‘Key AI enabler’: BofA upgrades Oracle to Buy after exceptional Q1 print

Published 10/09/2025, 12:00

Investing.com -- Bank of America (BofA) upgraded Oracle to Buy from Neutral, raising its price objective to $368 from $295, after the software company delivered an impressive first-quarter showing that reinforced its growing role in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The results sent Oracle’s shares soaring more than 31% in premarket trading Wednesday.

The company’s remaining performance obligations (RPOs) surged 230% quarter-on-quarter, a pace BofA analysts described as “exceptional,” securing its position as a “key AI enabler.”

The bank highlighted that while visibility on returns from Oracle’s rapidly rising capital expenditures remains limited, demand signals from its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) business are too strong to ignore.

BofA projects a 51% four-year CAGR for OCI revenues.

“Although profitability of AI workloads remains a key debate, it is clear that Oracle is capturing share in the large and rapidly growing market for AI infrastructure (we estimate that the AI applications industry alone will represent $155 billion by 2030),” analyst Brad Sills said.

He cited Oracle’s growing roster of marquee AI clients—including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, NVIDIA and AMD—as evidence of its rising influence.

“Oracle is clearly leveraging a number of advantages in its cloud software/hardware businesses to attract the largest of the AI enterprises,” the team wrote, adding that these reference customers should help the company capture more AI compute share.

Oracle’s capital expenditures are expected to climb to $35 billion in fiscal 2026 (FY26), up from more than $25 billion previously.

While Sills said returns on that spending are still uncertain, he estimates AI-related investments could deliver “a solid low 50s topline return in FY27,” on par with specialized AI infrastructure vendors.

The analyst added that Oracle’s “engineering-first” culture and history of building high-performance software and hardware lend credibility to claims of offering lower-cost AI compute.

The note also emphasized Oracle’s ability to pair its AI infrastructure push with its strong database and applications portfolio. Over time, BofA expects this to create a one-stop shop for customers and support value-added managed services.

The bank shifted its valuation methodology to an EV/sales basis, citing accelerating growth and backlog, and now applies a calendar year 2027 (CY27) multiple of 12.4x, a premium to large-cap software peers.

Despite uncertainties around long-term profitability, BofA argued that Oracle’s competitive moat is strengthening.

BofA’s updated estimates show 2027 revenues at $82.5 billion, up from a prior forecast of $78.8 billion, with EPS at $8.06.

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