What to Watch for in Oracle's Monday Earnings: Cloudy with a Chance of Billions
Brace yourselves, Oracle (ORCL) is dropping its fiscal first-quarter 2025 earnings after Monday’s closing bell, and all eyes are on its cloud infrastructure—because, apparently, everything these days is "in the cloud." Oracle’s hoping for revenue to hit $13.23 billion (up 6% year-over-year) and earnings per share of 91 cents. Not too shabby, considering last year they only managed 86 cents per share. Net income is expected to land at a cool $2.57 billion, which is more than enough to make you wonder where all that cloud money is actually floating off to.
Now, onto the juicy stuff: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Last quarter, they pulled in $2 billion, and they’ve promised an even shinier 50% growth for fiscal 2025. Analysts are crossing their fingers for $2.18 billion this quarter—because who wouldn’t want to see Oracle ride the AI hype train straight to the bank? With tech pals like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google already in their corner, Oracle's hoping to add Amazon's AWS to their collection at next week’s CloudWorld conference. Oh, and there’s talk of a possible AI factory announcement too, because why not? After all, AI is basically the golden ticket these days.
If Oracle meets its earnings expectations, I expect the stock price to see a positive boost. After all, the revenue growth, a strong year-over-year EPS increase, and a rise in net income should please investors. Oracle’s cloud business, which is growing rapidly, could also ride the AI wave, especially with the buzz surrounding Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and its potential partnerships with major players like AWS. If the earnings report exceeds or significantly beats expectations, the stock price is very likely to break through the previous high of $146.59.
However, if Oracle falls short of expectations, particularly in its cloud division, the stock could face a downturn. Investors have high hopes for OCI and AI-related developments, and missing these targets could dampen the stock's recent upward momentum. With the stock currently trading at $141.81, any earnings miss would likely push it lower as confidence would temporarily weaken. if the report falls short of expectations, $130 will be the first support level.