MSFT - Microsoft Corporation
140.29 +1.77 (1.28%)
Pre-market: 9:22AM EDT
| Previous close | 137.39 |
| Open | 137.36 |
| Bid | 140.22 x 1300 |
| Ask | 140.35 x 1000 |
| Day's range | 136.53 - 138.67 |
| 52-week range | 93.96 - 141.68 |
| Volume | 18,980,208 |
| Avg. volume | 24,356,981 |
| Market cap | 1.066T |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 0.97 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 27.38 |
| EPS (TTM) | 5.06 |
| Earnings date | 22 Oct. 2019 - 28 Oct. 2019 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 1.84 (1.33%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-08-14 |
| 1y target est | 154.71 |
- Market Realist
Microsoft Stock: Dividend Hike, Buybacks Attract Investors
Microsoft (MSFT) stock rose 1.19% in extended trading yesterday after the tech giant announced a new share buyback program and dividend increase.
- Investing.com
Top 5 Things to Know in the Market on Thursday
Investing.com -- Central banks around the world make different responses to the Federal Reserve's rate cut, U.S. stocks are set for a lower opening, and some fresh saber-rattling pushes oil prices back up. Here's what you need to know in financial markets on Thursday, 19th September.
- Investing.com
Stocks - U.S. Futures Point to Lower Opening Bell After Fed Rate Cut
Investing.com - U.S. futures fell on Thursday, after the Federal Reserve damped hopes for any further monetary easing on top of Wednesday's rate cut, the second in as many months.
- Financial Times
Big Tech veteran scents change in rules of the game
Big Tech is facing the prospect of broad sectoral regulation that goes well beyond the narrow antitrust focus that has defined government interest in the industry in recent decades, according to Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and top lawyer. Speaking in an interview this week, Mr Smith, who joined Microsoft in 1993, predicted a return to a period when government set broad rules governing how particular industry sectors operate, rather than focusing on individual cases of economic harm caused by monopolists. The shift reflects the wide range of concerns stirred up by today’s leading consumer tech companies, including privacy and the mass collection of data.
- Zacks
Buy Micron (MU) Stock Ahead of Q4 Earnings Amid Semiconductor Comeback?
Should investors consider buying Micron (MU) stock with the chipmaker set to report its quarterly financial results on Thursday, September 26?
- Market Realist
Dow Jones Index Reverses Losses, Closes Up 0.13%
The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index rose 36.28 points for a 0.13% increase today. The S&P; 500 Index gained 0.07% while tech ETFs mirrored that increase.
- Bloomberg
Microsoft Unveils $40 Billion Stock Buyback, Boosts Dividend
(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, said it will repurchase as much as $40 billion of shares in a new buyback program and boosted its quarterly dividend by 5 cents to 51 cents a share.The repurchase authorization has no expiration date, and may be terminated at any time, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said Wednesday in a statement. The company’s stock has risen 36% so far this year and its market capitalization remains at more than $1 trillion. Its previous buyback plan, unveiled in September 2016, was also for $40 billion.Flush with cash and an infrequent acquirer of large technology companies, Microsoft has been a massive buyer of its own shares since the early 2000s and generally has an active $40 billion buyback plan that gets replaced once expended. The company also introduced a dividend in 2003 and has boosted it steadily since then. The company had $133.8 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June 30.Under Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, Microsoft has seen its shares skyrocket and revenue growth return. The company is increasing cloud contracts for products like Office 365 and Azure, while its older and more profitable Windows business has found stability with customers moving to newer versions ahead of the expiration of older ones.(Updates with company cash holdings in the third paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
3 Large-Cap Dividend Stocks to Buy After Fed Cuts Interest Rates for Second Time
We searched, using our Zacks Stock Screener, for large-cap dividend stocks investors might want to buy after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the second time...
- Investing.com
Stocks - Wall Street Rebounds to End Flat After Rate Cut
Investing.com - Stocks recovered most of their losses by the end of trading Wednesday, erasing an afternoon selloff after the Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate for the second time in two meetings.
- Zacks
Crocs, Tailored Brands, Microsoft and Walt Disney highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day
Crocs, Tailored Brands, Microsoft and Walt Disney highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day
- Market Realist
Big Tech Breakup: Bill Gates Sides with Facebook
Bill Gates shares Facebook’s view that there is no need for breaking up America’s big tech companies as some politicians have proposed.
- Market Realist
Could Apple and Microsoft Lead a Market Rally?
Jim Cramer believes Apple and Microsoft stocks are ready to boost equity markets to new highs. Both stocks' market cap has crossed the $1 trillion mark.
- Bloomberg
Bill Gates Is Right to Support a Wealth Tax
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- In his new book on how to fix inequality, French economist Thomas Piketty may have gone a little too far with a call for a 90% wealth tax for billionaires and multimillionaires, but putting a tax on huge fortunes may well make sense. Bill Gates, the second richest man in the world, thinks so. His case makes it clear why governments should go for it.Gates said in a Bloomberg interview that he “wouldn’t be against” a wealth tax, even though he doesn’t believe the U.S. will introduce it. As an alternative, he proposed raising the estate tax to 55% for the top bracket from the current 40%. As things stand, Gates’s net worth increased by $16 billion this year to $106.8 billion (according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index). He gives away lots of money every year. He and his wife have donated more than $36 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 1994, though the couple’s contributions to the trust that finances the foundation’s activities were relatively small in 2018 at $43.9 million. (They contributed almost $4.7 billion in stock and cash in 2017.)Despite their generosity and a sober, goal-oriented approach to philanthropy, the family of the Microsoft founder cannot operate programs on the scale that a wealthy nation’s government does, even though it has resources comparable to that of a nation. The foundation’s expenses reached $4.8 billion in 2018 (which was at the lower end of its normal range of $4.5 billion to $6.5 billion); that’s about the size of the Republic of Georgia’s annual government spending.It doesn’t make sense for the Gateses to give away much more; even with the best of advice, they cannot always pick the most efficient ways to spend money for the benefit of society. That’s the job democracies reserve for politically representative governments and parliaments, supported by diverse expert institutions which should be able to provide a nation with a 360-degree view of its priorities.Even an extraordinarily talented individual like Gates finds it hard to analyze all the myriad inputs a modern state has to process. To give just one example from his Bloomberg interview, Gates is in favor of rolling back government subsidies to wind and solar energy producers, since renewable energy from these sources is already competitive with energy from fossil fuels. He thinks it’s time to shift incentives to areas such as energy storage and offshore wind generation, where technological progress is still lagging and costs need to be driven down.It’s fine for Gates himself to make such a change in his own investing (for, apart from his philanthropic activities, he’s also launched an investment vehicle for projects in the field of clean energy). But it isn’t time for governments to scrap wind and solar subsidies yet: Even if the marginal cost of generating power now is comparable across different technologies, the economics of renewable energy still don’t allow for the natural, market-based replacement of fossil fuel-burning plants.According to the International Energy Agency, the growth of renewable energy capacity stalled last year. Far less capacity is being added than necessary to meet the climate goals set by the 2016 Paris Agreement.That’s one of the areas where a wealth tax could come in handy. In a paper published earlier this month, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman from University of California, Berkeley, calculated that, had a wealth tax of 3% on fortunes above $1 billion been in place since 1982, Gates’s fortune still would have been enormous at $36.4 billion, but his extra taxes would have gone to useful government programs – and why not to clean energy subsidies?Taxing Gates’s current fortune at this rate would yield $3.2 billion this year. That’s more than the $2.6 billion U.S. spent on wind and solar subsidies in 2016, the latest year for which an Energy Information Administration estimate is available. It’s laudable that Gates recognizes it would make sense to share more of his wealth with society even if he doesn’t get to decide how the money is spent. While Piketty’s expropriatory ideas are capable of scaring any reasonable person away from the idea of a wealth tax, it may well be the case that Gates isn’t alone among the super-rich who’d support a reasonable tax on their huge fortunes. Sharing more of this wealth through taxes can be a useful complement to targeted philanthropy. It doesn’t have to mean confiscating, Communist-style, the just rewards of exceptional business acumen.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Baker at stebaker@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Financial Times
Microsoft shares rise on dividend lift and buybacks boost to $40bn
Microsoft said its board has approved new share buybacks and an 11 per cent increase to the tech group’s quarterly dividend, sending shares higher late Wednesday. Microsoft declared a quarterly dividend of 51 cents a share, up from 46 cents previously, payable to shareholders of record on November 21. The new share repurchase program of up to $40bn has no expiration date and may be terminated at any time, the company said.
- Zacks
Avnet (AVT) Eyes IoT Expansion With Acquisition of Witekio
The buyout of Witekio is likely to add more capabilities in embedded software, edge computing and security to Avnet's (AVT) IoT business.
- Zacks
Should You Buy Vegan Stocks & ETF?
Beyond Meat is one of the hottest IPOs this year and a new ETF aims to capitalize on the trend.
- Market Realist
Google Cloud Head of India Resigns, Joins Disney Unit
The head of Google’s cloud computing business in India, Nitin Bawankule, is set to leave the company at the end of this month.
- Bloomberg
Will Purdue’s Bankruptcy Engulf Its Owners?
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The bankruptcy of Purdue Pharma LP lays bare a distinction that the internet is making it more and more difficult to maintain: that between a company and the people who own or founded it.The Sackler family owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin, which has contributed to a crisis that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. There are numerous charges and more than 2,000 lawsuits against the company and its owners, and some recent joint settlements. The company has now declared bankruptcy, and wants to give control of Purdue to a trust run by the states, cities and counties that have filed suit against it.But what about the personal fortune of the Sacklers, estimated at $13 billion or more? Under traditional corporate theory, there is a clear distinction between the assets of the corporation and those of the owners. The limited liability company can go under, but the assets of the company owners are safe — just as, say, holding shares of Volkswagen in your mutual fund did not expose you to any personal liability for the automaker’s actions in falsifying emissions data.It turns out that this distinction is harder to uphold, if only in the eyes of the public, when a single family owns and runs a company. Last week New York State alleged that the Sackler family drained at least $1 billion from Purdue for the purpose of avoiding penalties against the corporation and thus shielding its wealth. If it looks like the Sackler family was trying to avoid legal penalties and fines, there will be strong political pressure, possibly backed by public opinion, to go after those additional funds.More generally, if a company is endangered by lawsuits, and the suits are not settled, its owners have a rationale to extract money from the company and stash it far away. But doing so will elicit a legal and public response, and the distinction between the personal and the corporate will not always be respected.Consider the Federal Trade Commission’s recent settlement with Facebook, under which some of founder Mark Zuckerberg’s personal assets are potentially on the line if Facebook does not respect its privacy agreements with the federal government. Some FTC commissioners suggested harsher treatment yet for Zuckerberg’s personal assets.Or, to give another example, Senator Elizabeth Warren has been promoting the notion of personal criminal liability for corporate CEOs if the firms engage in wrongdoing. Her bill would extend corporate liability beyond the company itself, and of course most CEOs of major companies are also shareholders to some extent. Maybe the goal is to punish these individuals in their roles as executives rather than as shareholders. But such penalties would blur these distinctions in the mind of the public — and eventually, perhaps, under the law.So how does the internet matter in all this? First, social media is very effective at drumming up outrage, and negative news seems to have a longer lifespan than positive news. The media’s pre-existing negative bias has been amplified, creating further animosity against any actual or supposed corporate villain.More important, social media personalizes agency — in effect, making it easier to accuse particular individuals of wrongdoing. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the Koch brothers all have images or iconic photos that can be put into a social media post, amplifying any attack on their respective companies. It is harder to vilify Exxon, in part because hardly anyone can name its CEO (Darren Woods, since 2017), who in any case did not create the current version of the company. Putting the Exxon logo on your vituperative social media post just doesn’t have the same impact. With Bill Gates having stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000, it is harder to vilify that company as well.This personalization of corporate evil has become a bigger issue in part because many prominent tech companies are currently led by their founders, and also because the number of publicly traded companies has been falling, which means there are fewer truly anonymous corporations. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the most important decision a new company makes is how personalized it wants to be. A well-known founder can spark interest in the company and its products, and help to attract talent. At the same time, a personalized company is potentially a much greater target.The more human identities and feelings are part of the equation, however, the harder it will be to keep the classic distinction between a corporation and its owners. As the era of personalization evolves, it will inevitably engulf that most impersonal of entities — the corporation.(Corrects second paragraph to say that hundreds of thousands of deaths have resulted from the opioid crisis, not the opioid OxyContin, in article published Sept. 16.)To contact the author of this story: Tyler Cowen at tcowen2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include "Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Oracle at OpenWorld: Autonomous Database & Cloud in Focus
Oracle (ORCL) is strategically expanding Autonomous Database portfolio and enhancing functionalities of cloud-based applications, which is encouraging adoption.
- Zacks
Oracle on a Partnership Spree With VMwae, Intel & Deloitte
Oracle's (ORCL) partnerships with the likes of Accenture and Microsoft are expected to aid the company in expanding cloud-base clientele.
- Zacks
Microsoft, Walt Disney Partner to Boost SLAB initiatives
Microsoft's (MSFT) IoT initiatives aimed at providing robust tools and platform to developers, and strengthening partner base will aid it in improving overall performance.
- Bloomberg
Coding Startup GitLab Hits $2.75 Billion Value With New Funding
(Bloomberg) -- GitLab Inc., a platform for developing and collaborating on code, has raised $268 million in new funding in a round valuing the startup at $2.75 billion, more than double its last valuation, the company said.The San Francisco-based startup provides a single application for companies to draft, develop and release code. The product is used by companies including Delta Air Lines Inc., Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.GitLab helps companies “get faster from ‘I want to make this,’ to getting the software out the door,” Chief Executive Officer Sid Sijbrandij said in an interview. “All the companies are becoming software companies, every change you want to make influences software, and the faster you can make that change, the easier it is.”The new funds will be used to add monitoring and security to GitLab’s offering, and to increase the company’s staff to more than 1,000 employees this year from 400. GitLab is able to add workers at a rapid rate, since it has an all-remote workforce, Sijbrandij said.The investment also comes in preparation for a potential public offering next year. GitLab’s largest competitor, GitHub Inc., was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in a stock deal announced in June 2018 worth $7.5 billion. But GitLab will instead aim for the public markets, targeting an IPO or direct listing next fall, Sijbrandij said.“We’d rather stay independent as a company,” he said. GitLab has set a tentative date of Nov. 18, 2020, but the CEO added that the startup will watch market conditions and that nothing is guaranteed.The Series E funding round was led by ICONIQ Capital and Goldman Sachs. New investors include Adage Capital Management, Alkeon Capital and Two Sigma Ventures, among others.GitLab has raised a total $426 million so far, including the new round.To contact the reporter on this story: Kiley Roache in New York at kroache@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Anne VanderMeyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
The Simple Strategy Fueling the Rise of Bill Gates’s Fortune
(Bloomberg) -- Bill Gates is still in wealth-creation mode.“We’re not, you know, in some defensive posture where we’re mostly in cash, or anything like that,” the Microsoft Corp. founder said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “The strategy that’s been used on the investments is to be over 60% in equities.”That’s helped Gates add $16 billion to his net worth this year, taking his wealth to $106 billion, behind only Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, even as his charitable donations have topped $35 billion.The Gates fortune had about $60 billion of equity assets as of Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. By comparison, the average family office portfolio in North America held about 32% of its assets in equities in 2018, according to Campden Wealth’s 2018 global family office report.The growth overseen by the billionaire’s investment chief, Michael Larson, who oversees family office Cascade Investment, has enabled Gates to build the world’s largest private foundation without diminishing his fortune.That may start to shrink if politicians heed his call for higher taxes.“I doubt, you know, the U.S. will do a wealth tax but I wouldn’t be against it,” he said in the interview. “The closest thing we have to it is the estate tax. And I’ve been a huge proponent that that should go back to the level of 55% that it was a few decades ago.”Inequality has become an explosive political issue with America’s richest 0.1% controlling more wealth than at any time since 1929. On Tuesday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released its annual Goalkeepers report. The study seeks to monitor and aid the progress of the United Nations in achieving in its Sustainable Development Goals, which the foundation says are being hindered by persistent inequality. The report called for greater investment in health care, education and technology to help reduce inequality worldwide.“There is no silver bullet that will make geography, gender and other random factors stop mattering,” the report notes. “But guaranteeing that every single child has access to good health and education systems is a very good start in that direction.”Gates, 63, also backed higher income taxes on America’s wealthiest people and made a call for greater transparency. “I’m for way more financial transparency. I don’t like that you can have trusts where nobody knows who owns it.”While Gates remains bullish on the U.S. and global economy, he doubted that the performance he’s enjoyed over the past was likely to endure. “There’s reasons to think absolute returns for the next decade will be less than they have been for the last several decades.”(Adds details from report in ninth paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Tom Metcalf in London at tmetcalf7@bloomberg.net;Erik Schatzker in New York at eschatzker@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven CrabillFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Bill Gates Says Wind, Solar Subsidies Should Go to Something New
(Bloomberg) -- It’s time wind and solar passed their subsidies along to emerging technologies that need them more, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates says.After decades of government incentives, wind and solar have been deployed widely enough for manufacturers and developers to become increasingly efficient and drive down costs. Now they can probably survive without them, Gates said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.“The tax benefits there should be shifted into things that are more limiting, like energy storage, offshore wind -- which still has a huge premium price,” said Gates, who co-chairs a global group of business, political and scientific leaders formed in 2018 to push for investments to help the world adapt to climate change.U.S. states including New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts see proposed offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean as crucial ingredients to phase out fossil fuels and fight climate change. But the costs of building wind farms at sea are still nearly twice as high as on land. Energy storage, meanwhile, is key to allowing wind and solar plants to dispatch power even when the sun sets and breezes go slack. But big batteries remain expensive, too.“The progress in solar and wind is very helpful,” Gates said. “But the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day.”To contact the reporters on this story: Christopher Martin in New York at cmartin11@bloomberg.net;Erik Schatzker in New York at eschatzker@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Joe Ryan, Steven FrankFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Bill Gates Says Big Tech Companies Shouldn’t Be Broken Up
Sep.17 -- Microsoft Corp. Co-Founder and former Chief Executive Bill Gates discusses concerns that some lawmakers in Washington have that companies from Alphabet Inc.‘s Google to Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have gotten too big and too powerful. Gates spoke to Bloomberg Television's Erik Schatzker in Seattle.
