Tech stocks took a header on poor Oracle earnings today.
The company, which was expected to ride the artificial intelligence wave, disappointed the Street. In fact, according to analysts at Cowen, “Expectations were high, and while we thought this was a solid cloud number, there was no upside to [Oracle cloud infrastructure] and it wasn’t the cleanest overall quarter, and the lower 2Q guide was surprising,” as quoted by Yahoo Finance.
However, don’t write the stock off just yet.
Despite missing its revenue target by $20 million, there’s still reason to like the ORCL stock. For one, the company just declared a quarterly dividend of 40 cents, payable October 26 to shareholders of record as of Oct. 12. Two, analysts still like the ORCL growth story.
Mizuho, for example, reiterated its buy rating on ORCL, with a $150 price target. The firm noted, “that despite FQ1 being the seasonally slowest quarter, Oracle delivered organic cloud revenue growth of 29% in constant currency, steered by strength in OCI Gen 2 (66% Y/Y growth) and back-office apps (17% Y/Y increase).”
Also, “While the company reported a slight revenue miss of $20M, this was driven by weaker licenses/hardware revenue (which is of lesser importance), according to the analysts.”
That being said, investors may want to take advantage of the pullback to less than $110. At this point, the $18 drop appears to be a severe overreaction.
