used to purchase marketable securities (net of proceeds received from maturities).

 

Fiscal 2007 Compared to Fiscal 2006:   Net cash used for investing activities increased in fiscal 2007 due to an increase in cash used for acquisitions, net of cash acquired. We paid cash to purchase a number of companies in fiscal 2007 including Hyperion, Stellent, MetaSolv, and Portal Software, and to purchase additional equity securities in i-flex. Cash outflows in fiscal 2006 primarily relate to our acquisition of Siebel and our equity investment purchases in i-flex.

 

Cash flows from financing activities:   The changes in cash flows from financing activities primarily relate to borrowings and payments under debt obligations as well as stock repurchases and proceeds from stock option exercise activity.

 

Fiscal 2008 Compared to Fiscal 2007:   Net cash provided by financing activities in fiscal 2008 increased in comparison to cash used by financing activities in fiscal 2007 due to the issuance of $5.0 billion of long-term senior notes in April 2008, additional proceeds from stock option exercises, excess tax benefits realized from stock-based compensation arrangements, and decreased spending on stock repurchases, and were partially offset by $1.4 billion of net repayments of short-term commercial paper notes.

 

Fiscal 2007 Compared to Fiscal 2006:   Net cash used for financing activities in fiscal 2007 primarily relates to an increase in stock repurchases and lower borrowings, net of repayments, when compared with fiscal 2006.

 

Free cash flow:   To supplement our statements of cash flows presented on a GAAP basis, we use non-GAAP measures of cash flows on a trailing 4-quarter basis to analyze cash flows generated from our operations. We believe free cash flow is also useful as one of the bases for comparing our performance with our competitors. The presentation of non-GAAP free cash flow is not meant to be considered in isolation or as an alternative to net income as an indicator of our performance, or as an alternative to cash flows from operating activities as a measure of liquidity. We calculate free cash flows as follows:

Long-Term Customer Financing

 

We offer our customers the option to acquire our software products and service offerings through separate long-term payment contracts. We generally sell contracts that we have financed on a non-recourse basis to financial institutions. We record the transfers of amounts due from customers to financial institutions as sales of financial assets because we are considered to have surrendered control of these financial assets. In fiscal 2008, 2007 and 2006, $1.1 billion, $891 million and $618 million or approximately 15%, 15% and 13%, respectively, of our new software license revenues were financed through our financing division.

 

Contractual Obligations

 

The contractual obligations presented in the table below represent our estimates of future payments under fixed contractual obligations and commitments. Changes in our business needs, cancellation provisions, changing interest rates and other factors may result in actual payments differing from these estimates. We cannot provide