Oracle's ORCL database business notched its strongest growth signal yet in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, with the Oracle Multicloud AI Database expanding 404% year over year, a pace the company itself flagged as its fastest-growing business ever. The momentum builds on a series of product moves through mid-2026, including the rollout of Oracle AI Database 26ai, which embeds agentic AI capabilities, vector search and select AI tools directly into the database layer, along with agentic AI innovations for enterprise data unveiled in March 2026 and continued multicloud expansion across AWS, Google Cloud and Azure infrastructure.
This database strength sits within a broader quarter of record results. Total fourth-quarter revenues rose 21% to $19.2 billion, while total cloud revenues climbed 47% to $9.9 billion, driven by 93% growth in cloud infrastructure. Software revenues, which are based on on-premise database licensing, declined 2% to $6.8 billion for the quarter and 1% to $24.5 billion for the full fiscal year, reflecting the continuing shift of workloads to the cloud. Full-year total revenues reached a record $67.4 billion, up 17%, with non-GAAP operating income rising 16% to $28.9 billion.
The sustainability question centers on cost. Fiscal 2026 free cash flow was negative $23.7 billion as capital expenditures surged to fund AI data center capacity, and Oracle plans to raise roughly $40 billion more in debt and equity in fiscal 2027, including a previously announced $20 billion equity issuance, after having already raised $43 billion in debt and $5 billion in equity in fiscal 2026. Remaining performance obligations reached $638 billion, up 363% year over year, giving management visibility into future demand. For fiscal 2027, Oracle guided total revenues to $90 billion and raised non-GAAP earnings-per-share guidance to $8.05. Management has pointed to the database and applications businesses' long track record of growing aggregate margin dollars through differentiation and expanding market size, even as infrastructure-related capital intensity remains a factor that investors are watching closely.
Database Rivalry: MSFT & AMZN Set the Competitive Backdrop
Oracle's database momentum unfolds alongside intensifying competition from Microsoft MSFT and Amazon AMZN, both scaling their own cloud database offerings. Microsoft continues expanding Azure SQL Database and Cosmos DB, embedding AI-driven features across its Fabric and Copilot ecosystem to compete for enterprise data workloads. Amazon, meanwhile, remains the cloud database incumbent through AWS services like Aurora, DynamoDB and Redshift, leveraging its broad infrastructure footprint. While Microsoft emphasizes integration with its productivity and AI stack, Amazon leans on scale and pricing flexibility. Both Microsoft and Amazon report database and cloud infrastructure growth within larger segment disclosures, making direct margin comparisons with Oracle's standalone database metrics difficult for investors to isolate.
ORCL’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Shares of Oracle have lost 30.6% in the past six-month period, underperforming the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s appreciation of 14.9%.
ORCL’s 6-Month Price Performance
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From a valuation standpoint, ORCL stock is currently trading at a discount with a trailing 12-month Price/Earnings ratio of 20.8x, which is lower than the Zacks Computer - Software industry average of 23.65x. Oracle carries a Value Score of B.
ORCL’s Valuation
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The Zacks Consensus Estimate for ORCL’s fiscal 2027 earnings is pegged at $8.03, which suggests 5.24% growth over the figure reported in fiscal 2026.
Oracle Corporation Price and Consensus
Oracle Corporation price-consensus-chart | Oracle Corporation Quote
ORCL stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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