New York, January 7, 2026, 11:40 ET — Regular session
- Oracle shares down 0.2% in late-morning trade, hovering near $193
- Jefferies keeps a Buy rating and $400 target, pointing to AI-driven demand
- Investors focus on converting a swollen contract backlog into revenue, with a dividend record date days away
Oracle Corp shares slipped 0.2% to $193.44 in late-morning trading on Wednesday, after Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating and kept a $400 price target in a 2026 software outlook. Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said OpenAI accounts for 57% of Oracle’s contract backlog and argued the stock can rebound after a roughly 40% slide tied to worry about AI spending and debt.
The call matters because Oracle has become a test case for how much the market will pay for AI infrastructure inside a mature software name. Investors want proof that the money going into new data centers shows up fast enough in cloud revenue — and that margins do not sag while the buildout runs.
Oracle in December reported remaining performance obligations, or RPO — a gauge of contracted revenue still to be recognized — jumped 438% to $523 billion, helped by new commitments from Meta Platforms, Nvidia and others. Cloud revenue rose 34% to $8.0 billion, and co-CEO Clay Magouyrk said Oracle has more than 211 live and planned regions and is more than halfway through building 72 multicloud data centers inside Amazon, Google and Microsoft clouds. Oracle ended Nov. 30 with $19.2 billion in cash, about $108 billion of borrowings and $20.5 billion of capital spending in the first half; Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said Oracle is now committed to “chip neutrality” for its cloud buildout. Oracle Investor Relations
Oracle also declared a quarterly dividend of 50 cents a share, payable on Jan. 23 to shareholders of record on Jan. 9, a filing showed. The payout is one of the next calendar markers for a stock that has traded more on AI headlines than on yield.
But the bet is lumpy. If AI customers slow orders, or power and chip supply gets tight, Oracle could be left with spare capacity and a bigger interest bill, while rivals such as Microsoft and Amazon can lean on fatter balance sheets.
Investors now look for the next update on spending, backlog conversion and cloud growth when Oracle reports fiscal third-quarter results, which the company says it expects to announce in mid-March. Until then, the tape may keep treating ORCL as an AI infrastructure trade, not a sleepy database stock.
