Oracle Earnings Report Day: Stock Price Plunges 56% in Six Months, $300 Billion AI Bet Repriced by Market

According to 1M AI News, Oracle issued another statement this morning regarding X, emphasizing that recent media coverage "reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the AI data center construction approach" and highlighting that the flagship Abilene campus "is progressing as planned, with 200MW already operational." Oracle had just posted yesterday stating that the related reports were "false and incorrect," and today they have reiterated with a different set of wording, with the company set to release its 2026 FY Q3 earnings report after hours today.

Behind the two statements in two days are the repercussions of the past two weeks: on March 5, reports emerged that Oracle planned to lay off thousands of employees to address a cash crunch caused by the AI data center expansion; the next day, there were reports that Oracle and OpenAI had abandoned plans to expand the Abilene flagship Stargate campus from 1.2GW to around 2GW, causing ORCL to flip from a 3% increase to in the green intra-day. Oracle's infrastructure executive Sachin Katti has publicly acknowledged the abandonment of the expansion, stating that they "ultimately chose to deploy the additional capacity to other locations." Earlier reports of a 2025 December delivery delay and a February 2026 Stargate joint venture with "zero employees, zero data centers" have each triggered sell-offs.

Oracle's core dilemma lies in the $300 billion OpenAI contract versus its balance sheet. In December of last year, the company disclosed that capital expenditures were expected to exceed previous estimates by $15 billion, and in February of this year, they announced a plan to raise up to $50 billion, with Wall Street predicting that free cash flow will remain negative until 2030. ORCL has fallen approximately 56% in six months, from a 52-week high of $345.72 in September of last year to a close of $151.56 last Friday, leading several investment banks to significantly lower their price targets. The morning of the earnings report day marks yet another attempt to control the narrative ahead of the conference call tonight.