Shares of Oracle (ORCL 5.98%), the legacy tech giant best known for its database software, were climbing again last month as it impressed investors with its latest earnings report. The results showed that it's seeing soaring demand for its cloud infrastructure services as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom continues to ramp up.
According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, the stock was up 21% as a result. As you can see from the chart below, the stock jumped on its Sept. 9 earnings report and continued to rally from there.
Oracle delivers another win
Oracle hasn't gotten as much attention as some AI stocks, but its cloud growth has been impressive. It's outgrowing cloud infrastructure leaders, like Microsoft and Amazon.
Overall revenue was up just 7% to $13.3 billion in the fiscal first quarter due to a decline in revenue from hardware and services, but that edged out the consensus at $13.23 billion. More importantly, cloud infrastructure revenue jumped 45% to $2.2 billion. Growth in cloud application revenue, or software-as-a-service, was solid as well, up 10% to $2.2 billion.
Cloud services are now Oracle's largest business as it transitions away from traditional licensing and support. The company continues to add new data centers at a rapid pace to meet skyrocketing demand.
Chairman Larry Ellison said the company now has 162 cloud data centers in operation or under construction, and it signed 42 new cloud graphics processing unit (GPU) contracts for $3 billion. It also saw strong growth in remaining performance obligations (RPO), a proxy for backlog, which jumped 53% to $99 billion.
On the bottom line, Oracle also delivered a solid result with adjusted earnings per share increasing 17% to $1.39, ahead of estimates at $1.32.
Image source: Getty Images.
Can Oracle keep gaining?
Looking ahead, Oracle also offered solid guidance, forecasting fiscal second-quarter revenue up 7%-9% with 23%-25% overall growth in cloud revenue. For the second quarter, management forecasts adjusted earnings per share of $1.45-$1.49, which was in line with estimates at $1.47. It also saw growth accelerating in the second half of the year as it forecast full-year revenue growth in the double digits and said cloud infrastructure growth would accelerate from last year.
Compared to its big tech peers, the stock still looks reasonably priced, and Oracle continues to look well positioned to capitalize on the boom in demand for data centers to run AI applications.
