Oracle (ORCL) Stock Pops 8% After Earnings Beat Ease AI Spending Fears

TLDR

• Oracle Q3 revenue hit $17.19 billion, beating the $16.91 billion estimate — up 22% year over year
• EPS came in at $1.79, ahead of the $1.70 Wall Street estimate
• Remaining performance obligations (RPO) grew 325% year over year to $553 billion
• Oracle raised its fiscal 2027 revenue forecast to $90 billion, above the $86.6 billion analyst estimate
• ORCL stock rose 8.3% in extended trading after the results were released

Oracle reported its fiscal third quarter results on March 10, beating Wall Street estimates on both revenue and earnings. The stock jumped 8.3% in after-hours trading.

Revenue for the quarter ended February 28 came in at $17.19 billion, up 22% year over year. Analysts had expected $16.91 billion. Earnings per share were $1.79, beating the $1.70 estimate.

The numbers landed at a good time. Investors had been watching closely to see whether Oracle’s heavy spending on AI data centers would start paying off — and this quarter gave them some answers.

Oracle Corporation, ORCL

RPO, which tracks future contracted revenue, grew 325% from last year to $553 billion. That was up from $523 billion the prior quarter and came in above the $540.37 billion estimate from Visible Alpha analysts. Oracle said most of the RPO growth came from large-scale AI contracts.

The company also raised its fiscal 2027 revenue forecast to $90 billion. That’s above the $86.6 billion that analysts had been modeling.

Cloud and Margin Outlook

Oracle’s cloud business grew 41% year over year in constant currency. Infrastructure-as-a-service revenue jumped 81%. Operating margin came in at 42.9%, slightly ahead of expectations.

Co-CEO Clay Magouyrk said cloud margins should improve over time. He noted that renting out AI chips from partners like Nvidia carries margins of 30% to 40%, and that 10% to 20% of customer cloud spending flows into Oracle’s database business, which runs at 60% to 80% gross margins.

For Q4, Oracle is guiding for revenue growth of 19% to 21% and cloud revenue growth of 46% to 50%. Adjusted EPS is expected between $1.96 and $2.00, above the $1.94 estimate.

What Analysts Are Saying

Jefferies analyst Brent Thill kept a Buy rating and a $320 price target. He called it a “clean beat across the board” and flagged the strong cloud growth as a highlight.

Wall Street overall has a Strong Buy consensus on ORCL, based on 24 Buys, five Holds, and zero Sells over the past three months. The average price target sits at $259.96.

Executive chairman Larry Ellison pushed back on fears that AI coding tools would hurt demand for business software. He argued Oracle is actually using those tools to build new SaaS products with smaller engineering teams. “That’s why we think the ‘SaaS’-apocalypse applies to others but not to Oracle,” he said.

The company added that it does not expect to raise additional funds to cover its large-scale AI data center commitments.

The post Oracle (ORCL) Stock Pops 8% After Earnings Beat Ease AI Spending Fears appeared first on CoinCentral.