• BNP Paribas expects the company to spend up to $100 billion in capital expenditures.
• Thirty-six out of 43 analysts covering the stock rate ORCL a ‘Buy’ or higher, six rate it a ‘Hold,’ and one rates it a ‘Sell.’
• For the fourth quarter, analysts expect revenue of $19.1 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $1.96.

Shares of Oracle (ORCL) were getting significant investor attention on Friday after BNP Paribas said it expects the software and cloud giant to increase its capital spending budget for the next fiscal year.

At the time of writing, ORCL stock was down more than 10% amid a broader market sell-off and was among the top-trending tickers on Stocktwits.

Spending More Money

According to Seeking Alpha, analyst Stefan Slowinski said in a research note that the company is expected to spend between $80 billion and $100 billion to bring online some data center campuses under Project Stargate and to acquire more Nvidia (NVDA) chips to power them.

The analyst has a price target of $283 on the stock, implying an upside potential of nearly 20% from the stock’s closing price on Thursday.

As per Koyfin data, 36 out of 43 analysts covering the stock rate ORCL a ‘Buy’ or higher, six rate it a ‘Hold,’ and one ‘Sell.’ For the fourth quarter, analysts expect revenue of $19.1 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $1.96.

Soaring AI Demand Leads To Aggressive Infra Buildout

The soaring demand for artificial intelligence has led to an aggressive infrastructure buildout by companies and hyperscalers to generate the computing power needed to keep the technology running.

Tech behemoths Meta (META), Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT) are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. on their infrastructure projects in a neck-and-neck race, triggering a wave of chip and other component shortages while simultaneously contributing to record-high energy consumption.

What Do Retail Traders Think About ORCL?

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment about the ORCL stock remained in ‘extremely bullish’ territory amid ‘high’ message volume over the last 24 hours, with many users seeing the pullback as a buying opportunity.

ORCL stock has gained more than 10%so far this year and has risen nearly 26% over the last 12 months, outperforming the S&P 500.

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