Oracle shares surged 40% Wednesday, setting the software giant on pace for its best trading day since 1992 and pushing its market value toward the $1 trillion milestone. The rally came after the company unveiled cloud demand and revenue projections that far exceeded Wall Street's expectations.
The company reported $455 billion in remaining performance obligations, a 359% jump from a year earlier. "The Street was looking for about $180 billion in RPO and they're talking about a number that is a multiple of that. That is astounding," Ben Reitzes, head of technology research at Melius Research, told CNBC's "Closing Bell: Overtime."
Oracle projected $18 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue for fiscal 2026 and said it expects the annual total to climb to $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion and $144 billion over the following four years. Analysts described the forecast as "absolutely staggering" and "a momentous confirmation" of investor confidence in artificial intelligence-driven cloud infrastructure demand.
The bullish projections overshadowed weaker first-quarter earnings. Adjusted profit came in at $1.47 a share, just under the $1.48 expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Revenue of $14.93 billion missed the consensus estimate of $15.04 billion.
Still, the stock spike has propelled Oracle to a market capitalization of $950 billion, within striking distance of joining the trillion-dollar club alongside peers Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia.
The rally also delivered what may be the largest single-day wealth surge in history for Oracle co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison. With a 1.16 billion-share stake in the company, Ellison's net worth swelled by about $87.8 billion in a matter of hours. According to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, only 18 people in the world are worth more than that sum in total.
