Oracle
shares enjoyed their best week since 2001 as Wall Street cheered a strong earnings report and bullish comments on the company’s prospects in cloud computing.
The stock jumped about 24% for the week, with almost all the gains coming in the two trading days after the company’s quarterly earnings release. The last time Oracle had a better week was in April 2001, in the midst of the dot-com crash, when so-called dead-cat bounces were common. The prior quarter Oracle shares lost almost half their value.
It’s a much different company today, and while Oracle was generally viewed as a late entrant into the cloud infrastructure market, the company has found a niche and is seeing rapid growth helping clients operate artificial intelligence models.
“Oracle is in the enviable position of having more demand than it can fulfill,” Joseph Bonner, an analyst at Argus Research, wrote in a note to clients on Friday. He recommends buying the shares and lifted his price target to $235 from $200.
