Oracle Booked $19.3 Billion and Spent $28.5 Billion. Its Backlog Is Now $664 Billion.

Oracle reported results for its fiscal 2027 first quarter on 10 September 2026. Revenue for the three months to 31 August was $19.3 billion, up 30% in both dollars and constant currency. The number that drew attention was not revenue. It was the gap between what the company has contracted to deliver and what it is spending to be able to deliver it.

The quarter

• Total revenue: $19.3 billion, up 30%
• Total cloud revenue (infrastructure plus applications): $11.6 billion, up 62% in dollars and 61% in constant currency
• Cloud infrastructure (OCI): $7.4 billion, up 121% in dollars and 120% in constant currency
• Cloud applications: $4.2 billion, up 10%
• GAAP operating income: $6.7 billion, up 57%, a 35% operating margin
• Non-GAAP operating income: $8.2 billion, up 31%, a 42% operating margin
• GAAP earnings per share: $1.56, up 55%. Non-GAAP earnings per share: $1.92, up 30%
• Quarterly dividend: $0.50 a share

The backlog, and what it is not

Oracle reported remaining performance obligations of $664 billion, an increase of $209 billion from a year earlier. On the earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Hilary Maxson described the same figure sequentially.

Our remaining performance obligations, or RPO, increased $26 billion from Q4.

The company said it booked more than $30 billion of additional AI cloud contracts during the quarter. Reuters reported the prior-quarter figure as $638 billion, against an analyst estimate of $639.89 billion for the quarter just reported.

Remaining performance obligations are a disclosure required under revenue-recognition accounting. The figure represents the transaction price allocated to contracted work the company has not yet performed. It is not cash in hand, not revenue, and not a forecast. It becomes revenue only as the service is delivered, over periods that can run for years, and it carries whatever counterparty and cancellation risk sits in the underlying contracts. A backlog roughly 34 times the quarter revenue says something about contracted demand; it says nothing by itself about when or whether that demand converts.

What it costs to build

Capital expenditure was $28.5 billion for the quarter. Reuters reported the net cash outlay at $18 billion, against analyst expectations of $19.38 billion. Maxson gave full-year guidance on the call of $90 billion to $95 billion in capital expenditure, with not more than $70 billion in net cash capital expenditure.

The company also said it completed the sale of $20 billion of common stock, before commissions, through an at-the-market equity programme — an issuance mechanism that sells shares into the open market over time rather than in a single underwritten block.

Asked why a backlog of that size does not imply proportionally more spending, Maxson pointed to how the contracts are structured.

The vast majority of those orders were via prepay or bring-your-own-hardware or a similar mechanic, so they don't require incremental capital from Oracle.

Guidance

• Second-quarter total revenue: up 30% to 34%, in constant currency and in dollars
• Second-quarter total cloud revenue: up 64% to 70% in constant currency, 65% to 71% in dollars
• Second-quarter non-GAAP earnings per share: $1.83 to $1.91 in constant currency, $1.85 to $1.93 in dollars
• Full fiscal 2027: total revenue of at least $90 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $8.10

How it compared

Revenue of $19.3 billion came in above the $19.14 billion LSEG consensus reported by Reuters. Adjusted earnings of $1.92 a share exceeded the $1.74 expected, according to Yahoo Finance. Capital expenditure and remaining performance obligations both landed well above expectations. Shares rose nearly 7% in extended trading after the release. Reuters noted the stock had fallen more than 20% year to date going into the print.