Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Stock Price Up 2.4% – Time to Buy?

Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) shares shot up 2.4% during mid-day trading on Friday . The company traded as high as $162.30 and last traded at $160.1870. 18,239,722 shares were traded during trading, a decline of 34% from the average session volume of 27,717,588 shares. The stock had previously closed at $156.48.

Key Stories Impacting Oracle

Here are the key news stories impacting Oracle this week:

• Positive Sentiment: U.S. Department of the Air Force awarded Oracle an $88 million OCI task order to support the Cloud One program — a mission‑critical, multi‑year government cloud engagement that adds stable, high‑margin backlog and further validates OCI for classified workloads. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: The City of Atlanta selected Oracle Permitting & Licensing (OPAL) to modernize planning, permitting and inspections — another public sector expansion that supports recurring SaaS/cloud revenue. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Oracle announced additional sector wins and product momentum: ReGrow Israel adopted Oracle Agriculture Data Intelligence, and Oracle Health’s Clinical AI Agent expanded to the UK — these industry deployments highlight cross‑sell opportunities for Oracle’s data/AI stack. Read More. • Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Income/structure commentary: a Seeking Alpha piece highlights preferred shares yielding ~6.6% — useful for yield‑focused investors but peripheral to ORCL’s equity growth story. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Legal overhang — multiple law firms have filed or are soliciting plaintiffs in securities‑class actions covering June–Dec 2025 with an April 6 deadline; the proliferation of suits raises regulatory/legal expenses and investor uncertainty. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Insider action — CEO Clayton Magouyrk sold 10,000 shares (~$1.55M). Single insider sales often reflect personal liquidity but can be interpreted negatively by some investors. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Financing and dilution concerns: an opinion piece flags Oracle’s AI infrastructure spending, potential financing pressure and dilution risk from growth initiatives — a near‑term headwind for sentiment if investors worry about returns on incremental AI investment. Read More.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several brokerages have recently weighed in on ORCL. Jefferies Financial Group reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $400.00 target price on shares of Oracle in a research note on Monday, January 5th. Scotiabank lowered their target price on Oracle from $260.00 to $220.00 and set a “sector outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, February 3rd. Piper Sandler dropped their target price on Oracle from $290.00 to $240.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, February 2nd. HSBC reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $382.00 price objective on shares of Oracle in a research report on Wednesday, November 26th. Finally, Citizens Jmp reduced their price objective on shares of Oracle from $342.00 to $285.00 and set a “market outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 5th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-six have issued a Buy rating, eleven have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Oracle presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $292.43.

Oracle Stock Up 2.4%

The firm has a market capitalization of $460.24 billion, a PE ratio of 30.11, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.37 and a beta of 1.64. The company has a current ratio of 0.91, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.28. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $184.88 and a two-hundred day moving average of $231.79.

Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, December 10th. The enterprise software provider reported $2.26 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.64 by $0.62. The company had revenue of $16.06 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.19 billion. Oracle had a net margin of 25.28% and a return on equity of 70.60%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 14.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $1.47 earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Oracle Corporation will post 5 EPS for the current year.

Oracle Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, January 23rd. Stockholders of record on Friday, January 9th were given a dividend of $0.50 per share. This represents a $2.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.2%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, January 9th. Oracle’s payout ratio is presently 37.59%.

Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Douglas A. Kehring sold 35,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, January 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $194.89, for a total transaction of $6,821,150.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 33,638 shares in the company, valued at approximately $6,555,709.82. This represents a 50.99% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Clayton M. Magouyrk sold 10,000 shares of Oracle stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $155.23, for a total value of $1,552,300.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 134,030 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $20,805,476.90. The trade was a 6.94% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 72,223 shares of company stock worth $13,689,064. Corporate insiders own 40.90% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Oracle

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. HFM Investment Advisors LLC grew its position in Oracle by 290.9% during the fourth quarter. HFM Investment Advisors LLC now owns 129 shares of the enterprise software provider’s stock valued at $25,000 after purchasing an additional 96 shares in the last quarter. Basepoint Wealth LLC bought a new position in Oracle in the fourth quarter worth $26,000. Winnow Wealth LLC acquired a new position in Oracle during the second quarter worth $28,000. FSA Wealth Management LLC acquired a new position in Oracle in the third quarter worth $28,000. Finally, Joseph Group Capital Management bought a new stake in shares of Oracle during the fourth quarter worth $29,000. 42.44% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

About Oracle

Oracle Corporation is a multinational technology company that develops and sells database software, cloud engineered systems, enterprise software applications and related services. The company is widely known for its flagship Oracle Database and a portfolio of enterprise-grade software products that support data management, application development, analytics and middleware. Over recent years Oracle has expanded its focus to include cloud infrastructure and cloud applications, positioning itself as a provider of both platform and software-as-a-service solutions for large organizations.

Oracle’s product and service offerings include Oracle Database and the Autonomous Database, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM) and supply chain management (SCM) cloud applications (often grouped under Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications), middleware such as WebLogic, and developer technologies including Java and MySQL.