Oracle Stock (ORCL) Q1 Earnings Drop Tomorrow: Here’s What Wall Street Is Really Watching
Oracle's moment of truth hits the tape tomorrow—and the entire tech sector's holding its breath.
### The Numbers Game
Analysts are circling like vultures around cloud revenue growth rates and AI infrastructure spending. Nobody's talking about legacy database performance anymore—because let's be honest, that's like bragging about your flip-phone collection.
### Cloud or Bust
Oracle's betting the farm on cloud transformation while trying to outmaneuver AWS and Azure. Their hybrid approach either makes them brilliantly adaptable or hopelessly stuck between two worlds—we'll find out which tomorrow.
### The AI Wildcard
Every tech CEO suddenly became an AI expert this year. Oracle's no exception. Watch for buzzword bingo: 'generative AI,' 'machine learning pipeline,' and 'cloud-native transformation' will likely get drinking-game worthy airtime.
### The Bottom Line
Oracle either crushes expectations and proves the dinosaurs can dance—or becomes another cautionary tale about legacy tech trying to play catch-up. Either way, the earnings call will be masterclass in corporate spin. Because nothing says 'innovation' like a 45-year-old company suddenly discovering cloud computing.
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Meanwhile, revenues are expected to grow by 13% from the year-ago quarter to $15.04 billion, according to data from the TipRanks Forecast page. The expected growth is mainly due to strong demand for Oracle’s cloud services, especially as more users turn to it for generative AI work. It’s important to note that Oracle has outperformed EPS estimates in six out of the past nine quarters.
Analysts’ Views Ahead of ORCL’s Q1 Print
Ahead of the Q1 report, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry lifted his price target on Oracle to $400 from $250, while keeping a Buy rating. The analyst pointed to a big shift in AI trends, with developers moving from “agentic AI” to “context engineering,” which he sees as a major catalyst for Oracle.
Chowdhry added that August was a slow month for Oracle’s business deals and expects this weakness to continue until late September. After that, he sees deal activity picking up through the end of the year. In his view, this is only a short-term issue, and long-term investors should use the current weakness as a buying opportunity, since Oracle’s fundamentals remain strong.
Meanwhile, Mizuho Securities raised the stock’s price target to $300 from $245 and kept a Buy rating, citing rising demand for AI and ORCL’s solid position in the market. The firm highlighted Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as a key growth engine, thanks to its fast and cost-effective GPU clusters.
According to Main Street Data, Oracle’s Cloud and License unit grew 14% year-over-year to $11.7 billion. The jump was led by strong demand for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and key business apps.
Options Traders Anticipate a Large Move
Using TipRanks’ Options tool, we can see what options traders are expecting from the stock immediately after its earnings report. The expected earnings MOVE is determined by calculating the at-the-money straddle of the options closest to expiration after the earnings announcement. If this sounds complicated, don’t worry, the Options tool does this for you.
Indeed, it currently says that options traders are expecting a 9.70% move in either direction.
Is Oracle a Good Stock to Buy Now?
Overall, Wall Street has a Moderate Buy consensus rating on ORCL stock, based on 24 Buys and 10 Holds assigned in the last three months. The average Oracle stock price target of $253.24 implies about 8.78% upside potential from current levels.
