TMTPOST -- Oracle Corporation shares on Wednesday logged its best day since 1992 after the company reported rosy outlook of its cloud business driven by the intense artificial intelligence (AI) race.
Credit：Oracle
Oracle stock rocketed as much as 43.1% and finished around 36% higher at a new close record of $328.33. It was the database-software company』s largest daily gain since December 1992. Oracle settled the day with a $946 billion market capitalization, suggesting a $247 billion daily gain in market value. That was the seventh-largest on record for any company. The company set another record as Wednesday saw the first-ever single day stock gain of more than 25% for a company worth at least $500 billion, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The stock surge drove Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison』s net worth surged $89 billion, the biggest one-day increase ever recorded, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. As of the market close on Wednesday, Ellison』s total net worth, which is largely derived from his 41% stake in Oracle, registered $383.2 billion, overtaking Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk and for the first time claiming the top spot of the Bloomberg』s daily ranking. According to Forbes, Oracle stock helped lift Ellison』s personal wealth by about $100 billion to around $392.6 billion, closing to Musk as the richest person in the world with net worth of $439.9 billion.
Prior to the stunning stock surge, Oracle disclosed Tuesday after the bell multi-billion-dollar contracts with several customers, outweighing the top and bottom line miss for its first quarter of the fiscal year 2026 ended August 31.
Revenue for the August quarter grew 12% year-over-year (YoY) to $14.93 billion, versus the Wall Street estimated $15.03 billion polled by LSEG. Earnings per share (EPS) of $1.47 fell short of expected $1.48. However, Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO), a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, soared 359% YoY to $455 billion.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz attributed the RPO standout to massive cloud contracts. 「We signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers in Q1,」 said Catz in a statement. the chief executive expressed upbeat on the cloud business, stating: 「It was an astonishing quarter—and demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure continues to build. Over the next few months, we expect to sign-up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half-a-trillion dollars.」
Catz revealed Oracle anticipated revenue from its cloud infrastructure to grow 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year, and then increase to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion, and $144 billion over the following four fiscal years. 「Most of the revenue in this 5-year forecast is already booked in our reported RPO. Oracle is off to a brilliant start to FY26,」 she said.
Analysts solely focused on Oracle』s guidance and a massive growth trajectory that the company sees owing to its cloud infrastructure business. They were gushing about the numbers and the company』s prospects in AI.
Oracle's report marks "arguably the most momentous" quarter in its history, although the headline financials were admittedly less impressive than the company's projections for the future, TD Cowen analysts commented. The massive commitments to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure "should solidify investor confidence" in Oracle's "dominance & differentiation" when it comes to training AI models, the analysts said in a note.
Oracle』s capital expenditure (Capex) is expected to be $35 billion for this fiscal year, representing 65% yearly growth, Catz told analysts on the earnings call. When asked about how much it was going to cost the company to build out the infrastructure needed to service those customers, Catz said that one difference between Oracle and some of its rivals is in the way it deals with the property that houses data centers.
「I know some of our competitors, they like to own buildings,」 she said. 「That』s not really our specialty. Our specialty is the unique technology, the unique networking, the storage — just the whole way we put these systems together.」
Oracle』s Capex forecast "bodes very well" for companies like Nvidia Corporation, Broadcom Inc. , Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and Arista Networks Inc., "who all have exposure to Oracle and Stargate, and the inferencing boom," according to Melius.
