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The Ballmer Days Are Over

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Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#121

Post by marcamillion »

axiom wrote: post #6

Microsoft issues dividends. Google and Apple don't.

Doesn't that support the OPs point ? The reason MSFT issues dividends, like any steward of shareholder capital, is because they realize that their shareholders can generate higher returns on that cash than they can.

Given that MSFT is a tech company, and we have seen many major tech companies started and grown to almost MSFT's size in the last decade, it does support the OPs point that clearly Ballmer missed a few things.

MSFT missed search. Great. They missed the music play, great. They missed the phone play. Great. Now they missed social media. How many things do they have to miss before someone says Ballmer has to go.

It is precisely because they are a 'high-tech' company AND paying dividends that validates the OPs original point...in my humble opinion.

Edit: That being said, them paying dividends will affect the stock price for sure. But, he was just using the stock price as a proxy for Ballmer's performance.

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#122

Post by varikin »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #117
zmmmmm wrote: post #116

I think Microsoft should break itself up and leave Ballmer in charge of the business focussed parts and put a new CEO in charge of WP7, xbox and the other consumer parts. Everyone heaps platitudes on Jobs but the reality is he has no understanding of or interest in business needs. On the other hand, you can make an argument that Ballmer has performed quite well on this front. The simple fact is that it may be impossi…

>Everyone heaps platitudes on Jobs but the reality is he has no understanding of or interest in business needs. On the other hand, you can make an argument that Ballmer has performed quite well on this front. Yeah Apple definitely doesn't need all that cash they're raking in. Move along please, point to something substantive and back it up with evidence before you arrogantly dismiss Steve Jobs. He has valid criticism…

I think the OP is right, but you are misunderstanding. Jobs understands his business, but what products does Apple put out there for businesses? Microsoft has Exchange, Active Directory, .NET/C#/MVC, MSSql, plus many more products aimed at the enterprise. Apple makes consumer products and does it will. The iPhone/pad/pod, AppleTV, laptops, and desktops. They tried the server market with XServer, but that was discontinued this year.

I want to mention again .NET and C#. C# has become a cornerstone of the enterprise world, much like Java. You could say that Apple has XCode and Obj-c, but that doesn't really compete against .NET, except for desktop apps. But the focus of XCode lately has been iOS and .NET has been web apps. Of course this is a broad generalization.

Back to business needs. Microsoft is great at products for the businesses, and great at selling them to the businesses. They are also great at other things too, like XBox. I have had a feeling for a couple years now that there are departments with great product managers that put the product above the politics of a large corporation and upper management that shield the workers from the politics. Those departments end up with great products, like the XBox, Office (though I have heard Office just has the clout of being a big money maker to get whatever they want), Visual Studio/.NET/etc, Windows, and possibly IE (or at least the the current IE team). But reading about what happened with purchasing Danger to take on the iPhone stinks of to many people trying to tell Danger team what to do.

About the only place where Microsoft and Apple true stand toe to toe is the OS. Windows 7 looks great (I have only used it sparingly being a Mac/Linux guy) and OSX is great. I guess you could say the browser is another place. Both IE9 and Safari are good, but really, I think Firefox and Chrome have them beat.

How Microsoft can use this to their advantage is for someone else to figure out. Maybe splitting up would be good, or maybe they just need to say to hell with completing against Apple when in comes to consumer gadgets.

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#123

Post by ars »

Spyro7 wrote: post #108
asr wrote: post #31

I'm sorry, he lost me at comparing Microsoft stock to Apple and Google over the past 10 years. In retrospect, those are two of the most successful publicly traded tech companies of the period--not a fair comparison. Not to mention those were small companies in 2000. For Microsoft stock to have increased 1200% (as Google's did) it would have probably had to grow into some very significant portion of the world economy.…

Note: I do not hold shares in any of the below companies. Apple and Google were in their heydays during this time period. If anyone is interested in seeing a really interesting comparison then go to finance.google.com and do the following: 1. Look up MSFT 2. Click "All" for your zoom option, this should give you from 1986 to present 3. Add GOOG and AAPL using the compare box Now look at the chart. MSFT is up 25,019.0…

Link for the lazy: http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#124

Post by javert »

This article is too business-centric. MS is sinking slowly because the world is moving to better things than Windows. It's sort of like selling bicycles, when motorbikes are becoming increasingly available.

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#125

Post by [deleted] »

callmevlad wrote: post #37
j2d2j2d2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a return of Gates. Microsoft will continue being unvisionary if they bring anyone else to the table. You just can't fake the magic of the founders.

Are there any great examples of this besides Steve Jobs and Apple? Didn't seem to work too well for Yahoo.

[deleted]

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#126

Post by btilly »

philwelch wrote: post #97
bonch wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry, he lost me at comparing Microsoft stock to Apple and Google over the past 10 years. In retrospect, those are two of the most successful publicly traded tech companies of the period--not a fair comparison. Apple and Google are Microsoft's biggest competitors. Is he not supposed to compare Microsoft to its direct rivals?

Judging by source of revenue, Microsoft's an enterprise software vendor, Apple is a consumer electronics company, and Google is an advertising company. They're Microsoft's biggest rivals in terms of media hype, and they all make mutually competing products, but they're not a fair basis of comparison in terms of stock value. How have Oracle and SAP done?

...but they're not a fair basis of comparison in terms of stock value. How have Oracle and SAP done?

Let's compare with a whole platoon of major tech companies that were big a decade ago:

ADBE: +73.40% HPQ: +47.36% IBM: +48.65% MSFT: -27.03% ORCL: +109.06% SAP: +70.15% YHOO: +70.57%

You'll note that MSFT sticks out like a sore thumb.

In their defense, MSFT also has been paying dividends, which some of the comparison companies have not. When a company pays a dividend, the stock price theoretically should fall by almost exactly the dividend paid. As http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/dividend_yield shows, they had a particularly big payment in 2005. When I put those dividends back in to MSFT, their stock has been utterly flat over a decade. This makes them a lot better than they otherwise appear, but their poor performance still sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the tech industry.

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#127

Post by varikin »

redthrowaway wrote: post #119
swilliams wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sinofsky is really good at running Windows & Office, but is he the right guy to successfully expand beyond that? MS is getting its butt kicked in mobile, social, and consumer electronics, all of which Sinofsky doesn't have direct experience.

Gates didn't have direct experience in any of the areas Microsoft ended up dominating. In the end, the CEO's role is more visionary than mentor. His job is to guide, not to teach. A good CEO can make smart choices about technologies with which he's unfamiliar, if he has a vision in mind. Compare Sculley and Jobs in their approach to Apple: neither was technologically gifted, but Sculley relied on the engineers to dic…

Also, it doesn't have to be the CEO with the vision. The CEO can, in the scenario, find and back up someone else with the vision.

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#128

Post by stock_toaster »

dirtae wrote: post #102
stock_toaster wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe an additional benefit is that the tax rate on dividends is substantially lower than that of capital gains.

You're wrong. The long term capital gains tax rate in the U.S. is 15% for most people. The tax rate for "qualified" dividends (essentially, dividends on stock that you've held for awhile) is 15%. Starting in 2013, dividends will be taxed at your ordinary income tax rate (which is the way they used to be taxed), while long term capital gains will be taxed at 20%, which means that for most people, dividends will be mor…

Ah. Thanks for the correction. The information I had must have been dated, looking here[1] it does appear that my information was old (probably from the 2003-2007 timeframe). I could have also been misremembering, and in fact the original data was probably comparing income tax to dividends tax. Good thing I am not an accountant!

It does seem that recent changes have again adjusted the tax rate. In fact, based on more information[2], it seems long term capital gains tax is in fact lower (while short term is the same as dividend tax).

[1]: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dividend_tax#...

[2]: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Capital_gains...

(updated for formatting)

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#129

Post by amorphid »

Spyro7 wrote: post #108
asr wrote: post #31

I'm sorry, he lost me at comparing Microsoft stock to Apple and Google over the past 10 years. In retrospect, those are two of the most successful publicly traded tech companies of the period--not a fair comparison. Not to mention those were small companies in 2000. For Microsoft stock to have increased 1200% (as Google's did) it would have probably had to grow into some very significant portion of the world economy.…

Note: I do not hold shares in any of the below companies. Apple and Google were in their heydays during this time period. If anyone is interested in seeing a really interesting comparison then go to finance.google.com and do the following: 1. Look up MSFT 2. Click "All" for your zoom option, this should give you from 1986 to present 3. Add GOOG and AAPL using the compare box Now look at the chart. MSFT is up 25,019.0…

MSFT was the overpriced darling of the Dotcom era. Ballmer inherited an insane valuation. Meanwhile, in the last ten years, net income has gone from under 8 billion to over 18 billion. This is not a failure and will eventually be reflected in the stick price.

Source -- http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/inside_ms.mspx

Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over

#130

Post by mruniverse »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

So this is just shareholder activism at its finest. A lot of M$ share holders are upset at the Skype deal and with the returns on the stock since Ballmer took over. Nothing new here, just that Microsoft lead by Ballmer has underperformed the market. I keep waiting for these folks to say who they think should be running Microsoft but that doesn't come up a lot.

I'd like to see Steve Jobs take over. It'd be his next great adventure. He can directly reach the other half of userland.
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