Catenaa, Friday, December 26, 2025- Oracle shares have plummeted by over 30% so far this quarter, with three trading days remaining in the period, as the stock is on pace for its sharpest decline since 2001, during the dot-com bust.
Investors have grown skeptical about the database software vendor’s ability to open more server farms for ChatGPT operator OpenAI, which agreed in September to spend over $300 billion with Oracle.
Three months ago, Oracle named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as its new CEOs. They’re off to a rough start.
Earlier this month, Oracle reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue and free cash flow.
On the earnings call, newly appointed finance leader Doug Kehring called for $50 billion in fiscal 2026 capital expenditures, 43% higher than the plan announced in September and double the total from the previous year.
Additionally, Oracle is plotting $248 billion in leases to boost cloud capacity, on top of building data centers.
Such growth will require boatloads of debt. In September, Oracle raised $18 billion in a jumbo bond sale, one of the largest debt issuances on record in the tech industry.
Kehring committed on the earnings call to keeping Oracle’s investment-grade debt rating. But some skeptical investors are betting otherwise, pushing up the prices of Oracle’s credit default swaps.
Magouyrk and Sicilia’s tenure began at a time of historic optimism. About two weeks before they took the reins from Safra Catz, Oracle reported a 359% revenue backlog tied heavily to OpenAI’s commitment.
The deal represented a major endorsement for Oracle, which was left off Gartner’s list of top five cloud infrastructure providers by revenue for 2024.
Following reports about the OpenAI agreement on September 10, Oracle’s stock shot up almost 36%, the third-sharpest rally since the company’s 1986 IPO. Shares reached an intraday record of $345.72.
“We think $340 was terrifying,” said Zachary Lountzis, Vice President at Lountzis Asset Management, in an interview. Lountzis held $25 million in Oracle shares as of Sept. 30, according to a filing.
