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Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

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Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#91

>The shares surged as much as 5.6 percent to a record $60.45. The last time Microsoft was trading near that level was in 1999. Using share price is suboptimal because the number of shares outstanding has decreased significantly since 1999. Better to use market cap (which is share price times the number of shares outstanding). (According to wikipedia) Microsoft reached a market cap of $618.9 billion in December 1999,…

You should also subtract cash from mkt cap, as both are huge for 2000s MSFT an current aapl

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#92
post #89
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why companies have stock buy-backs, in order to pump up the share price. Why does this matter to them? Stocks are very strange to me.. when I think of owning a business, I'd hope to get some share of the profits, which as I understand it, is dividends for stocks. This being the case, I always thought stock buybacks were a long term investment in the sense that the company would pay more upfront so they'd ha…

About the last question, all of the reasons you mention are valid (also management compensation is sometimes linked to share price). Dividends and buybacks are essentially interchangeable as far as the shareholders are concerned. Simplifying a bit (ignoring taxes, transaction costs, discount on cash on the balance sheet, etc.), if you own 10% of a company valued at $100mn (i.e. you have $10mn in shares) and the compa…

> Dividend and buybacks are essentially interchangeable as far as the shareholders are concerned.

But they are taxed differently, which is a huge deal for long term investors. Long term gains are taxed at lower rates and compound pre-tax, while dividends incur annual taxes at ordinary income tax rates.

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#93
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the last question, all of the reasons you mention are valid (also management compensation is sometimes linked to share price). Dividends and buybacks are essentially interchangeable as far as the shareholders are concerned. Simplifying a bit (ignoring taxes, transaction costs, discount on cash on the balance sheet, etc.), if you own 10% of a company valued at $100mn (i.e. you have $10mn in shares) and the compa…

> Dividend and buybacks are essentially interchangeable as far as the shareholders are concerned. But they are taxed differently, which is a huge deal for long term investors. Long term gains are taxed at lower rates and compound pre-tax, while dividends incur annual taxes at ordinary income tax rates.

Correct. This is another reason why buybacks are popular. On the other hand, some people might prefer to get steady income by default without having to liquidate periodically parts of their portfolio. And long term investors might not be happy when a company spends money buying back its shares at high valuations (of course they could sell if they think the shares are overvalued, but we are talking about long term investors).

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#94
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is 90% great for me. The 10% that annoys me is mostly around the way update works. If you have long running processes (like security camera DVR software, big render jobs, etc...) having the OS decide to reboot in the middle of the night is a bit of a headache. I know you can disable the update service, but it would be nice if they just put that in the windows update UI. The other part that bugs me are the…

> I know you can disable the update service No, you can't in Windows 10.

IIRC if you have pro/enterprise you can disable it through a group policy.

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#95
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is 90% great for me. The 10% that annoys me is mostly around the way update works. If you have long running processes (like security camera DVR software, big render jobs, etc...) having the OS decide to reboot in the middle of the night is a bit of a headache. I know you can disable the update service, but it would be nice if they just put that in the windows update UI. The other part that bugs me are the…

> I know you can disable the update service No, you can't in Windows 10.

This worked for me:

http://www.trishtech.com/2016/01/how-to-quickly-enabledisabl...

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can you get a 10% annual return perpetuity? Lending and borrowing rates are closely tied together since they're literally just two sides of the same market. Global long term rates have been slowly trending lower for the last few years.

http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-... Over a long period of time that is what the market has returned. It is not guaranteed.One year it might be down 50% one year it might be 50%, but if you look at 30years S&P has returned about 7.5%. 10% is a just a round number makes math easier. You can plug in a different number my point its hard to get to 450 billion.

What does your formula say the S&P 500 is worth compared to how much it's trading for?

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#97
post #57
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand though that if MSFT had 100B USD in cash and spent it all in stock repurchase, then, in theory, its stock price wouldn't move but its market cap would go down by 100B. The market cap is not a perfect indicator of the value of a business either. If we start to nitpick, why not calculate share price in real dollar terms (take inflation into account), adjust for the average P/E ratio of US stocks, adjust…

> if MSFT had 100B USD in cash and spent it all in stock repurchase, then, in theory, its stock price wouldn't move but its market cap would go down by 100B ? In the process of buying shares back, the market capitalization would increase due to the increase in share price. The share price would absolutely move. This is why companies have stock buy-backs, in order to pump up the share price. The 'buyback ratio' is the…

Frankly, this is opinion is so uniformed I'm not sure where to start... so welcome to Finance 101.

> In the process of buying shares back, the market capitalization would increase due to the increase in share price.

Wrong. If that was true, you'd have a company spending money and having a market cap that increases. See the problem? Generating money out of nothing...

> The share price would absolutely move.

Wrong. If this was true, you would just buy stocks of companies that do buybacks and make some alpha doing that. In fact there is an etf that tracks just such companies and it underperforms the S&P 500: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA%3ASPYB&ei=TXkKWJjO...

> This is why companies have stock buy-backs, in order to pump up the share price.

Wrong. They buy back shares to return money to investors. If you have a pile of cash sitting in your books, you can either return it to investors by paying back dividends or buying back shares. Only way it would increase the stock price is by signaling that the company doesn't need money and can return it.

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#98
Just took a look at MSFT. I was surprised to see that the stock has been climbing basically linearly for a solid 5 years now. I wanted to revisit the CEO/stock price graph now that we've seen a bit of Nadella's performance:

http://i.imgur.com/lr9j2KS.png

I was expect to see a nice perfect correlation of Ballmer = flat stock price, but it actually looks like the upturn began during his tenure. Speaks well for him, although overall it's not a pretty picture of his tenure.

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#99
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-... Over a long period of time that is what the market has returned. It is not guaranteed.One year it might be down 50% one year it might be 50%, but if you look at 30years S&P has returned about 7.5%. 10% is a just a round number makes math easier. You can plug in a different number my point its hard to get to 450 billion.

The S&P only had 500 companies starting in 1957 using that as the start date you get: 6.170%. S&P has returned ~6.5% over the long term in inflation adjusted returns. However, the trend has been lower returns over time and inflation is currently very low. https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/ (You can look at the methodology, but they project further into the past.) 6.736% : 1871 to now 6.525% : 1900 to now 6.2…

Ok I plugged in sept 1986 - sept 2016

Here are the numbers I got:

Annualized S&P 500 Return: 7.656%

Annualized S&P 500 Return (Dividends Reinvested): 10.047%

I didn't use CPI.

If you want to invest into MSFT at this price be my guest. I believe it is overvalued at this level with such limited growth.

Re: Microsoft Shares Soar to Record on Earnings Boost From Cloud

#100
post #57
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand though that if MSFT had 100B USD in cash and spent it all in stock repurchase, then, in theory, its stock price wouldn't move but its market cap would go down by 100B. The market cap is not a perfect indicator of the value of a business either. If we start to nitpick, why not calculate share price in real dollar terms (take inflation into account), adjust for the average P/E ratio of US stocks, adjust…

> if MSFT had 100B USD in cash and spent it all in stock repurchase, then, in theory, its stock price wouldn't move but its market cap would go down by 100B ? In the process of buying shares back, the market capitalization would increase due to the increase in share price. The share price would absolutely move. This is why companies have stock buy-backs, in order to pump up the share price. The 'buyback ratio' is the…

If the company ends up with less cash, then its market cap should be lower, not higher.

When a share is bought back by a company, accountants handle it by either cancelling the stock or turning it into treasury stock, which has negative equity value to cancel out its positive nominal value. In either case, the repurchased stock does not add value to the company.

To illustrate the point, consider creating a company that consists of three $1 bills. You create three shares of the company and sell them to three investors. Assume that the market is efficient and that each share is valued at $1. Let's imagine the company's balance sheet. It has $3 of assets (cash) balanced by $3 of equity (stock). Now the company decides to spend $2 on share buybacks. It spends $2 of its cash pile buying two shares from two investors. Let's look at the balance sheet now. It has $1 of assets left (cash) balanced by $1 of equity (the remaining outstanding share). If you like, you can optionally record the two shares the company bought as treasury stock, so that the equity is $3 of stock and -$2 of treasury stock, for the same total of $1 outstanding stock.

As you can see, the value of the company falls when it executes a share buyback. This makes sense, because after the buyback, the company is poorer.

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