Dec. 15, 2025 — Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) is starting this week in a market mood that can best be described as “AI sobriety, with a side of whiplash.” Shares were trading around $190 on Monday after last week’s sharp selloff, as investors continue to digest two big storylines: Oracle’s surging AI/cloud backlog and the very real, very expensive infrastructure spending required to deliver it. [1]
Oracle’s stock has become a bellwether for a broader question hanging over Big Tech into 2026: When does AI spending stop looking like a moonshot and start looking like a business? Reuters’ market commentary on Monday framed it plainly—after disappointing updates from Oracle and Broadcom, the AI theme that dominated 2025 is suddenly shakier, with rotation out of high-flying tech showing up even in major index performance. [2]
Oracle stock price today: why ORCL is still swinging
Monday’s Oracle action is less about a single new headline and more about “aftershocks” from a turbulent week:
- Oracle’s latest earnings and guidance re-focused attention on cash burn, debt, and payback timelines for AI data centers. [3]
- A report about potential OpenAI-related data center timeline slippage (which Oracle disputed) put fresh sensitivity around execution risk—construction delays, power availability, and supply constraints. [4]
- Analysts are still broadly constructive on the long-term opportunity, but the market is clearly demanding more evidence that Oracle can turn backlog into cash-flowing revenue without stressing the balance sheet. [5]
That combination is why ORCL has been trading less like a sleepy enterprise software stock and more like a leveraged AI infrastructure proxy.
Earnings recap: what Oracle reported in fiscal Q2 2026
Oracle’s fiscal Q2 2026 results (reported Dec. 10, 2025) delivered a mixed message: the business is growing, cloud demand is real, and the backlog is enormous—yet near-term revenue and guidance didn’t clear the market’s increasingly high bar. [6]
From Oracle’s own release, key operating metrics included:
- Total revenue:$16.1B (up 14% year over year) [7]
- Total cloud revenue (IaaS + SaaS):$8.0B (up 34%) [8]
- Cloud Infrastructure (IaaS):$4.1B (up 68%) [9]
- Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO):$523B (up 438% year over year) [10]
The AI-cloud hype isn’t being built on vibes alone—Oracle is showing real demand signals, and in Q2 it pointed to new commitments from Meta and NVIDIA among others (as highlighted in the company’s commentary around RPO growth). [11]
But markets trade on directional surprises, not just big numbers. Reuters reported Oracle’s quarterly revenue came in at about $16.06B, slightly below the analyst consensus of $16.21B, and that a key forward-looking contracts metric also came in a touch under expectations. [12]
Guidance that spooked the Street: EPS, revenue, and cloud growth expectations
The most market-moving part of the update wasn’t what Oracle earned last quarter—it was what management suggested comes next.
Reuters reported Oracle guided for fiscal Q3 adjusted EPS of $1.64 to $1.68, below the $1.72 analyst estimate (LSEG), and forecast total revenue growth of 16%–18%, below estimates around 19.4% growth. [13]
Oracle also posted $523B in future contracts (RPO), but Reuters noted that figure was slightly below Visible Alpha estimates of $526B—a small miss on paper, but symbolically important when investor psychology is shifting from “growth at all costs” to “show me the receipts.” [14]
The headline that changed the debate: Oracle lifts FY2026 capex outlook to about $50B
Then came the number that really re-priced the stock: capital expenditures.
Reuters reported Oracle executives said fiscal 2026 capex is now expected to be $15B higher than the $35B figure the company had discussed in September—implying roughly $50B in capex for the fiscal year ending May 2026. [15]
That is… not small. It’s “build-a-small-country-of-data-centers” money.
Breakingviews (Reuters’ financial commentary) framed the tension sharply: Oracle’s operations generated around $2B of cash in the period referenced, while capex ran about $12B, and the company raised expected full-year spending from $35B to $50B. [16]
Oracle’s defense is essentially: the spending is matched to contracted demand—they’re not building empty malls in the desert; they’re building capacity because customers already lined up. Channel Dive summarized Oracle’s stance similarly, quoting Oracle’s CFO emphasizing that most capex is for “revenue-generating equipment” going into data centers and pointing back to the backlog strength. [17]
Still, the market’s skepticism is rational: giant capex plans can be value-creating or value-destroying depending on utilization, pricing power, financing cost, and execution.
Financing questions: debt, credit risk, and “creative” capex models
Once you say “$50 billion,” investors immediately ask: Who’s paying?
Reuters reported that on the earnings call, Oracle executives discussed alternative financing models—including scenarios where customers bring their own chips (reducing Oracle’s up-front capex burden) or where vendors rent capacity rather than sell it. [18]
Markets, meanwhile, have been watching Oracle’s balance-sheet risk signals. In Reuters’ reporting around the selloff, Oracle was described as having roughly $100B in debt, with the cost of default insurance (credit-default swaps) moving to multi-year highs during the volatility. [19]
The key point for investors: Oracle’s AI cloud push is increasingly being evaluated like an infrastructure build—where funding structure matters almost as much as revenue growth.
OpenAI data center delay report: what happened, what Oracle said, and why it mattered
On Dec. 12, Reuters reported Oracle disputed a Bloomberg News report that some OpenAI-related data centers were being pushed out to 2028 from 2027 due to labor and materials shortages. Oracle’s spokesperson told Reuters there were no delays affecting contractual commitments and that milestones remained on track, adding Oracle was aligned with OpenAI on execution and expansion plans. [20]
Investopedia’s recap underscored how sensitive the stock has become to any perceived execution risk: Oracle shares slid further after the report, even with the company reiterating that milestones remained on track. [21]
The deeper issue is not just whether one project slips. It’s that at AI scale, bottlenecks now include not only GPUs, but also construction capacity, power availability, and supply chains—a theme Reuters highlighted with analysts noting practical constraints are becoming a bigger factor. [22]
Wall Street forecasts: analyst price targets still point higher, but the story has changed
Despite the drawdown, sell-side forecasts remain notably upbeat—at least on price targets.
MarketBeat’s consensus snapshot (as of the most recent data it displayed) shows:
- Consensus rating: Moderate Buy
- Average 12‑month price target:$301.57
- High / low targets:$400 high and $130 low
- Number of analyst ratings:43 [23]
With ORCL around $190, that consensus target implies roughly ~59% upside—a huge gap that reflects how divided the market is between “this is a temporary capex panic” and “this is a debt-funded bet with execution landmines.” [24]
Reuters also noted that after results, at least 13 brokerages cut price targets, even as some analysts argued the spending is necessary to meet demand. [25]
What’s different now is what analysts will have to be right about. The bull case can’t just be “AI!” It has to be:
- capacity delivered on time,
- high utilization,
- durable pricing,
- manageable financing costs,
- conversion of backlog into cash flow.
Technical picture: “oversold” vibes, but the trend is damaged
From a purely technical standpoint, several analysts describe ORCL as being in a corrective phase after its big 2025 run.
An Investing.com technical analysis published on Dec. 15 pointed out that Oracle has dropped below both its 50‑day moving average (~$247) and its 200‑day moving average (~$213)—typically a bearish signal—and flagged a near-term support zone around $185–$190. [26]
That doesn’t predict the future (no indicator does), but it helps explain trader behavior: once a large-cap breaks long-term trend levels, a lot of funds and systematic strategies mechanically reduce exposure.
The bull case for Oracle stock in 2026: backlog + cloud momentum + “chip neutrality”
Oracle’s optimistic argument is straightforward:
- The company has amassed a massive backlog ($523B RPO) that could provide multi-year revenue visibility. [27]
- Cloud infrastructure growth is strong (IaaS up 68% year over year in Q2). [28]
- Oracle is positioning itself as a serious AI infrastructure provider—especially via its OpenAI partnership and other large customers. [29]
In the Q2 release, Oracle also emphasized strategic shifts that (in theory) improve execution flexibility—most notably its move toward “chip neutrality” after selling its stake in Ampere, saying it no longer views designing and manufacturing its own chips as strategic for its data centers. [30]
Oracle additionally touted scale and distribution: 211 live and planned cloud regions, and progress building 72 Oracle Multicloud datacenters embedded across Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds—plus claiming its multicloud database business grew 817% in Q2. [31]
If Oracle can turn that footprint into a repeatable “enterprise AI factory,” the current selloff could eventually look like a classic capex-cycle tantrum.
The bear case: cash-flow timing, AI ROI skepticism, and OpenAI concentration risk
The market’s caution has three main roots:
1) Cash now vs. revenue later.
Spending $50B to build capacity before it’s fully monetized is a timing mismatch. It can work—utilities and hyperscalers do it—but it raises risk if demand or pricing weakens.
2) AI investors are becoming picky.
Reuters’ Dec. 12 analysis described a shift away from indiscriminate AI buying toward more selective scrutiny, especially around capex and timelines for returns. [32]
3) OpenAI exposure.
Reuters reported Oracle’s $300B OpenAI data-center deal helped propel Oracle into the infrastructure race, but it also ties Oracle’s narrative tightly to OpenAI’s trajectory. [33]
Investopedia similarly highlighted investor concern that OpenAI represents more than half of Oracle’s cloud backlog, raising questions about the funding and durability of that demand. [34]
Even if Oracle can repurpose capacity to other customers, the market may haircut the “certainty” of future revenue until utilization is visible.
Key catalysts to watch next for ORCL investors
A few concrete dates and signals may matter more than hot takes:
Next earnings: early-to-mid March 2026
Oracle’s investor materials indicate its Q3 FY2026 earnings are expected mid‑March 2026, though exact dates can vary by calendar source. [35]
Dividend timeline
Oracle declared a $0.50 per share quarterly dividend, with a record date of Jan. 9, 2026 and payment date of Jan. 23, 2026. [36]
What the market will actually reward
Between now and the next earnings print, expect ORCL to trade on evidence—any combination of:
- clearer capex financing plans,
- confirmation of data-center buildout milestones,
- signs backlog is converting to revenue faster than feared,
- stabilization in credit-risk indicators,
- and broader “AI ROI” sentiment across mega-cap tech. [37]
Bottom line
As of Dec. 15, 2025, Oracle stock is sitting at the uncomfortable intersection of two truths:
- Oracle is showing real cloud and AI demand (RPO and cloud growth are eye-catching). [38]
- The price of meeting that demand is a massive, front-loaded investment cycle that forces hard questions about cash flow, debt, and execution risk. [39]
Wall Street’s consensus targets imply meaningful upside from current levels, but the market is no longer handing out premium valuations for AI ambition alone. Oracle’s next chapter—up or down—will likely be written in boring-but-decisive metrics: capex efficiency, utilization, financing cost, and the pace of backlog conversion.
References
1. www.reuters.com, 2. www.reuters.com, 3. www.reuters.com, 4. www.reuters.com, 5. www.reuters.com, 6. www.reuters.com, 7. investor.oracle.com, 8. investor.oracle.com, 9. investor.oracle.com, 10. investor.oracle.com, 11. investor.oracle.com, 12. www.reuters.com, 13. www.reuters.com, 14. www.reuters.com, 15. www.reuters.com, 16. www.reuters.com, 17. www.channeldive.com, 18. www.reuters.com, 19. www.reuters.com, 20. www.reuters.com, 21. www.investopedia.com, 22. www.reuters.com, 23. www.marketbeat.com, 24. www.marketbeat.com, 25. www.reuters.com, 26. www.investing.com, 27. investor.oracle.com, 28. investor.oracle.com, 29. www.reuters.com, 30. investor.oracle.com, 31. investor.oracle.com, 32. www.reuters.com, 33. www.reuters.com, 34. www.investopedia.com, 35. investor.oracle.com, 36. investor.oracle.com, 37. www.reuters.com, 38. investor.oracle.com, 39. www.reuters.com
