Blamer should have been gone a long time ago. They have lost some real visionaries because of him and lost site of what they are in the market to provide.
Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#22The stock market is all about the future, not the past. A lot of people see Microsoft's future as being less profitable than its past. That's why people belittle it. Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to. It's funny how the OP shows the financial numbers for one quarter and says the "the trend here is clear". You can't determine a trend on one quarter, you h…
The market does not think. It is neither efficient nor rational. If the stock market is about the future, then how do you interpret Goldman Sachs' share price of $235 in November 2007? 1 year later it fell to $53. A company's share price will tell you nothing about the actual financial stability or future of the company.
Neither is it entirely non-efficient nor non-rational.
Obviously, the stock market isn't about the actual future -- nobody knows that.
It's about the expected future, calculated in a pure informational way.
The price = the market's overall evaluation of all currently available information. Obviously it's not perfect, but the point is that if you know better, then you ought to be in investing, not programming, because you'll make a lot more money.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#23I used to work for Microsoft, and while I now work for a "cooler" company, it's good to see people doing some actual analysis about it instead of blind M$ bashing.
I used to work for them too. The atmosphere just got worse with every passing year. I don't think Ballmer's done anything to rejuvinate the culture. It just keeps getting more cutthroat and political.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#24Blamer should have been gone a long time ago. They have lost some real visionaries because of him and lost site of what they are in the market to provide.
Why?
Kinect and Xbox came to fruition under his leadership. And that division alone can become billion dollar business for MSFT. Agreed WP7 was late but MSFT takes pride in being late to any market. After all, they are last man standing in most of the markets. Zune failed but can't he have couple of failures? Btw, their core enterprises business is growing.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#25The stock market is all about the future, not the past. A lot of people see Microsoft's future as being less profitable than its past. That's why people belittle it. Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to. It's funny how the OP shows the financial numbers for one quarter and says the "the trend here is clear". You can't determine a trend on one quarter, you h…
>Also, their stock price has been basically flat for 10 years. That tells you what the market thinks of Microsoft.
If you consider MSFT stock price to have been flat over the last 10 years, then the market itself has essentially been flat over the last 10 years.
MSFT stock is up 20% over the last 10 years.
The S&P 500 is up 26% over the last 10 years.
That's not that big of a difference when considering (1) the immense volatility that we gone through over the last two boom and bust cycles and (2) some large portion of that 26% S&P 500 gain is Apple's 100x increase in split adjusted stock price.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
People belittle Ballmer because: (1) they were the big villain for a long time and there's still a lot of unspent schadenfreude with their name on it. (2) they've always been juxtaposed with Apple which is in meteoric rise like nothing we've really ever seen. (3) because monkey boy Their stock price is flat only if you don't include the dividends they've paid out.
"Their stock price is flat only if you don't include the dividends they've paid out." You have that backwards. If people think a company will pay out big dividends, then they bid up the price of the stock. That Microsoft's stock has remained mostly flat despite good dividend payments suggests that the stock would have plummeted without the dividend payments, and it will plummet if the dividend payments stop. A flat s…
"If people think a company will pay out big dividends, then they bid up the price of the stock."
No not really and if they do then the price falls once the dividend is announced.
This is basic math:
Company is worth x dollars.
Company gives away y dollars.
Company is now worth x - y dollars.
Felix Salmon explains it well here:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/19/apples-sens...
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#27The stock market is all about the future, not the past. A lot of people see Microsoft's future as being less profitable than its past. That's why people belittle it. Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to. It's funny how the OP shows the financial numbers for one quarter and says the "the trend here is clear". You can't determine a trend on one quarter, you h…
The market does not think. It is neither efficient nor rational. If the stock market is about the future, then how do you interpret Goldman Sachs' share price of $235 in November 2007? 1 year later it fell to $53. A company's share price will tell you nothing about the actual financial stability or future of the company.
This man is absolutely right.
The stock market is rarely rational. This is exploited by value investors, like myself, who invest in companies that are undervalued for no reason.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#28Microsoft is only as good as the people paying allows it to be. If/when Windows refunds becomes popular, and people get the next-door kid to install an OS and LibreOffice. Then MS dies fast.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#29The stock market is all about the future, not the past. A lot of people see Microsoft's future as being less profitable than its past. That's why people belittle it. Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to. It's funny how the OP shows the financial numbers for one quarter and says the "the trend here is clear". You can't determine a trend on one quarter, you h…
>"The stock market"
Microsoft isn't beholden to the stock market in the way Google or Apple are. The two largest shareholders are Gates and Balmer. They have about 9% of the company between them - that's more than the three largest institutional investors.
As part of Dow Jones Industrial Average, many index funds have to hold Microsoft stock and have a strong disincentive to create turmoil which might drive the price down. Unlike the tech stocks to which they are often compared, Microsoft pays dividends which keeps the stock price lower.
As for the stock market being the future, that future is based on speculation about the next quarter not long term innovation.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#30"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent".
This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M.
The only argument the author makes for claiming Microsoft's execution has been excellent is that "Windows Phone 7 is really good". Well, guess what? It may or may not be true that Windows Phone 7 is good, but it takes a whole lot more than a good OS to make a profit. You need to establish a community of developers who will write apps for your platform, you need to create an easy-to-use market place for end-users, you need to talk to phone manufacturers to make plenty of phones running your OS, you need to make deals with carriers to sell your phones, etc.
Microsoft has failed at most of this, hence their financial losses. Microsoft's execution in the mobile market is, so far, a failure, and Ballmer is partly responsible.