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Oracle executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison.
(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Why Wall Street is unbothered by any margin weakness in Oracle’s GPU rental business

The stock has bounced all the way back.

Luke Kawa

When Advanced Micro Devices reached a megadeal with OpenAI at the start of the week, Wall Street went bananas and the shares did too, with more than 20 analysts raising their price targets in the 24 hours following the announcement.

When The Information put out a report on Tuesday saying Oracle’s GPU rental business had a fairly low profit margin, shares dipped and Wall Street responded by doing... absolutely nothing.

Not a single brokerage polled by Bloomberg has changed its rating or price target on shares of the hyperscaler in the wake of this news. And that’s seemingly for good reason: the stock has completely erased Tuesday’s drop!

Mizuho Securities called Tuesday’s tumble “a buying opportunity,” while Guggenheim added that early returns may be fairly soft, but “it’s reasonable to expect any deal to be at least 25% gross margin over its life — or Oracle wouldn’t sign it.”

While profitability challenges in the early stages of a ramp are far from uncommon, competing on price is an old hat for Oracle in particular. Back in 2017, founder, chairman, and CTO Larry Ellison detailed plans to grow its cloud business by matching Amazon Web Services’ list prices while offering speedier compute, enticing customers with the assurance that “your bill will drop by half” if they switched over. And earlier this year, the company offered very preferential pricing for government agencies.

The profitability metric reported by The Information “isn’t much of a surprise to us as the company has historically looked to undercut competitors’ pricing — as it’s done for its cloud services business,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard wrote. “We don’t expect Oracle to make changes to its pricing strategy near term as this has enabled it to capture share. Oracle can also leverage its higher-margin software and database segments to offset the pressure.”

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Lululemon’s stretch getting tested: Stock plunges after after outlook is cut

Lululemon shares are down double digits in premarket trading after the company cut its full-year sales and profit outlook, overshadowing a Q1 beat and raising fresh concerns about the brand’s turnaround efforts.

The company now expects fiscal 2026 revenue to be flat to down 1%, compared with its prior forecast for 2% to 4% growth. Guidance for full-year diluted earnings per share was dragged down to a range of $10.95 to $11.15, below the company’s previous guidance of $12.10 to $12.30 and well below Wall Street’s estimate of $13.26.

Key numbers for Q1:

  • EPS of $1.69 vs. the $1.68 expected.

  • Revenue of $2.47 billion vs. the $2.43 billion expected.

The modest top-line beat masked a widening divergence between Lululemons geographic markets. While international revenue rose 22% overall with a 30% increase in Mainland China, the bigger problem remains North America, where revenue fell 5%.

Interim co-CEO and CFO Meghan Frank acknowledged during the earnings call that recent product rollouts underperformed. A highly anticipated yoga campaign failed to generate its expected halo effect across broader product lines.

Profitability metrics took a major hit, with gross margins contracting by 410 basis points to 54.2% due to mounting tariff costs and promotional markdowns. Operating income consequently fell 37% year over year to $276.9 million.

“We experienced spikes of negative commentary in the media and on social channels with regard to our brand, which had an impact on traffic and overall top-line performance,” Frank said during the earnings call. “And second, not all of our product launches have met our expectations. While we have had several successful launches so far this year, we have seen others as we start Q2 not generate the anticipated guest response.”

Lululemons valuation has already been steadily compressing for years. While it was once one of retails richly valued stocks, investors have been questioning whether the company can return to the double-digit growth era.

The results also arrive during a leadership transition. Lululemon announced back in April that former Nike executive Heidi ONeill is set to take over as CEO in September, with investors looking to her to revive growth in North America and restore the brands growth.

As Lululemon faces both macroeconomic pressure and brand-specific challenges, its stock has dropped around 40% year to date.

markets

US job growth skyrocketed in May, blasting past expectations

The US economy added 172,000 jobs in the month of May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, sending 10-year Treasury yields higher.

The strong May job market surprised economists. Experts had predicted only 85,000 new jobs — just half the reported number. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, as expected.

The job growth story is a hopeful spot for the economy as consumers continue to feel inflationary pressure from the Iran war.

Job gains were buoyed by the leisure and hospitality sector, which added 70,000 jobs, as well as local government, healthcare, and education.

Both the March and April jobs reports were revised upward, making them collectively 93,000 higher than previously reported.

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