New York, Feb 25, 2026, 10:48 (EST) — Regular session
- Oracle shares jumped early after Oppenheimer bumped its rating to Outperform, pinning a $185 target on the stock.
- Investors are weighing the payoff of Oracle’s AI data-center investments as the call arrives.
- Next up for traders: Oracle’s results, due out in early March.
Oracle climbed 3.2% to $150.87 late Wednesday morning, buoyed by a Wall Street upgrade that offered some relief to a stock that’s seen plenty of turbulence this year.
Oppenheimer’s Brian Schwartz bumped Oracle up to “Outperform” from “Perform” and slapped on a $185 target, noting, “we see a favorable risk/reward after the stock’s multiples have been cut by more than half since September.” Schwartz labeled Oracle a “strong EPS compounder,” and he’s forecasting earnings per share could more than double by fiscal 2030. Investing.com
Timing is key here: software stocks have been battered lately as investors argue over how generative AI is shifting pricing power and affecting jobs. On Tuesday, parts of the sector got a lift—shares rallied after Anthropic, an AI startup, rolled out corporate-focused partnerships. Still, the broader S&P 500 Software & Services index is deep in the red for the year.
The spending overhang at Oracle isn’t going away. Earlier this month, Oracle said it’s looking to raise $45 billion to $50 billion in 2026—debt and equity combined—to ramp up cloud infrastructure. About half of that is slated to come from equity-linked and common stock sales, the rest from senior unsecured bonds issued early in the year. The company pointed to signed demand from major Oracle Cloud Infrastructure clients: AMD, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, TikTok, and xAI all made the list. Meanwhile, a lawsuit from bondholders filed back in January claims Oracle didn’t disclose just how much debt the AI push would require.
Oracle’s pushing to turn that demand into steady cloud revenue. But the company’s still up against larger cloud competitors, and investors remain wary—they want to see more concrete evidence that all this spending is actually translating into cash flow.
The upgrade leaves the execution issue unresolved. What it does do is intensify the ongoing argument over valuation versus risk, especially as the business demands more capital and payoffs can be slow, showing up only after several quarters or even years.
Plenty could unravel quickly. Should customers start dialing back on orders, or if buildout expenses outpace forecasts, Oracle risks squeezed margins and a jump in funding requirements. That would leave the stock vulnerable once more, bounce or not.
Next up for Oracle: earnings are due March 9, per Investing.com. The street is tracking any changes around cloud revenue, spending levels, and financing strategies, plus word from executives on just how tightly they’re managing returns from AI infrastructure.
Oracle shares got a boost from the upgrade. Now, investors are bracing for the company’s results and outlook, with attention squarely on how Oracle frames the cost of chasing growth—and how the market responds.
