NEW YORK, March 13, 2026, 18:00 EDT
Oracle shares slipped roughly 2.5% to $155.11 late Friday in U.S. trading, following a regulatory filing that revealed the software giant now expects its fiscal 2026 restructuring plan to cost up to $2.1 billion—an increase from the previous $1.6 billion estimate.
That’s key for Oracle, which still faces skepticism over whether its AI expansion can actually deliver profitable growth rather than just swelling expenses. This week, the company raised its fiscal 2027 revenue goal to $90 billion and cited $553 billion in remaining performance obligations—the sum of future contracted revenue. But Friday’s filing dragged the cost issue back into the spotlight.
Oracle pointed to AI code-generation tools as a key reason it’s able to produce more software with a leaner workforce, according to its filing, which indicated most restructuring charges came from severance costs. The company stuck to its $50 billion fiscal 2026 capital spending target, noting it has already secured $30 billion through its ongoing plan to raise up to $50 billion in debt and equity this year.
Oracle turned in third-quarter revenue of $17.2 billion, with adjusted EPS landing at $1.79. Cloud infrastructure sales surged 84%, topping out at $4.9 billion. RPO, on the other hand, shot up 325% to $553 billion.
The stock jumped roughly 12% Wednesday. Matt Britzman, a senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, pointed out that a lot of the latest AI deals allow clients to “pay upfront or bring their own hardware,” which takes some of the funding pressure off Oracle. Reuters
Oracle is chasing AI cloud deals with Meta and OpenAI, squaring off against Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure. But Friday saw Oracle lag its competitors—Microsoft slipped roughly 1.6%, Amazon eased about 0.9% in late U.S. trade.
Oracle leaders pushed back on the notion that artificial intelligence will undermine their established software segment. “I don’t agree with that at all,” co-CEO Mike Sicilia said, dismissing concerns that AI coding innovations spell doom for software-as-a-service, or SaaS. Larry Ellison added that Oracle is actually leveraging these tools to speed up new product development. Reuters
Risks are still on the table. According to Morgan Stanley analysts, investors want clearer signs that Oracle’s AI chip rental operation will actually boost both earnings and free cash flow. And that larger restructuring reserve? It could spell further turbulence ahead.
There’s demand on the table, but costs aren’t going away. eMarketer’s Jacob Bourne dubbed Oracle’s quarter “a stress test result for the AI trade.” Investors seemed undecided Friday, judging by the pullback—just how much of that test did Oracle actually clear? Reuters
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