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Oracle (ORCL) has been under pressure recently, and that’s why the latest analyst call is important. Analyst Siti Panigrahi at Mizuho wrote that “bearish concerns” surrounding Oracle are easing after the Q3 report while maintaining an “Outperform” rating on the shares but cutting the price target to $320 from $400 due to peer multiple contraction rather than a change in their underlying thesis.
The old thesis was rather straightforward: Oracle’s aspirations in AI were legitimate, but the company would need to go heavily leveraged to support that investment in the data center business. The new argument is that a significant part of that business growth can be supported through customer prepayments and bring-your-own-hardware models.
