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Oracle ( ORCL ) reported Q3 IaaS revenue of $4.89B, up 84% year-over-year, with outstanding performance obligations rising to $553B (up 325% year-over-year) driven by large-scale AI contracts. Nebius Group (NBIS) reported Q4 2025 revenue of $227.7M, up 503.6% year-over-year, with the AI cloud segment growing 800% year-over-year.
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Oracle’s revenue beat FY2027 guidance and rose to $90B in revenue, shifting investor sentiment from widespread pessimism to growth after months of concerns about the company’s ability to deliver AI cloud infrastructure and meet its 2030 financial goals.
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Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL ) stock rose more than 10% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the company delivered a fiscal Q3 2026 earnings report that quelled many lingering investor concerns, prompting Barclays to raise its price target, JPMorgan to upgrade the stock, and Piper Sandler to reaffirm its top position. The results mark what Oracle calls the first time in 15 years that both organic total revenue and non-GAAP EPS grew 20%+ in the same period, driven by demand for AI-fueled cloud infrastructure that management says continues to outstrip supply. Also in focus this week, AI cloud infrastructure pairs Nebius Group NV (NASDAQ:NBIS) offers a useful lens on the broader topic of AI cloud-building that is changing Wall Street’s view of enterprise technology.
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Taker
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Company name
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firm
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Old → New Hierarchy
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New price target
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Draw a line
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ORCL
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Oracle Corporation
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Barclays
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Overweight → Overweight (PT raised)
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$240
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Key investor concerns highlighted in Q3; Sharing “Good Work Starts Here”
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ORCL
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Oracle Corporation
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JPMorgan
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Neutral → overweight
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$210
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Shares’ 55% decline since mid-September creates good risk/reward
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ORCL
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Oracle Corporation
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Piper Sandler
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Overweight → Overweight (decreased PT)
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$210
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A reduction of several degrees was accepted; Demand still outstrips supply in the AI cloud
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Barclays raised its price target on Oracle to $240 from $230 while maintaining its overweight rating, saying the Q3 print addressed many of the investor concerns about capital spending, contracts’ gross margin profile, and Oracle’s ability to deliver on time. The company sees other parts of the business, including software-as-a-service and maintenance, performing well, generating what it calls “well above” current dividend levels, and sees shares “starting to do well from here.”
JPMorgan upgraded Oracle from neutral to overweight, citing a 55% decline in shares since mid-September and Oracle’s delivery on its growth momentum. The company noted that investor sentiment has shifted from “blind faith to widespread pessimism” about achieving Oracle’s 2030 financial goals, and sees a favorable risk/reward against this backdrop. JPMorgan’s new price target is $210, down from $230, reflecting a more conservative outlook even as the company builds on the name.
READ: The analyst named NVIDIA in 2010 Just naming his top 10 AI stocks
Piper Sandler analyst Billy Fitzsimmons lowered his price target to $210 from $240 to reflect the more data on the software, while maintaining an overweight rating. Fitzsimmons noted that Oracle provided “breadcrumbs” in Q3 that should help ease investor concerns, with demand for AI cloud computing growing faster than supply. Management expects to “comfortably meet and likely exceed” growth rate forecasts for FY27 and beyond.
Oracle is one of the world’s largest enterprise software and cloud infrastructure companies, with a market cap of about $429 billion. Its cloud infrastructure segment has become the primary growth engine, with IaaS revenue reaching $4.89 billion in Q3, up 84% year over year, driven by AI training and analyzing workloads. Total cloud revenue reached $8.91 billion, up 44% year over year. The company’s remaining performance obligations, a leading indicator of contracted future revenue, rose to $553 billion, a 325% year-over-year increase, driven by large-scale AI contracts.
The stock is under significant pressure on this report. Oracle shares are down 23.16% as of March 10, falling from $194.42 to $149.40 at the end of the year. Much of that decline followed Oracle’s Q2 report in December, when the stock fell nearly 13% on a revenue miss despite a strong EPS beat. Reddit’s sentiment data tells a similar story: Sentiment on Oracle was rated “very bearish” as recently as March 9, with posts like “What’s wrong with Oracle?” Dominating retail investor discussions. It reversed sharply after the earnings release on March 10, absorbing to “very bullish” with a score of 80 by Tuesday evening.
Nebius Group, a pure-play AI cloud infrastructure company that has emerged as a fast-growing name in the space, provides a profitable context for the topic of AI cloud-building. Nebius reported Q4 2025 revenue of $227.7 million, up 503.6% year-over-year, with its AI cloud segment growing 800% year-over-year alone. Nebius shares have gained 15.2% year-to-date, in stark contrast to Oracle’s YTD decline, though the two companies are at very different stages of the scale. The analyst consensus on Nebius has a price target of $147.45, which implies a roughly 53% upside from current levels.
The combination of Oracle’s Q3 results and the response from several firm analysts reflects a meaningful reassessment of how Wall Street thinks about the stock after months of sour sentiment. The Q3 print is presented in the metrics most important to the AI cloud article: IaaS 84%, multicloud database revenue increased 531%, and the RPO number that signals the pipeline is not slowing down. Oracle also raised its FY2027 total revenue guidance to $90 billion, a number that has been a focal point of skepticism for investors.
The analyst consensus price target sits at $253.08 with 32 buy ratings, 10 holds, and only 1 sell among covering analysts. Oracle’s current price of $149.40, new targets at $210 from JPMorgan and Piper Sandler and Barclays’ $240 target are both meaningfully above current levels.
The opposite of this optimism is reality. Oracle is carrying $124.7 billion in non-current debt and generating negative cash flow of -$24.74 billion in Q3 due to capital expenditures of $48.25 billion. The company also announced plans to raise up to $50 billion in additional debt and equity financing for further data center expansion. Interest expense grew 32% year-on-year. These are not small risks, and they help explain why JPMorgan lowered its price target even as it raised the stock.
For long-term investors, Oracle’s Q3 report and subsequent wave of analyst support represent a significant shift in the stock’s near-term narrative. The original bull case, that Oracle is building the AI infrastructure foundation that enterprises and hyperscalers need, has gained significant credibility in the form of a $553 billion RPO balance and accelerating IaaS growth. The Composite Sentiment Index of 68.79 with a 7-day trend change of +22.61 suggests momentum is reversing.
That said, the capital intensity of Oracle’s expansion strategy means that free cash flow will remain negative for the foreseeable future, and the debt burden warrants ongoing scrutiny. Oracle pays a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share, and its RPO pipeline stands at $553 billion with a balance sheet stretched by significant capital expenditures and a growing debt load. The Q3 print mitigates near-term risk, but the long-term thesis still hinges on Oracle executing on its $90 billion revenue target in FY2027 in a capital-intensive, GPU-supply-constrained environment.
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