The stock market has gone through a tough few days, and although it appeared Tuesday morning that investors might not have to face another big plunge going into the trading day on Wall Street, there wasn't much sign of an impending recovery. The Federal Reserve begins a two-day meeting on monetary policy today, and there's a lot of uncertainty about whether the central bank will stick to its previous plan or accelerate its schedule of interest rate increases. As of 8 a.m. ET, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.96%) had risen just 24 points to 30,551. S&P 500 (^GSPC 1.51%) futures had gained 8 points to 3,758, and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 2.01%) futures had picked up 45 points to 11,342.
There has been a lot of hype lately about stock splits, with some of the biggest technology stocks in the world having announced them recently. Alphabet (GOOGL 2.01%) (GOOG 2.27%) is in line to join those companies doing splits, with the internet search giant making its move about a month from now. However, in the meantime, investors are focusing on company fundamentals, and it was another tech stock -- Oracle (ORCL 3.75%) -- that powered higher on favorable financial results Tuesday morning.
The details on Alphabet's stock split
Alphabet shareholders approved the 20-for-1 stock split at the annual shareholder meeting on June 1. The split will take the stock price, which is currently above $2,100 per share, and bring it down to just a bit above $100 per share.
NASDAQ: GOOGL
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There's no fundamental reason for a stock to respond to splits, but in the past, the period leading up to a split has often resulted in favorable moves for share prices. That hasn't been the case for Alphabet, though, as the market environment has remained choppy.
The actual split will become apparent to investors starting on Monday, July 18. Shares should be distributed after the market close on the preceding Friday, July 15, giving brokers time over the weekend to process share-balance changes and prepare for post-split trading. From there, it'll be up to Alphabet to prove that it can keep its growth engines humming and get its stock price moving back in an upward direction.
Oracle gets a nice move
Yet for investors wanting more immediate good news, Oracle didn't disappoint. The software giant's fiscal fourth-quarter financial report for the period ending May 31 showed signs of continued growth as Oracle embraced cloud computing even more fully.
The numbers for Oracle were solid. Total sales in the quarter were up 5% to $11.8 billion, even after accounting for a currency-related headwind of 5 percentage points. Cloud revenue jumped 19% year over year, with particularly strong results from its infrastructure cloud and its Fusion and NetSuite enterprise resource planning platforms. Adjusted earnings came in flat from year-ago levels at $1.54 per share.
NYSE: ORCL
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CEO Safra Catz believes the revenue growth Oracle is seeing could accelerate from here. The longtime chief executive called out the infrastructure division as entering a "hyper-growth phase," and she believes that when you also consider the applications business from Oracle's recent acquisition of Cerner, there are plenty of reasons to expect an extended period of heightened sales gains.
Oracle hasn't been immune to the downturn, having lost more than 35% of its value since November 2021 before this morning's rebound. Fundamentally, though, Oracle seems to be on track, and shareholders are recognizing that fact for the first time in a while.
