Oracle shares rose 2.84% to $148.87 on Wednesday, adding to their second consecutive gain as Citigroup analyst Tyler Radke placed the stock on a 90-day positive catalyst watch. Radke reiterated a Buy rating and a $330 price target, implying roughly 122% upside. He argued the recent selloff went too far, driven by investor capitulation and technical selling pressure, including pressure around credit spreads and at-the-market share issuance.
The stock remains 56.94% below its 52-week high of $345.72. Oracle also told the Deutsche Bank Tech Conference that its cloud infrastructure is delivering real results for large enterprise clients, easing some concerns over the heavy debt load taken on to build AI infrastructure for partners including Microsoft and OpenAI. TipRanks data showed a Strong Buy consensus from 28 analysts with an average price target of $257.79. Technical indicators were mixed-to-bullish: the stock traded above its 20-day exponential moving average, Williams %R signaled Buy, and RSI stood at 51.19.
Separately, Oracle told managers to trim payroll before September 1, adding to a fiscal year in which its workforce already fell by about 21,000 people. The cuts come against a data center spending bill that outran cash generation: Oracle spent $55.7 billion on AI data centers in fiscal 2026, up from $21.2 billion, and posted negative free cash flow of $23.7 billion. Cloud infrastructure revenue grew 77%, and Oracle ended the year with $638 billion in remaining performance obligations, up 363% year over year. About $75 billion of that is already prepaid or supplied directly as customer hardware, and Bank of America estimates more than half the backlog is tied to OpenAI.
Funding plans remain in focus. Oracle raised $43 billion in debt and $5 billion in equity in fiscal 2026, and plans to raise about $40 billion more in fiscal 2027, but does not expect to issue additional debt in calendar 2026. It instead leans on a $20 billion at-the-market equity issuance and cash flow. Oracle carries roughly $129 billion in total borrowings with annual interest expense of $4.6 billion, and S&P cut its rating to BBB-, one notch above junk. BD8 Capital's Barbara Doran flagged execution risk, customer concentration, and debt. Next catalysts are the mid-September earnings report and late-October investor day; Oracle guided first-quarter cloud revenue growth of 58% to 64% and total revenue growth of 27% to 29%, with non-GAAP earnings of $1.72 to $1.76 per share.
