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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

#101
post #97
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Only way it would increase the stock price is by signaling that the company doesn't need money and can return it.

That's not completely true. If a company has $10bn of excess cash and a market capitalisation of $50bn you cannot simply assume that the business is worth $40bn. The market might be assigning a value to this cash lower than the nominal value (for example because there is a risk that the management will just do some stupid acquisition with the money). And beyond valuation considerations, stock prices are affected by supply and demand: buybacks create some artificial demand.

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

#102
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which has nothing to do with long term price trends and everything to do with artificially timing the market.

PS: If yesterday the market shot up 30% that's not a good sign for the next month.

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

#103
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until the "windows is better part" Windows 10 has been the worst desktop experience I have ever encountered. From day 1 I have had driver issues, forced updates, no matter how I configure the time zone resets to GMT (which is great because it uses 3am as a time to restart and force installing updates). To say nothing if the awful UI. I had none of these issues with Ubuntu and I paid Microsoft for this…

I have worked mainly on OSX for my career, and recently had to switch to Windows for VR work. I started on Windows 7 and absolutely hated it. I hated the visual style of it, the awful UX of it, and just found it to be painful all-the-way-around. Sitting down at my desk in the morning, I'd almost always utter a small sigh of frustration just logging in. When we finally got cleared by IT to go ahead with Windows 10 I w…

Personally, for me though Pre-W10: Average UI, Great UX. W10: Nice UI touches, No-so great UX.

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

#104
There are a few comments on this thread about people disputing microsofts cloud revenues. I've got no extra intel or inside knowledge, however what I am seeing in the market suggests to me MSFTs cloud numbers are probably near to what they claim.

I lead sales and marketing at a small Microsoft partner. Even though we are an edge case we haven't lost a deal against salesforce.com for quite a while, and I am hearing similar reports from other established Microsoft partners here in Australia.

The combination of Dynamics CRM Online / Dynamics365 with the broader stack (BI, office365, azure) is extremely compelling to businesses.

And at a third of the price of salesforce licensing all we needed to have done was equal them to win the deals.

As Microsoft goes up look out for salesforce going down. They did a great job and set the gold standard, but the market has caught up and overtaken them now.

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

#105

>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,…

Do you know why share count decreased? I was under the impression that new shares have been continuously issued.

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

#106

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, alt…

In the nerd community in particular, there is so much wishful thinking that Microsoft will fail that some people actually believe Microsoft is and has been failing. It's fairly amusing given the reality.

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

#107

>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,…

Consider that Microsoft started paying dividends after 2000, a yield of about 2.5%. A rough calculation of that compounding for 16 years is 150%.

2.5% compounded over 16 years is exactly 48.5%, nowhere near 150.

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

#108
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things that we know for sure: - Microsoft is not dead. - Paul Graham is a tedious windbag. (Look it up.)

I politically disagree with pg, but that man is a genius no ifs and buts.

I'm not expressing an opinion about anyone with this; I would like to point out that being a genius is no bulwark against being a tedious windbag. Or heartbreakingly stupid. Or anything, really.

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

#109
post #50
post #25

Even as a longtime Apple fan and inveterate Microsoft-hater, I have to hand it to Satya Nadella and Microsoft as a whole. Their success is deserved. I work with basically the full range of Microsoft products in my job and what I see is that everything has improved lately. Windows is better, Office is better, their cloud offerings are better, and even the Surface is better. Now, if they would only improve the licensin…

In some aspects Microsoft has changed for the best (e.g. open source, developer community relationship) and in others it is changing for the worst. This is my list: - Skype protocol centralization and crashing all the time - Surface Book Issues - Updates and malware detection that can't be turned off - Windows 10 leaking information to Microsoft that you can't control. - Windows Phone (down) - Azure changing their pr…

What have been your problems with the Surface Book?

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

#110

>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,…

Do you know why share count decreased? I was under the impression that new shares have been continuously issued.

They buy back stock all the time.

Just a few weeks ago they announced a $40B stock buy back program.

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