A Four-Session Week: Oracle and Adobe Will Report the Same Night, and Only One of Them Guided a GAAP Earnings Range

by Leah Avraham · September 4, 2026

Previews Correspondent, Earnings Dispatch

Monday, Sept. 7 is Labor Day and US markets are closed, so next week runs four sessions, Tuesday through Friday. The reporting calendar carries a fiscal-calendar wrinkle — two companies on the slate will describe a 'second quarter' that ended two weeks apart — and the two largest names will report after the close on the same Thursday evening using opposite disclosure conventions.

Tuesday belongs to GameStop, which said in an Aug. 31 announcement that it expects to release full second-quarter results on Sept. 8. Unusually, most of the story is already out. That Aug. 31 release disclosed what the company called 'certain preliminary unaudited financial information for the second quarter ended August 1, 2026.'

The preliminary figures point in two directions at once. Net sales are expected in a range of $780 million to $800 million, against $972.2 million in the prior-year period. Operating income is expected between $150 million and $170 million, against $66.4 million. Net income is expected between $290 million and $310 million, against $168.6 million. Taking the midpoints, that is sales down about 19% and net income up about 78% in the same three months, by our arithmetic on the company's ranges.

What bridges the two is not operations. The same release flagged approximately $238 million of net gains related to the company's eBay derivative asset and equity investment, partially offset by a loss of approximately $75 million on digital assets and related receivables. Netting those two marks leaves roughly $163 million, a figure that sits inside the $150 million to $170 million operating-income range the company expects. Put differently, on the company's own preliminary numbers, investment marks contribute about as much to the quarter as the retail business does.

The balance sheet moved a long way as well. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities are expected between $5.050 billion and $5.070 billion, against $8.694 billion a year earlier, while the company reported holding 43.4 million eBay shares valued at approximately $4.947 billion. All of these are GAAP-basis or holding disclosures; the preliminary release we read did not present an adjusted or non-GAAP earnings figure alongside them.

So Tuesday's real questions are narrow and answerable: whether the audited figures land inside the preliminary ranges, how the fair-value marks are classified in the income statement, and what the underlying retail operation looks like once the marks are set aside. Because GameStop pre-announced, the surprise is unlikely to come from the headline figures.

Also on Tuesday, after the close, Casey's General Stores will issue first-quarter fiscal 2027 results, with a conference call the following morning at 7:30 a.m. Central, according to the company's Aug. 19 announcement. On Wednesday morning Chewy will report its fiscal second quarter before the market opens, with a call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern, per its own scheduling release.

Thursday evening is the week. Oracle said it will release first-quarter fiscal 2027 results 'on Thursday, September 10th, after the close of the market,' with a call at 4:00 p.m. Central. Adobe said it will release third-quarter fiscal 2026 results 'after the market closes on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026,' with a call from 2 to 3 p.m. Pacific. Converting those two time zones, both calls are set to begin at 5 p.m. Eastern, so they will run over the top of each other.

They will be judged against very different starting lines. Oracle's June 10 fourth-quarter release contains explicit numeric guidance for the quarter it is about to report: total revenue growth of 27% to 29% in both constant currency and US dollars, total cloud revenue growth of 57% to 63% in constant currency and 58% to 64% in dollars, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.71 to $1.75 in constant currency, or $1.72 to $1.76 in US dollars. That release sets no GAAP earnings-per-share range for the quarter, and none for the full year either.

That omission matters more for Oracle than it would for most companies, because its two earnings series are far apart. In fiscal 2026, Oracle reported GAAP EPS of $5.83 and non-GAAP EPS of $7.631, a difference of about $1.80. In the fourth quarter alone, GAAP EPS was $1.45 against non-GAAP EPS of $2.111. When Thursday's number arrives, the guide-versus-actual comparison will only exist on the adjusted line.

There is also a shape problem worth watching. Oracle said in June that it confirmed 'our prior revenue guidance of $90 billion total revenue' for fiscal 2027 and raised full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance to $8.05. Against fiscal 2026 revenue of $67.4 billion, a $90 billion year implies growth of roughly 33.5% by our arithmetic, while the first quarter is guided to 27% to 29%. The year, as guided, gets faster after this print. The other figure that will be read first is remaining performance obligations, which Oracle put at $638 billion at the end of fiscal 2026, up $85 billion sequentially.

Adobe guides both bases, which makes its Thursday report checkable in a way Oracle's is not. In its second-quarter release, Adobe set third-quarter targets of $6.67 billion to $6.72 billion in revenue, GAAP earnings per share of $4.40 to $4.45 and non-GAAP earnings per share of $6.05 to $6.10, along with segment subscription targets of $1.87 billion to $1.89 billion for Business Professionals and Consumers and $4.61 billion to $4.64 billion for Creative and Marketing Professionals. The GAAP and non-GAAP ranges are $1.65 apart at both the bottom and the top.

For the full year Adobe is targeting revenue of $26.50 billion to $26.60 billion, GAAP EPS of $17.90 to $18.00 and non-GAAP EPS of $24.35 to $24.45, a $6.45 spread at both ends. For context on how the two series behave, in the second quarter, which ended May 29, 2026, Adobe reported revenue of $6.62 billion, GAAP diluted EPS of $4.25 and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $5.96, a difference of $1.71.

Friday closes the week with Kroger, which said it will host its second-quarter 2026 call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 11 and that the quarter ended Aug. 15, 2026. That date is the fiscal-calendar wrinkle of the week. GameStop's second quarter ended Aug. 1, 2026, two weeks earlier, and Samsara — which reported on Thursday, not next week — also closed its fiscal second quarter on Aug. 1. Two of next week's reporters will therefore attach the label 'second quarter' to periods that closed a fortnight apart, which is worth remembering before comparing either of them to a macroeconomic series or to each other.

Everything above is guidance, scheduling and preliminary company disclosure. None of these companies has reported the periods described, and the figures cited are what each company has published in advance, not results. Next week's job on this desk will be checking each print against the specific range its own company set, and noting which basis that range was set on.