Oracle’s (ORCL) massive backlog for its cloud business stunned Wall Street and cemented the company’s role as a key player in the AI market, lifting hopes that the broader AI-fueled tech rally has more room to run.
Oracle said late Tuesday that its “RPO,” or remaining performance obligations, a measure of future revenue from customer contracts, jumped roughly 360% in the quarter to $455 billion. That outstanding contract revenue drove the company to project that its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) business will grow 77% to $18 billion in its current fiscal year and soar to $144 billion in 2030.
Deutsche Bank analyst Brad Zelnick called the results “truly awesome” and said, “Oracle has underscored its position as the leader in AI infrastructure.”
Oracle CEO Safra Catz said the software giant signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers in the first quarter. While Catz didn’t name those customers, she noted that the company has “significant” contracts with “the who’s who of AI, including OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), xAI (XAAI.PVT), Meta (META), Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD), and many others.” The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Oracle signed a $300 billion, five year deal with OpenAI.
Oracle stock soared more than 36% Wednesday, marking shares’ biggest daily gain since December 1992 and adding over $250 billion in market value to the company. That also pushed chairman Larry Ellison’s wealth past that of Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk’s to secure the title of world’s richest person.
The stock’s surge came even as the software giant’s earnings and revenue for its first quarter fell below Wall Street’s projections.
Oracle also lifted its forecast for capital expenditures to $35 billion from a previous estimate of $25 billion as it fills its data centers with the latest chips and servers to support AI demand.
The move lifted AI chip stocks Wednesday, with Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) jumping 4% and 3.5% in midday trading, respectively.
William Blair analyst Sebastien Naji said in a note to clients Wednesday that Oracle “continues its shift to a meaningfully higher strata of growth” and called its backlog “astonishing.” Jefferies (JEF) analyst Brent Thill said the results support “growing AI optimism.”
Just weeks ago, tech stocks were under pressure as investors worried that the AI-fueled tech rally was coming to an end, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s AI bubble commentary and an MIT report that most companies it studied weren’t getting a return on their investments in AI spooking markets during an otherwise slow late-summer period for investors.
Oracle’s report on Tuesday, however, appeared to give investors renewed faith in the AI boom. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq (^IXIC) were both trading at record highs on Wednesday.
As Truist Wealth’s co-chief investment officer, Keith Lerner, told Yahoo Finance Wednesday, “[T]he dominant theme of this bull market that we’ve been talking about for the last few years is AI and technology … And we’re seeing that validated once again with this latest report.”
Some analysts still had questions about Oracle, however, following Tuesday’s report.
JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy lifted his price target on Oracle shares to $270 from $210 on its “stellar bookings performance,” as he wrote in a note to clients Wednesday, but said questions remain over its “customer concentration risk” and the “likelihood of customers being able to fund $455B worth of future payments.”
William Blair’s Naji told Yahoo Finance “Concentration is always a risk if these customers decide to pullback on investments longer-term or potentially run out of capital to invest.” OpenAI, one of Oracle’s customers, is set to burn through $115 billion in cash through 2029, while it’s expecting to see annual revenue of $13 billion this year, according to The Information.
And Bank of America (BAC) analyst Brad Sills also noted that whether Oracle can grow its AI cloud business profitably “remains a key debate,” but upgraded the stock to Buy from Neutral after its earnings results.
Oracle’s gain on Wednesday put shares up 97% for the year and pushed its market capitalization north of $920 billion.
Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at laura.bratton@yahooinc.com.
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