 1.4% at the high end of Di Bona’s estimate. No one likes to see sales slip, but given its relatively small exposure to the financial sector, Oracle may well have taken more lumps than it really deserves. Of course, Cisco’s scary warning may presage a general downturn in spending that would be hard on the entire software sector. Di Bona’s also notes that Oracle may have set itself up for a fall by reducing the amount of information it releases to investors, which in turn led them to assume the worst. Moreover, the stock had gained a lot of ground this year, and may have been at the top of its range. Meanwhile, downtown San Francisco is jammed with Oracle OpenWorld attendees. With the big event kicking off Sunday evening, visiting techies were lined up to ride the nearby cable cars, and restaurants near Moscone Center were jammed. As you’d expect, traffic is ugly; if you’re going to the show, don’t drive your car. Technology Industry