Oracle just posted its worst quarterly stock performance in nearly a quarter century, and the culprit isn’t a product failure or a lost contract. It’s the sheer volume of money the company is pouring into artificial intelligence infrastructure, with no clear timeline for when those bets will pay off.
The stock dropped approximately 30% in Q4 2025, the steepest quarterly decline since Q3 2001, when it fell nearly 34%. For context, that earlier plunge happened during the dot-com implosion.
The earnings report that broke the dam
On June 10, Oracle released its fiscal Q4 results. Revenue actually beat estimates. Instead, the stock cratered 8.9% after the bell.
The reason: capital expenditures came in at levels that made investors visibly uncomfortable. Oracle spent $55.66 billion on capex across fiscal 2026, overshooting its own $50 billion target by more than 11%. That’s not a rounding error. That’s an extra $5.66 billion that management apparently decided to spend beyond what it had already telegraphed to the market.
