OFSS shares fall after report of parent Oracle triggering 'force majeure' on data centre project

Shares of Oracle Financial Services Software (OFSS) dropped as much as 5.43% to an intraday low of ₹10,332. On the BSE, OFSS shares dropped as much as 5.2% to an intraday low of ₹10,337 amid spike in volumes.

Trading volume on the BSE spiked nearly three times to 17,000 shares compared with an average of 6,180 shares traded daily in the past two weeks.

Force majeure refers to a legal clause in contracts that excuses parties from their obligations when an extraordinary, uncontrollable event prevents fulfilment of the contract.

Oracle cannot terminate the lease under any circumstances, the report said, adding that alternative asset manager Blue Owl has about $3 billion in equity in the project, with Oracle responsible for paying the debt costs.

Rather than exiting as the main tenant, Oracle is attempting to delay payments should the data centre dubbed Project Jupiter get derailed and fail to come online in 2028 as planned, according to a report by Bloomberg News.

The 1,400-acre Project Jupiter campus, which secured $18 billion in loans from a consortium of banks, according to reports, is part of Oracle's broader agreement with OpenAI to provide AI computing capacity.

Earlier this week, OFSS in a clarification to exchanges said that OFSS is a subsidiary of Oracle, and it is a separate entity altogether.

As of 11:33 am, OFSS shares traded 3.2% lower at ₹10,.,578, underperforming the NIFTY LARGEMIDCAP 250 index which was down 0.1%.