Oracle (ORCL +0.08%) stock is surging in Wednesday's trading. The company's share price was up 12.1% as of 1:45 p.m. ET, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
NYSE: ORCL
Key Data Points
After the market closed yesterday, Oracle reported results for the fourth quarter of its last fiscal year -- a period that ended May 31. Both sales and earnings for the period came in below Wall Street's expectations, but the company's forward guidance provided reasons to be upbeat. In addition to strong sales and bookings outlooks, the company also announced new artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships with Alphabet and OpenAI.
Oracle stock hits record high despite earnings miss
For fiscal Q4, Oracle reported non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share of $1.63 on sales on $14.92 billion. Meanwhile, the average analyst estimate had called for the enterprise software company to post per-share earnings of $1.65 on sales of $14.57 billion. Revenue for the period was up roughly 3.3% year over year, while adjusted earnings per share were down roughly 2.4% from the $1.67 in profits it posted in last year's quarter.
But other metrics pointed to the business being quite healthy, and the stock has rocketed to a new high. Remaining performance obligations, a metric that tracks services that have been contracted for but not yet delivered and recorded as revenue, rose 44% year over year to hit $98 billion. Additionally, cloud infrastructure service revenue surged 42% year over year to hit $2 billion in the quarter. That's still far below what other top cloud infrastructure service providers are posting, but it suggests that the value of Oracle's overall ecosystem is helping to bring in customers and boost spending in a valuable category.
AI business is heating up for Oracle
For the first quarter of its current fiscal year, Oracle expects sales will increase between 6% and 7% year over year on a currency-adjusted basis. Earnings per share are projected to come in between $1.31 and $1.35.
While Oracle didn't issue specific full-year sales growth targets, management's outlook was very encouraging. CEO Safra Catz stated that she sees strong AI demand helping to push overall sales up at a double-digit level this year. The CEO also said she expects sales growth to accelerate as the year progresses, which could be an indication that growth will continue to pick up at the beginning of the company's next fiscal year.
Not only does the company's long-term growth outlook appear promising, but Oracle also inked new partnerships with Alphabet and OpenAI. No stock market trend is hotter than artificial intelligence right now, and Oracle is getting a valuation boost by scoring new deals with some of the biggest players in the space.
OpenAI will begin using Oracle's cloud infrastructure for some of its generative AI projects. In particular, investors seem to be excited about OpenAI's ChatGPT being trained on Oracle Cloud. Even better, the enterprise software leader also entered into a new multi-cloud partnership with Alphabet for AI services.
