Wall Street watches nervously as Oracle enters price zones last seen in 2000

Oracle is trading like it’s stuck in a time loop with the dot-com era. On September 10, the company’s shares jumped 36% in a single session, pushing its year-to-date gain to 84%, as Cryptopolitan extensively reported.

Oracle told investors it expects cloud revenue to surge 700% over the next three fiscal years. That one forecast was enough to pull it into the top tier of the S&P 500, ranking seventh overall this year.

This sudden price action has dragged Oracle into the middle of a bigger debate on whether artificial intelligence is inflating another tech bubble.

Investors are betting on long-term AI bets, and with Oracle playing a central role in TikTok’s cloud infrastructure in the U.S., the political spotlight has only gotten hotter.

President Trump’s White House extended the TikTok ban deadline to December 16, allowing negotiations to keep running. That gives Oracle more time in its role as the platform’s main cloud host, a position it’s held for years.

Oracle’s future profits raise valuation questions

ORCL now trades at 43 times estimated earnings, the highest level since the early 2000s. That puts it above every major tech name in the S&P 500 except one. Nvidia, which is actually pulling in profits today, trades at 31 times forward earnings.

The difference? Oracle’s growth is based on what might happen in 2027 and 2028, not what’s showing up in this fiscal year.

Michael Bailey, director of research at Fulton Breakefield Broenniman, said, “Investors viewed Oracle as a boring low growth company, and all of a sudden it’s an AI winner. But you’ve got a lot of risk. You’re buying the stock now based on hope that we’re going to see massive growth in year four, five and six.”

The problem is, analysts haven’t adjusted their forecasts for this year or the next. That makes the stock look expensive on paper right now. But when you stretch the numbers across three years, the valuation drops to 25 times profits. That’s still way above Oracle’s ten-year average, but at least it’s not nosebleed.

Bailey added, “This year is irrelevant, next year is irrelevant, the year after that is more important. If you go out a few years, there’s going to be this massive spike in growth. You’ve got to value that today.”

Wall Street stays bullish but flags the risks

Oracle’s long game might sound like a moonshot, but it’s not the only one playing it. Tesla and Palantir are both trading at over 180 times forward earnings, even though they’re in very different sectors. And even when stretched over three years, those names still sit around 100 times earnings, making Oracle’s 25x seem mild.

But those are edge cases. Even Nvidia, which has been a poster child for the AI wave, is only trading at 24 times expected earnings over three years. And unlike Oracle, Nvidia’s revenue is hitting now — 58% growth this year, 33% next, then 17% in 2027.

Oracle’s revenue path is slower: 17% growth this year, 22% in 2027, and a huge 42% jump in 2028, based on Bloomberg analyst estimates.

That delayed growth is exactly what’s making people cautious. It’s not about whether Oracle gets the contracts. It’s about whether the end clients, the companies using these AI tools, actually turn that tech into value fast enough.

Sameer Bhasin, principal at Value Point Capital, said, “The issue isn’t Oracle not getting the business, it’s the end customer, will they get the benefit out of it as fast as the market assumes?” He pointed to the dot-com era, when everyone was laying fiber cables but returns were negative.

Despite all of that, the analysts aren’t backing off. Out of 47 analysts tracked by Bloomberg, 34 say buy, 13 say hold, and zero have a sell rating on ORCL.

Tyler Radke at Citigroup upgraded the stock to buy after its September earnings release, citing a stronger growth path as reason enough to pay a higher valuation.

In his note dated September 10, he wrote that Oracle shares “still have upside from here with top/bottom-line growth significantly accelerating in the years ahead.”

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