Oracle upgraded by Morgan Stanley

Albin Lohr-Jones | Pool via Bloomberg | Getty Images

Safra Catz, chief executive officer of Oracle, arrives at Trump Tower in New York, on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016.

There may be a buying opportunity in Oracle shares if earnings rise, analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote on Wednesday.

Oracle shares jumped nearly 3 percent Wednesday morning, hovering near $48 a share, down from September’s 52-week high of $53.14 per share. Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $57 a share.

Oracle has gone through a necessary reset toward more achievable cloud growth expectations, after “over-exuberance” from executives Larry Ellison, Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, analyst Keith Weiss wrote in a research note.

Shares fell hard over the past few quarters after investors let go of the idea that Oracle’s cloud will become the “next Microsoft.”

But those investors may have been ignoring some potential upside at the company, according to Weiss.

Some of Oracle’s businesses are still strong, like databases, licensing and on-premise data storage, Weiss wrote. Plus, Oracle’s earnings could benefit from recent tax overhaul legislation. In addition to lower tax rates, Oracle could bring back cash from overseas and put it toward stock buybacks, dividends or acquisitions, according to Weiss.

“We see the combination of continued stable fundamental performance, a lower tax rate and an increasing volume of share repurchases pushing to total return for ORCL into the low-teens over the next two years,” Weiss wrote.

The bullish note comes a day after a report from The Information said that big cloud software companies like Amazon and Salesforce were looking at alternatives to some of Oracle’s database technologies.