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Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) is scheduled to release its fiscal third-quarter financial results after the markets close on Monday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters are calling for $0.72 in earnings per share (EPS) on $9.78 billion in revenue. In the same period of last year, Oracle said it had EPS of $0.69 and $9.27 billion in revenue.

Following the most recent earnings report, Oppenheimer noted that Oracle’s cloud reset could weigh on the company valuation, since it reveals its cloud business-model transition is taking longer than the Street expected and resets typically last multiple quarters. Unfortunately, the firm thinks this strategy will take many years to make up the ground and possibly lead to customer workloads attrition along the way.

On the other hand, Jefferies took a more positive stance. The firm said that it understood investor frustration with the uncertainty and inconsistent dynamics of this model as it evolves, but it also believed that it had never witnessed such an aggressive model transition at such scale and at such velocity. Ultimately, Jefferies believes that the technology will win out in this case.

A few other analysts weighed in on Oracle ahead of the earnings report:

• Morgan Stanley has a Buy rating.
• Cleveland Research has a Hold rating.
• Barclays has an Overweight rating with a $60 price target.
• OTR Global has a Positive rating.
• Credit Suisse has a Buy rating and a $62 price target.
• Instinet has a Buy rating.
• Drexel Hamilton has a Buy rating with a $62 price target.

So far in 2018, Oracle has outperformed the U.S. broad markets with its stock up over 10%. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is only up 14%.

Shares of Oracle were last seen at $52.37, with a consensus analyst price target of $56.14 and a 52-week range of $43.60 to $53.48.

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