Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle Corporation, rings the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, July 12, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Oracle Shares rose more than 12% in intraday trading Tuesday and are on track for a record close, a day after the company reported fiscal third-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations.
Shares were trading at more than $127 as of midday Tuesday, above the previous closing high of $126.71 set on Sept. 11, 2023. They are also on track for the biggest gain since Dec. 10, 2021, when Oracle shares closed up 15.6%. .
Oracle reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.41, higher than the $1.38 per share that analysts had expected, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv. Revenue of $13.28 billion was slightly lower than the $13.3 billion analysts had estimated.
The company’s cloud services and licensing support segment, its largest business, saw sales rise 12% to $9.96 billion, eclipsing the $9.94 billion expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
Deutsche Bank raised its price target on Oracle shares to $150 from $135 on Tuesday, noting that CEO Safra Catz reiterated fiscal 2026 guidance and strong results on cloud infrastructure.
Analysts, maintaining a buy rating on Oracle stock, wrote that Oracle’s cloud infrastructure is “driving the stock narrative” and that they are “more confident than ever on the demand picture.”
UBS analysts raised their price target on Oracle shares from $130 to $150 and maintained a buy rating on the stock, writing that they were “encouraged by revenue turnaround, OCI growth, intelligence backlog numbers artificial intelligence and from the prospect that large core companies in the database business could benefit in 2024/2025 from an increase in migration to the cloud based on artificial intelligence”.
Analysts at Bernstein Research, who have the equivalent of a buy rating on Oracle shares, raised their price target to $159 from $147. They cited management’s comments that supply continues to outpace demand and wrote that the results “dispelled some of the growth concerns that had crept in over the past two quarters.”
— CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.