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Oracle jumps after Q3 results exceed expectations, boost to sales guidance

Oracle had gained nearly 12% in early trading on Wednesday after the company's quarterly results and outlook gave investors reason to cheer.

The hyperscaler reported:

  • Sales of $17.2 billion (estimate: $16.9 billion).

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $1.79 (estimate: $1.70).

  • RPO (remaining performance obligations, or backlog) of $553 billion (estimate: $537.8 billion).

Oracle’s closely watched capex for the quarter was $18.64 billion, above analyst estimates of $14 billion.

Management also raised its sales outlook for the next fiscal year to $90 billion; analysts had expected $86.7 billion.

One year ago, management suggested that its fiscal 2027 top-line growth rate would be around 20%. And last quarter, the company said that 2027 sales would be $4 billion higher than previously expected. Putting this all together, this means Oracle’s previous 2027 sales guidance was in the neighborhood of $84.4 billion ahead of this report.

Breaking down Oracle’s cloud business:

  • Cloud revenue was $8.9 billion, up 44% year on year.

  • Cloud infrastructure revenue was $4.9 billion, up 84% year on year.

  • Cloud application revenue was $4 billion, up 13% year on year.

All of those figures were marginally ahead of estimates.

The cloud company’s elevated indebtedness and expected cash burn compare unfavorably to other hyperscalers, which caused markets to treat its aggressive capex plans as more risky than those of its peers. That’s been exacerbated by OpenAI, itself a cash incinerator, being the source of much of Oracle’s pipeline of future business.

Oracle’s five-year credit default swap spreads widened significantly from mid-September through late January due to this counterparty and credit risk. The company’s perceived creditworthiness recovered after announcing plans to raise money through equity, not just debt, to find its expansion plans, before CDS spreads once again blew out to their widest level since 2009.

“Oracle has been stained by the negative sentiment around OpenAI and is generally viewed as a poster child for AI Capex excess / madness and so a super squeezy rally in the stock could tell us AI Capex fears have peaked for now,” Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets, wrote ahead of this release.

Oracle shares took a beating recently, as a number of analysts have lowered their price targets for the stock, which is down about 56% from its 52-week high of $345.72.

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AMD shares climb on double Citi upgrade to “buy” with $575 price target

AMD’s shares are rising in premarket trading following a double upgrade from Citi. Citi analyst Atif Malik raised AMD’s investment rating to “buy” from “neutral” and boosted the bank’s 12-month price target to $575 from $460 per share, per Barron’s.

Malik argued that the broader market currently misprices AMD by looking at it primarily as a CPU producer, underestimating its massive GPU potential. Citi says that AMD is uniquely “poised to win the lion’s share” of Meta’s customized graphics chip business. Meta is leaning into AMD’s custom MI450 chips, which deliver a lower total cost of ownership compared to buying traditional off-the-shelf merchant hardware, according to Investing.com.

Citi highlighted a massive multiyear deal between the two tech giants involving a 160 million-share common stock warrant. As the first phase ramps up through 2027, Citi expects each gigawatt of data center infrastructure to translate into roughly $15 billion in revenue. Consequently, Citi hiked its 2027 AMD AI sales forecast to $33 billion (up 137% year over year) and projects GPU sales to reach $50.8 billion by 2028.

CEO Lisa Su recently delivered an optimistic demand forecast, predicting that the global market for CPUs will grow by more than 35% annually over the next five years. The chipmaker delivered a robust Q1 earnings report back in May that beat Wall Street expectations across key data center segments.

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Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Nebius, Rocket Lab, Teradyne rise on Nasdaq 100 Index inclusion announcement

Tech stocks Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Nebius, Rocket Lab, and Teradyne have risen as much as 8.9% in premarket trading on Friday, thanks in part to Nasdaq’s announcement that the five companies will join its flagship Nasdaq 100 Index starting June 22.

As part of the index operator’s quarterly rebalance, which affects some $1.4 trillion in assets within the Nasdaq 100 ecosystem, the companies will replace Charter, Zscaler, Cognizant, Insmed, and Verisk — relatively slow-growth legacy businesses that have lingered around the bottom of the index in market cap terms of late. Most of those stocks slipped slightly on the news.

With CoreWeave and Nebius as two of the major players in the neocloud space, and Astera Labs and Teradyne specializing in making AI hardware and semiconductors, the latest additions reflect how the index is upping its exposure to the AI infrastructure stack. Back in December, Nasdaq also added AI data storage names Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital, as well as AI server manager Monolithic Power Systems, as part of its quarterly rebalance.

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Jon Keegan

Adobe beats on Q2 earnings, revenue; CFO to step down

Adobe reported fiscal Q2 results Thursday, beating analysts’ estimates for revenue and earnings, as its stock plumbed its lowest levels since 2019.

For Q2 2026, the creative software company posted:

  • Revenues of $6.62 billion (estimate: $6.45 billion).

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $5.96 (estimate: $5.82).

  • Annual recurring revenue of $27.1 billion (estimate: $26.6 billion).

  • Subscription revenue of $6.42 billion (estimate: $6.27 billion).

  • Remaining performance obligations of $22.27 billion (estimate: $21.86 billion).

The company also said its CFO, Dan Durn, would step down next week “to pursue a new professional opportunity.” And it boosted its full-year guidance for earnings and revenue.

Shares fell 5.5% in after-hours trading.

Adobe is feeling the pressure from AI, as the April release of Anthropic’s Claude Design threatens the company’s core design software business. Shares have tanked lately, with the stock down by nearly half over the past 12 months, putting it at levels not seen in years.

Last quarter, Adobe announced that CEO Shantanu Narayen, who had been at the company for 18 years, would be leaving after his successor was appointed. Today, Adobe announced that CFO Dan Durn would also be leaving the company — this month.

Adobe announced a $25 billion stock buyback in April, which gave the stock a boost. The company said it repurchased about 8.5 million shares during the quarter.

In a press release, Narayen said:

“Adobe delivered record revenue of $6.62 billion in Q2 reflecting strong AI-driven demand across our customer groups and we are raising our full-year fiscal 2026 revenue and non-GAAP EPS targets on the strength of that performance.”

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Trump says he’s called off impending strikes on Iran, sending stocks higher and oil plunging

President Trump on Thursday afternoon said he is calling off upcoming planned strikes on Iran. In a Truth Social post, Trump said “discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.”

Stocks broadly popped, with the S&P 500 moving from roughly flat to up 1.4% on the day, and oil plunged on the news.

“Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others. The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized — Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly,” the president added.

West Texas Intermediate crude futures are down 3% on Thursday afternoon, dropping sharply following the post.

Oil-sensitive stocks reacted accordingly, with airlines including Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Alaska Air, and Frontier all climbing significantly. Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean similarly jumped.

Freight companies including UPS, FedEx, XPO, and Old Dominion Freight were also up on oil’s movement.

Oil-adjacent companies including Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Occidental Petroleum dipped.

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