Markets ORCL JUL 01, 2026

Oracle rebounds 2.1% as William Blair adds ORCL to July conviction list, calls it 'major beneficiary' of AI buildout

Oracle jumped in pre-market Wednesday after William Blair named it a top July pick, capping a rebound from last week's 19% drawdown — the stock's worst week since 2001.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

Oracle rose 2.1% in pre-market trading Wednesday after William Blair added the stock to its July conviction list, tagging ORCL and four others as “major beneficiaries” of the AI infrastructure buildout. Meta and Oculus came off the same list. The rotation is small, but it’s the kind of coded signal buy-side desks read as a call on which vendors get paid during the capex wave and which have already priced it in.

The 7:39 AM ET note from Seeking Alpha reset the tape after a bruising stretch. ORCL fell 19% last week, its worst weekly print since 2001 per CNBC, before recovering 3% on Monday alongside a broader melt-up that carried the Dow above 52,000 for the first time and lifted Tesla more than 7%. William Blair’s other July adds, ServiceTitan, Everpure, Dynatrace, American Express, and Ecolab, sit next to Oracle as the firm’s preferred exposures.

Under the drawdown is a set of numbers that don’t obviously justify one. Oracle’s June 10 fiscal Q4 release put remaining performance obligations at $638 billion, up 363% year-over-year and $85 billion higher sequentially. Q4 revenue rose 21% to $19.2 billion, cloud revenue climbed 47% to $9.9 billion, and IaaS grew 93%. Non-GAAP Q4 EPS came in at $2.11. Management guided Q1 FY2027 revenue growth of 27% to 29%, cloud growth of 57% to 63% in constant currency, and lifted full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance to $8.05, roughly 18% growth.

The counter-narrative sits in the capital stack. Oracle plans to raise about $40 billion in FY2027 through combined debt and equity, including a previously announced $20 billion at-the-market equity program, against free cash flow of negative $23.7 billion for FY2026. Freedom Broker kept its Buy but trimmed its target to $210 from $230; consensus still sits at $268.27.

Then there’s the tell inside the house. Vice Chairman Jeffrey Henley sold 400,000 shares on June 24 at an average of $159.16 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, cutting his position by half, days before the stock hit a 52-week floor of $134.57. The insider clock and the analyst clock are running at different speeds, and this week the analysts are louder.

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.