{
  "id": 8926094,
  "title": "Oracle’s Co-CEOs Deliver Explosive Growth, but Stock Plunges 50% in Their First Year",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/21/oracles-co-ceos-deliver-explosive-growth-but-stock-plunges-50-in",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-09-21T13:05:35.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Yahoo Finance",
    "slug": "yahoo-finance",
    "url": "https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/oracle-co-ceos-deliver-explosive-130535126.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In the first year of the recent co-CEO era at Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), the stock has plummeted by 50%, despite delivering a $664 billion contract backlog and a 121% growth in cloud infrastructure revenue. Q1 capex amounted to $28.5 billion, while free cash flow turned negative at $5.4 billion. Oracle's FY27 spending guidance reached $90 to $95 billion. Wall Street's sentiment remains optimistic, with 82% bullish on the stock, citing a $238 consensus target. However, ORCL did not make the list of 24/7 Wall St's top 10 stocks to buy now. The co-CEOs, Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia, took over near the peak of the company's performance. Under their leadership, the contracted business grew at a pace rarely seen in enterprise software. The remaining performance obligations increased by $209 billion year-over-year, and cloud infrastructure revenue grew by an astounding 121%. Oracle also booked over $30 billion in new AI cloud contracts in a single quarter. Despite these impressive figures, the operational execution is under scrutiny due to high capital intensity. Q1 capex surged to $28.5 billion, resulting in negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion. Oracle completed a $20 billion equity issuance, causing the interest expense to rise by 55% to $1.4 billion. CFO Hilary Maxson has warned of a potential five-percentage-point gross margin decline for fiscal 2026. The co-CEOs inherited businesses they already managed and achieved impressive scale, but it remains to be seen if operating cash flow will outpace net cash capex. Wall Street remains 82% bullish, with a $237.97 consensus price target.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}