(Reuters) – Oracle shares rose more than 9% in premarket trading on Tuesday as the cloud computing company’s upbeat quarterly results and forecast reinforced investor confidence about its ability to narrow the gap with the market leaders.
The Texas-based firm’s cloud business – viewed as a less expensive option to leaders Microsoft and Amazon – has seen rapid adoption due to integration of artificial intelligence.
Oracle’s cloud services revenue rose 21% to $5.6 billion in the first quarter. Its overall revenue of $13.31 billion beat estimates of $13.23 billion.
“Q1 results were good overall and remain fundamentally positive on certain aspects of Oracle’s narrative, particularly Oracle’s ability to capitalize on AI training-related opportunities,” JP Morgan analysts said in a note.
Oracle’s shares have risen more than 32% this year, while Microsoft and Amazon have added 8% and 15%, respectively.
Oracle’s cloud infrastructure is also powered by Nvidia’s hardware, widely considered the gold standard for AI semiconductors.
The company is also partnering with rival cloud service providers to make it simpler for its customers to connect their data across vendors. On Monday, it announced a tie-up with Amazon Web Services, after having signed a similar one with Alphabet’s Google Cloud in June.
“Now with the help of all big three (Azure, Google Cloud and now AWS joining force), we will continue to observe a nice cloud revenue lift as well as growth acceleration thanks to the multi-cloud partnership,” Bernstein analysts said in a note.
Oracle trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 21.30, while Microsoft stood at 29.81 and Amazon at 31.59. At least five brokerages have raised their target price since Monday.
(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)