39 Wall Street analysts have issued “buy,” “hold,” and “sell” ratings for Microsoft in the last twelve months. There are currently 3 hold ratings and 36 buy ratings for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street analysts is that investors should “moderate buy” MSFT shares. Firstly, they can buy shares in companies on the exchanges where they are listed. For instance, they can invest in Microsoft stock on the NYSE stock exchange, so they actually own a share in the company. This can be considered a long-term investment, as the individual is usually waiting for the price to rise over time.

  1. Curiously, the hackers were interested in finding out information about themselves, specifically what Microsoft knows about them, the company said.
  2. Microsoft (MSFT 1.56%) stock surged higher after reporting earnings for its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday.
  3. Mr. Nadella took over the role of CEO in 2014 and then the role of chairman in 2021.
  4. It also derives revenue from hardware products such as Microsoft Surface and Xbox.
  5. CFDs are traded on margin, which means that a trader can open larger positions with their capital.
  6. Microsoft’s influence on the development of AI has grown so quickly as to attract scrutiny from regulators and those outside the tech industry.

Thanks to AI, Wall Street strategists expect a strong showing for Microsoft’s latest earnings report. Citi analysts raised their price target and reiterated their “buy” rating on the stock, per CNBC. The Productivity and Business Processes segment offers several software solutions including Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, Microsoft Viva, and Skype for Business. Microsoft also operates Skype, Outlook.com, OneDrive, and LinkedIn for business professionals as well as Dynamics 365. Dynamics 365 is a set of cloud-based and on-premises business solutions for organizations and enterprises of all sizes. Microsoft launched a game called Flight Simulator in 1982 that has since become the longest-running video game franchise.

Microsoft earnings beat easily. Here’s why that may be met with a shrug.

InvestorPlace Earnings is a project that leverages data from TradeSmith to automate coverage of quarterly earnings reports. InvestorPlace Earnings distills key takeaways including earnings per share and revenue, as well as how a company stacks up to analyst estimates. These articles are published without human intervention, allowing us to inform our readers of the latest figures as quickly as possible. In addition, the more personal computing segment — which handles new Windows licenses, Xbox products, and Bing — remains the weak link as sales of PCs and video games cool off in a post-pandemic market. Sales of ads will also remain sluggish until the macro situation improves. Within that segment, revenue from Azure and other cloud services grew 30%.

In November, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella played a key role in the return of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI after Altman’s stunning ouster. CFO Amy Hood said on the call that the company expects a material sequential increase in capital spending in the March quarter. Microsoft climbed 1.3% to hit $404 a share on Wednesday, bringing its valuation above $3 trillion for the first time ever. In the just-ended quarter, Microsoft’s commercial cloud offerings broadly brought in $33.7 billion, up 24 percent. Investors are taking a breather as they wait on earnings from Big Tech, with Alphabet and Microsoft scheduled to report after market close on Tuesday.

Tom Yeung is a market analyst and portfolio manager of the Omnia Portfolio, the highest-tier subscription at InvestorPlace. He is the former editor of Tom Yeung’s Profit & Protection, a free e-letter about investing to profit in good times and protecting gains during the bad. Get stock recommendations, portfolio guidance, and more from The Motley Fool’s premium services. From where I sit, the most important trait I look for during earnings season is how the market and a specific company reacts to the news.

It also derives revenue from hardware products such as Microsoft Surface and Xbox. Thomas Yeung produced this article using data from Thomson Reuters and unique https://traderoom.info/ generative AI prompts. These prompts help distill real-time quarterly earnings data and combine it with InvestorPlace.com’s best-in-class analysis.

Wall Street Favorites: 3 Long-Term Stocks With Strong Buy Ratings

This group is widely believed to be working for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. Scott Franklin (R-FL), Suzan K. DelBene (D-WA), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Deborah K. Ross (D-NC) have sold shares totaling $42,959,500. Insiders have sold a total of 254,832 Microsoft shares in the last 24 months for a total of $80,855,912.65 sold. Want to know when executives and insiders are buying or selling Microsoft stock? Sign up for InsiderTrades.com’s daily newsletter to get the latest insider transactions delivered to your inbox daily.

The Relative Strength rating shows how a stock’s price performance stacks up against all other stocks over the last 52 weeks. Microsoft earned $2.99 a share on sales of $56.5 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected Microsoft earnings of $2.65 a share on sales of $54.5 billion. On a year-over-year basis, Microsoft earnings increased 27% while sales climbed 13%. On Nov. 15, Microsoft detailed its latest AI software tools and services at its Ignite conference.

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Microsoft (MSFT 1.56%) stock surged higher after reporting earnings for its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday. The software giant has not escaped the effects of the sell-off that has hit its industry or the uncertainty surrounding its metaverse strategy. Founded in 1993, The Motley Fool is a financial services company dedicated to making the world smarter, happier, and richer. The Motley Fool reaches millions of people every month through our premium investing solutions, free guidance and market analysis on Fool.com, top-rated podcasts, and non-profit The Motley Fool Foundation. Microsoft, which recently overtook Apple as the world’s most valuable company, last week became only the second business in history to reach a stock market valuation of $3tn.

“This was another masterpiece quarter and guidance from Nadella that will send a major ripple impact across the tech world,” Dan Ives wrote. Software giant warned of looming costs in the AI race that could dampen future growth as gen AI soaks up massive investments. © 2024 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions.

Revenue from the Productivity and Business Processes unit, including Office productivity software, LinkedIn and Dynamics totaled $19.25 billion. That was up 13% and higher than the $18.99 billion StreetAccount consensus. On Thursday, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) disclosed that its Microsoft-hosted email system was hacked by Midnight Blizzard. HPE said it was notified of the breach — without saying by whom — on December 12.

Microsoft shares have pared their earlier after-hours losses and are now trading essentially flat after the company provided upbeat guidance during its earnings conference call with investors. In particular, investors are looking for the company to cash in on what they see as its lead in artificial intelligence. It has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, the start-up behind tokenexus the ChatGPT chatbot, and spent last year racing to push its A.I. Will not start producing meaningful results until this year, but investors have looked for early signs of how much the hype will turn into sales. Two weeks ago, Microsoft topped Apple as the most valuable public company. Next week, Satya Nadella will hit his 10th anniversary as the company’s chief executive.

Remember, always keep your losses small and never argue with the tape. Technically, the stock bottomed in November 2022 and is up over 30% since then. The bulls want to see the stock rally after reporting earnings and the bears want to see it gap down and fall. It will be interesting to see what happened last quarter since Microsoft integrated ChatGPT into Bing which could have a big impact. Citing redundancies within the two companies, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees last week across its gaming division, including Activision employees as well as some working on the Xbox console. She also said that operating margin for the full year in fiscal 2024 will improve one to two percentage points, despite higher investment in cloud and AI infrastructure.

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