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(Sharecast News) - Shares in Oracle Corporation soared on Wednesday, after the US tech giant said it was on track to secure contracts in its core cloud business worth in excess of $500bn.
The enterprise software specialist said it had won four multi-billion dollar contracts with three customers in the first quarter.
As a result, its remaining performance obligations (RPO) - a key measure of booked revenues - increased 359% to $455bn.
Safra Catz, chief executive, called it an "astonishing quarter".
But she continued: "Demand for Oracle cloud infrastructure continues to build. Over the next few months, we expect to sign up several additional multi-billion dollar customers, and RPO is likely to exceed half a trillion dollars."
In total, cloud infrastructure revenue is expected to rise 77% this year to $18bn, before reaching to $144bn over the subsequent four years. Last year, cloud infrastructure revenue totalled $10.3bn.
As at 1230 BST, the stock had surged 34% in pre-market trading.
Oracle is benefiting from the boom in artificial intelligence, which requires large-scale cloud infrastructure and access to graphic processing units.
Other notable contracts secured during the quarter included a deal with OpenAI to develop 4.5 gigawatts of US data centre capacity.
Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief technology officer, said: "Multi-cloud database revenue from Amazon, Google and Microsoft grew at an incredible rate of 1,529% in the first quarter.
"We expect multi-cloud revenue to grown substantially ever quarter for several years, as we deliver another 37 data centres to our three hyper-scaler partners, for a total of 71.
"AI changes everything."
The update was included in Oracle's first-quarter results, published on Tuesday evening.
Total revenues for the three months rose 11% on a constant currency basis to $14.9bn, while earnings per share rose 6% to $1.47. The numbers were marginally below consensus.
Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at Scope Markets, called the backlog of contracted sales "staggering".
He continued: "While top-line numbers were mixed, investors are energised by a huge uplift in Oracle's cloud infrastructure outlook.
"Partnerships with the likes the Nvidia, Meta and OpenAI, combined with a 1,500% jump in multi-cloud revenue and aggressive data centre expansion, have reinforced Oracle's positioning at the heart of the AI infrastructure boom.
"The market reaction underlines how investors are prioritising forward-looking growth prospects over short-term earnings misses."