Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Trading Up 9.9% on Analyst Upgrade

Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCLGet Free Report)’s stock price shot up 9.9% during trading on Monday after DA Davidson upgraded the stock from a neutral rating to a buy rating. DA Davidson now has a $180.00 price target on the stock. Oracle traded as high as $159.75 and last traded at $156.94. 49,539,251 shares were traded during trading, an increase of 79% from the average session volume of 27,731,998 shares. The stock had previously closed at $142.82.

ORCL has been the topic of a number of other reports. BMO Capital Markets reduced their price target on shares of Oracle from $270.00 to $205.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, February 4th. Oppenheimer reissued a “market perform” rating on shares of Oracle in a research note on Thursday, December 11th. KeyCorp decreased their price target on shares of Oracle from $350.00 to $300.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, December 11th. TD Cowen cut their price objective on Oracle from $400.00 to $350.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, December 11th. Finally, Citigroup restated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Oracle in a research note on Wednesday, December 17th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-six have given a Buy rating, eleven have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Oracle has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $292.43.

Read Our Latest Analysis on ORCL

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Oracle news, insider Mark Hura sold 15,000 shares of Oracle stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, December 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $196.89, for a total transaction of $2,953,350.00. Following the sale, the insider directly owned 234,077 shares in the company, valued at $46,087,420.53. The trade was a 6.02% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, EVP Douglas A. Kehring sold 35,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, January 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $194.89, for a total value of $6,821,150.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 33,638 shares in the company, valued at approximately $6,555,709.82. The trade was a 50.99% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders sold a total of 62,223 shares of company stock valued at $12,136,764 in the last three months. 40.90% of the stock is owned by insiders.

More Oracle News

Here are the key news stories impacting Oracle this week:

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Norges Bank bought a new stake in Oracle in the second quarter valued at about $4,275,378,000. Jennison Associates LLC grew its position in shares of Oracle by 2,062.4% in the 3rd quarter. Jennison Associates LLC now owns 9,227,252 shares of the enterprise software provider’s stock worth $2,595,072,000 after acquiring an additional 8,800,546 shares in the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Oracle by 3.5% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 174,802,084 shares of the enterprise software provider’s stock valued at $34,070,674,000 after acquiring an additional 5,841,584 shares during the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. raised its position in shares of Oracle by 333.7% during the 3rd quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 5,238,006 shares of the enterprise software provider’s stock valued at $1,473,137,000 after acquiring an additional 4,030,382 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Invesco Ltd. raised its position in shares of Oracle by 42.1% during the 2nd quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 8,839,166 shares of the enterprise software provider’s stock valued at $1,932,507,000 after acquiring an additional 2,619,722 shares in the last quarter. 42.44% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Oracle Price Performance

The stock has a market capitalization of $450.91 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.50, a PEG ratio of 1.25 and a beta of 1.64. The company has a 50 day moving average of $187.88 and a 200-day moving average of $233.45. The company has a quick ratio of 0.91, a current ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.28.

Oracle (NYSE:ORCLGet Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, December 10th. The enterprise software provider reported $2.26 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.64 by $0.62. Oracle had a net margin of 25.28% and a return on equity of 70.60%. The company had revenue of $16.06 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.19 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $1.47 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was up 14.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts predict that Oracle Corporation will post 5 EPS for the current year.

Oracle Announces Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, January 23rd. Shareholders of record on Friday, January 9th were paid a $0.50 dividend. This represents a $2.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.3%. The ex-dividend date was Friday, January 9th. Oracle’s payout ratio is presently 37.59%.

Oracle Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Oracle Corporation is a multinational technology company that develops and sells database software, cloud engineered systems, enterprise software applications and related services. The company is widely known for its flagship Oracle Database and a portfolio of enterprise-grade software products that support data management, application development, analytics and middleware. Over recent years Oracle has expanded its focus to include cloud infrastructure and cloud applications, positioning itself as a provider of both platform and software-as-a-service solutions for large organizations.

Oracle’s product and service offerings include Oracle Database and the Autonomous Database, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM) and supply chain management (SCM) cloud applications (often grouped under Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications), middleware such as WebLogic, and developer technologies including Java and MySQL.

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