Oracle Stock (ORCL) Preview for the Dec. 26, 2025 Market Open: Latest News, Earnings Takeaways, Wall Street Forecasts, and Key Risks

U.S. equity markets are coming off a holiday-shortened week: exchanges closed for Christmas Day (Thursday, Dec. 25) after an early close on Wednesday, Dec. 24, and are scheduled to run a full session on Friday, Dec. 26. ^[1]

For Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL), that matters because the stock has been one of 2025’s most headline-sensitive large-cap tech names—whipsawed by optimism around AI-driven cloud demand, and anxiety over the cost (and financing) of building the capacity to deliver it.

Below is what investors should know heading into the Dec. 26 open—covering the newest catalysts, recent financial results, analyst forecasts, and the risks that are moving the tape.

Where Oracle stock stands heading into Friday’s session

Oracle last closed the Dec. 24 shortened session at $197.49. ^[2]

Early premarket indications have been mixed, with one widely followed market-data dashboard showing ORCL last trading around the mid-$190s in premarket activity (note: premarket prints can be thin and volatile, especially after holidays). ^[3]

Zooming out, the bigger context is volatility: Barron’s described Oracle’s 2025 trading range as roughly $118.86 to $345.72, underscoring just how fast sentiment has swung around the AI/cloud buildout story. ^[4]

The core debate around Oracle right now: “Massive AI backlog” vs. “Massive AI bill”

Oracle is effectively being priced on two competing narratives:

The bullish case

Oracle says cloud demand—especially for infrastructure used in AI workloads—has accelerated sharply. In its fiscal 2026 second quarter report (released Dec. 10), the company posted:

Total revenue: $16.1B, up 14% year over year
Cloud revenue (IaaS + SaaS): $8.0B, up 34%
Cloud Infrastructure (IaaS): $4.1B, up 68%
Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO): $523B, up 438% year over year

Oracle also highlighted new commitments from major names (including Meta and NVIDIA) as contributing to the RPO surge. ^[5]

To bulls, those numbers are the “demand proof” that Oracle’s cloud platform is becoming a real AI-era infrastructure beneficiary—not just an enterprise software incumbent.

The bearish case

The market’s pushback isn’t mostly about demand—it’s about delivery economics:

How fast can Oracle convert that backlog into recognized revenue?
What margins will it earn after power, chips, depreciation, and operating costs?
How much incremental debt (or off-balance-sheet financing) is required to build data centers at the pace implied by its contracts?

Those questions intensified after Oracle’s December results and forward outlook—especially around capex and cash flow.

What Oracle’s latest earnings really told the market

Oracle’s fiscal Q2 2026 headline results looked strong on cloud growth, but investors focused on two complications:

A major one-time boost to earnings
Oracle said both GAAP and non-GAAP EPS were positively impacted by a $2.7B pre-tax gain tied to the sale of its interest in Ampere. ^[6]
That helps explain why EPS growth looked eye-catching—while investors still worried about the underlying cash spend required for AI infrastructure.
Guidance and spending that didn’t calm fears
Reuters reported that Oracle’s forecast missed Wall Street targets on key items, and that the company signaled significantly higher spending to meet AI/cloud commitments—fueling concerns about near-term profitability and free cash flow. ^[7]

This is why Oracle can post rapid OCI growth and still see the stock react sharply: the market is treating ORCL as a “show me” story on execution and monetization, not just demand.

The capex shock: why investors keep coming back to the same question

One of the most market-moving lines in December coverage: Oracle indicated that fiscal 2026 spending expectations moved higher versus prior assumptions, with Reuters noting Oracle’s capex for FY2026 was expected to be $15B higher than its September estimate, as it builds out cloud infrastructure tied largely to AI commitments. ^[8]

That’s the crux. Investors are trying to handicap a multi-step chain:

Big contracts → massive buildout → eventual utilization → eventual margin expansion → eventual cash flow

If any link looks uncertain—timing, financing, utilization, or pricing—ORCL tends to move violently.

OpenAI: the opportunity and the headline risk in one

Oracle’s AI infrastructure narrative is strongly linked to OpenAI-related demand.

Reuters reported Oracle pushed back on a media report suggesting delays to OpenAI-related data centers, underscoring how sensitive the market has become to any “timing slip” headlines. ^[9]
Separate Reuters coverage has framed OpenAI-linked capex as a major contributor to investor anxiety around Oracle’s debt-fueled buildout. ^[10]

For traders heading into Dec. 26, the practical takeaway is simple: OpenAI-related headlines can move ORCL quickly, whether they are about construction timelines, financing partners, power availability, or customer demand.

The TikTok joint venture catalyst: why it matters for Oracle stock

A newer catalyst that re-entered the story in late December is TikTok’s U.S. restructuring.

Reuters reported that ByteDance signed binding agreements to transfer control of TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new joint venture—TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC—with an investor consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. The structure reported by Reuters gives the consortium 80.1%, with ByteDance retaining 19.9%, and a targeted closing date of Jan. 22, 2026. ^[11]

China’s commerce ministry publicly weighed in on Dec. 25, urging the parties to seek “lawful” and “balanced” solutions consistent with Chinese regulations—an important reminder that this is not just a commercial transaction; it remains politically and regulatorily complex. ^[12]

Why ORCL investors care:
If Oracle’s role expands as a “trusted security partner” (as described in coverage of the deal), TikTok could represent incremental cloud/security workload and a higher-profile strategic position. But it also adds a new category of uncertainty: regulatory approvals, governance questions, and geopolitical risk—which public-market investors tend to discount.

Financing and credit stress: the “other” Oracle chart traders watch

Oracle’s equity story increasingly intersects with credit-market signals.

Reuters has reported multiple times in late 2025 that the cost of insuring Oracle’s debt (credit default swaps) jumped to the highest levels in years following earnings, reflecting growing investor caution about leverage and AI-related capital intensity. ^[13]

Two additional developments made that theme louder:

Reuters reported in September that Oracle was aiming to raise $18B in debt as it ramped investment in cloud infrastructure. ^[14]
The Financial Times reported that big tech firms—including Oracle—have used special purpose vehicles (SPVs) and other structures to finance AI data centers, shifting large amounts of data-center debt off balance sheets; the FT reported Oracle secured over $60B through similar structures for data centers leased to OpenAI. ^[15]

Whether investors view this as smart financial engineering or hidden risk depends on their confidence in AI demand durability and Oracle’s ability to convert backlog into steady cash flows.

Multicloud momentum: a quieter tailwind investors shouldn’t ignore

While the market is obsessed with AI data centers, Oracle is also pushing a broader “cloud neutrality / multicloud” strategy—trying to make Oracle databases and services run seamlessly across hyperscalers.

Oracle highlighted in its earnings release that its multicloud database business was its fastest-growing business, up 817% in Q2. ^[16]

And in mid-December, Oracle announced expanded availability of Oracle Database@Google Cloud in additional regions (including India), explicitly positioning it as a way for customers to pair Oracle databases with Google Cloud analytics and AI tools while meeting data residency needs. ^[17]

This is relevant for ORCL stock because multicloud can:

Reduce “all-or-nothing” buyer friction
Expand Oracle’s addressable market
Potentially improve retention and upsell dynamics for high-value database workloads

It’s not always a day-to-day trading driver—but it is part of the longer-term growth case many analysts cite.

Wall Street forecasts: what analysts are modeling now

Analyst sentiment has been volatile, but not uniformly bearish. The key theme is wider dispersion—big upside targets from bulls, sharp skepticism from bears.

Consensus targets still imply meaningful upside (but with heavy caveats)

Investor’s Business Daily reported that analysts tracked by FactSet had an average target price near $299.66 (as of mid-December), implying substantial upside from prices around the high-$100s/low-$200s. ^[18]

But price target cuts have been frequent

Recent examples in published analyst-note coverage include:

Piper Sandler cutting its ORCL price target to $290 (reported by Investing.com), reflecting concern about the pace and economics of the AI buildout. ^[19]
Goldman Sachs reportedly cutting its price target to $220 while keeping a Neutral stance, citing modest shortfalls and sharply higher capex (as summarized in a Yahoo Finance item). ^[20]
A bearish view from Redburn (Rothschild & Co.) reiterated with a $175 target and “Sell” reasoning tied to perceived over-optimism around the OpenAI deal (via Yahoo Finance coverage). ^[21]

Separately, Reuters has noted that multiple brokerages reduced targets after Oracle’s outlook and spending updates, even as some argued the spending is strategically necessary. ^[22]

What to take from this into the Dec. 26 open:
The “average price target” headline can look attractive, but the range of outcomes is unusually wide—because the biggest variables (capex intensity, financing terms, utilization, and timing of backlog conversion) are genuinely hard to model.

Five things to watch on Dec. 26 before (and right after) the open

Any new OpenAI-related buildout or financing headlines
Oracle has already had to respond publicly to delay reports—showing how sensitive the narrative is. ^[23]
TikTok JV developments (and any regulatory commentary)
Reuters’ Dec. 25 China ministry comments are a reminder this deal can generate headlines at any time. ^[24]
Credit-market temperature (CDS / bond chatter)
Rising default-insurance costs don’t mean default is imminent, but they can pressure equity sentiment for highly capital-intensive stories. ^[25]
Holiday liquidity effects
With the market reopening after Christmas and coming off an early close, liquidity can be thinner than usual—which can amplify moves in headline-driven names. ^[26]
Any confirmation signals on backlog monetization
Investors are laser-focused on whether Oracle’s massive RPO converts into revenue fast enough to justify the spend. ^[27]

Bottom line for ORCL heading into the Dec. 26, 2025 session

Oracle stock is trading like a referendum on AI infrastructure execution.

The company’s reported cloud growth and enormous RPO backlog give bulls plenty to point to—but Reuters’ reporting on guidance misses, rising capex expectations, and debt/credit concerns explains why the market keeps demanding proof on cash-flow conversion. ^[28]

Add the TikTok joint venture headline cycle—potentially a strategic tailwind, but also a regulatory wildcard—and ORCL becomes one of the more event-driven mega-cap tech names to watch into year-end. ^[29]

This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.