Markets ORCL JUN 17, 2026

Oracle clears $638B backlog but signals another $40B raise; ORCL slides 10%

Q4 revenue and EPS topped estimates and RPO surged 363% to $638B, but a planned FY2027 capital raise and negative $23.7B free cash flow rattled shareholders.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

ORCL fell roughly 10% in extended trading Wednesday after Oracle paired a record backlog with a fresh capital-raise signal that overshadowed the headline beat. Q4 revenue of $19.2 billion edged the $19.10 billion LSEG consensus, adjusted EPS of $2.11 cleared the $1.96 expected, and remaining performance obligations leapt 363% year-over-year to $638 billion, well above the StreetAccount $595.67 billion mark and up $85 billion sequentially. The market sold it anyway.

The reason isn’t mysterious. Oracle plans to raise approximately $40 billion in fresh debt and equity in fiscal 2027, on top of $43 billion in debt and $5 billion in equity already pulled down in FY2026, and a previously announced $20 billion at-the-market equity program. Capex came in at $55.7 billion against an analyst estimate of $50.9 billion, growth of 162%, and free cash flow landed at negative $23.7 billion. Net capex guidance for FY2027 is roughly $70 billion before $20 billion to $25 billion in customer prepayments. The backlog is real. So is the bill.

The operating story is genuinely strong. Q4 cloud infrastructure revenue hit $5.8 billion, up 93%, full-year IaaS reached $18.1 billion on 77% growth, and total FY2026 revenue of $67.4 billion grew 17%. GAAP EPS of $5.83 rose 34%; non-GAAP EPS of $7.63 rose 27%. Q1 FY2027 guidance points to 27% to 29% revenue growth and non-GAAP EPS of $1.72 to $1.76. Cloud CEO Clay Magouyrk flagged nearly one gigawatt of compute coming online this quarter. The 8-K exhibit also disclosed a $75 billion prepaid-and-customer-supplied GPU pool, the kind of disclosure that exists because investors started asking.

Concentration is the quieter problem. Bank of America analysts estimate more than half of the RPO base is tied to OpenAI, which makes the $638 billion figure something closer to one counterparty’s promise. Newly installed CFO Hilary Maxson, hired during the quarter from Schneider Electric, inherits the funding calendar that has to make it real.

Cloud capex cycles tend to be judged not on the size of the backlog but on who’s left holding the asset when demand resets.

Sources

About the author

Henley Marrast

MARKETS DESK

Henley Marrast covers AI-equity flow, accelerator demand, and earnings prints for AI Sheet Report. She leads coverage of the public AI complex from the New York markets desk, with a focus on the daily tape and quarterly results. She has been writing about technology markets for several years.