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Capital Investment Advisory Services LLC lifted its stake in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 13.1% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 47,812 shares of the software giant’s stock after buying an additional 5,538 shares during the period. Microsoft comprises about 1.1% of Capital Investment Advisory Services LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 20th largest position. Capital Investment Advisory Services LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $17,835,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Several other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of the stock. Auto Owners Insurance Co grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 56,160.8% in the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 60,116,384 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $29,073,486,000 after acquiring an additional 60,009,531 shares in the last quarter. Amundi lifted its position in shares of Microsoft by 30.8% during the first quarter. Amundi now owns 41,675,076 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $15,426,862,000 after purchasing an additional 9,814,598 shares in the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its position in shares of Microsoft by 10.5% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 29,323,744 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $10,852,884,000 after purchasing an additional 2,784,809 shares in the last quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC boosted its holdings in Microsoft by 1.8% during the fourth quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 25,300,410 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $12,235,785,000 after purchasing an additional 458,014 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership grew its position in Microsoft by 64.3% in the 1st quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 24,264,779 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $8,982,083,000 after purchasing an additional 9,493,778 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Insider Transactions at Microsoft In other Microsoft news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total transaction of $2,388,068.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 42,677 shares in the company, valued at $21,188,276.96. This trade represents a 10.13% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total transaction of $4,878,900.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 100,447 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $49,007,086.83. The trade was a 9.05% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. In the last quarter, insiders sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. Insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets MSFT has been the subject of several analyst reports. BMO Capital Markets increased their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen restated a “buy” rating and issued a $540.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Cantor Fitzgerald upped their target price on Microsoft from $502.00 to $522.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, July 27th. Bank of America increased their price target on Microsoft from $500.00 to $600.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, September 1st. Finally, KeyCorp reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, September 3rd. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $564.27. View Our Latest Stock Analysis on MSFT

Microsoft Stock Performance NASDAQ:MSFT opened at $493.78 on Monday. Microsoft Corporation has a 12 month low of $349.20 and a 12 month high of $553.72. The company has a current ratio of 1.23, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The firm’s 50 day moving average is $466.97 and its 200 day moving average is $422.94. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.67 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 1.11.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. The business had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.Microsoft’s revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $3.65 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 earnings per share for the current year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 19th will be issued a $0.98 dividend. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.8%. Microsoft’s payout ratio is 21.83%.

Trending Headlines about Microsoft Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

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Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Greenleaf Trust boosted its holdings in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 1.5% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 296,267 shares of the software giant’s stock after buying an additional 4,452 shares during the period. Microsoft comprises 1.1% of Greenleaf Trust’s portfolio, making the stock its 9th largest holding. Greenleaf Trust’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $110,514,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Trustmark Bank Trust Department lifted its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 0.3% during the 2nd quarter. Trustmark Bank Trust Department now owns 43,531 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $16,238,000 after acquiring an additional 143 shares during the period. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC increased its stake in Microsoft by 0.9% in the second quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 64,375,360 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $24,013,297,000 after acquiring an additional 543,172 shares during the period. New Mexico Educational Retirement Board raised its position in Microsoft by 14.7% in the second quarter. New Mexico Educational Retirement Board now owns 392,261 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $146,321,000 after purchasing an additional 50,314 shares in the last quarter. Royal London Asset Management Ltd. raised its position in Microsoft by 2.1% in the second quarter. Royal London Asset Management Ltd. now owns 5,802,929 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,164,609,000 after purchasing an additional 117,089 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Mufg Securities Americas Inc. lifted its stake in Microsoft by 8.9% during the second quarter. Mufg Securities Americas Inc. now owns 223,734 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $83,457,000 after purchasing an additional 18,306 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Microsoft News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ MSFT opened at $493.78 on Monday. Microsoft Corporation has a 12-month low of $349.20 and a 12-month high of $553.72. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $466.97 and its 200 day simple moving average is $422.94. The company has a quick ratio of 1.22, a current ratio of 1.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The company has a market cap of $3.67 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 1.11. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $87.62 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $3.65 EPS. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, research analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 19th will be issued a $0.98 dividend. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 21.83%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades MSFT has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. UBS Group set a $525.00 price objective on Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. BMO Capital Markets upped their target price on shares of Microsoft from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Mizuho dropped their target price on shares of Microsoft from $515.00 to $490.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, July 15th. Tigress Financial lifted their price target on shares of Microsoft from $680.00 to $690.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, August 5th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus boosted their price target on shares of Microsoft from $450.00 to $530.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, September 4th. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $564.27.

Get Our Latest Report on Microsoft

Insider Activity at Microsoft In related news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total value of $2,388,068.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 42,677 shares in the company, valued at $21,188,276.96. The trade was a 10.13% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total value of $20,764,903.98. Following the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 533,624 shares in the company, valued at approximately $265,888,830.48. This represents a 7.24% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last 90 days, insiders have sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. Company insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

About Microsoft (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Microsoft NVIDIA Just Named AI’s Next Bottleneck—And These 3 Stocks Sit Right In It Gold Has Gone Sideways, But These 3 Stocks Haven’t The AI Bottleneck Is Not Chips Anymore and 3 Pipeline Stocks Are Cashing In These 3 Stocks Under $20 Have Wall Street Looking Past the Share Price Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MSFT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report).

Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Louisbourg Investments Inc. lowered its stake in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 3.5% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 41,327 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 1,493 shares during the period. Microsoft accounts for approximately 2.8% of Louisbourg Investments Inc.’s portfolio, making the stock its 4th biggest holding. Louisbourg Investments Inc.’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $15,416,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other large investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Auto Owners Insurance Co grew its stake in Microsoft by 56,160.8% during the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 60,116,384 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $29,073,486,000 after buying an additional 60,009,531 shares during the last quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC boosted its position in shares of Microsoft by 234.5% in the fourth quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC now owns 17,822,280 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $8,619,211,000 after buying an additional 12,493,786 shares during the period. Amundi lifted its position in Microsoft by 30.8% in the 1st quarter. Amundi now owns 41,675,076 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $15,426,862,000 after buying an additional 9,814,598 shares in the last quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 64.3% during the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 24,264,779 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $8,982,083,000 after acquiring an additional 9,493,778 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Diamant Asset Management Inc. increased its stake in shares of Microsoft by 38,442.1% during the 1st quarter. Diamant Asset Management Inc. now owns 6,810,388 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,521,001,000 after purchasing an additional 6,792,718 shares during the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Microsoft Price Performance Microsoft stock opened at $493.78 on Monday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.22, a current ratio of 1.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $466.97 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $422.94. Microsoft Corporation has a twelve month low of $349.20 and a twelve month high of $553.72. The stock has a market cap of $3.67 trillion, a P/E ratio of 27.49, a P/E/G ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 1.11.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. The business had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $3.65 earnings per share. As a group, analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current year. Microsoft Increases Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be paid a $0.98 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 19th. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.8%. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 21.83%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Microsoft In related news, CEO Satya Nadella sold 86,525 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, September 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $501.46, for a total transaction of $43,388,826.50. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 486,763 shares in the company, valued at approximately $244,092,173.98. The trade was a 15.09% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total value of $20,764,903.98. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president owned 533,624 shares in the company, valued at approximately $265,888,830.48. The trade was a 7.24% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last 90 days, insiders have sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of research analysts have recently commented on the stock. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, July 20th. Sanford C. Bernstein set a $660.00 target price on Microsoft in a research note on Monday, August 10th. Oppenheimer restated an “outperform” rating and issued a $515.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Wednesday, July 22nd. KeyCorp reissued an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, September 3rd. Finally, Benchmark reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Friday, July 24th. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Microsoft presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $564.27.

Get Our Latest Analysis on Microsoft

Key Microsoft News Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Microsoft NVIDIA Just Named AI’s Next Bottleneck—And These 3 Stocks Sit Right In It Gold Has Gone Sideways, But These 3 Stocks Haven’t The AI Bottleneck Is Not Chips Anymore and 3 Pipeline Stocks Are Cashing In These 3 Stocks Under $20 Have Wall Street Looking Past the Share Price

Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

WT Wealth Management lifted its holdings in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 29.8% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 15,582 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 3,578 shares during the quarter. Microsoft comprises approximately 1.6% of WT Wealth Management’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 18th biggest position. WT Wealth Management’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $5,812,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of MSFT. Frankly Finances LLC purchased a new stake in Microsoft in the second quarter valued at approximately $35,000. MidAtlantic Capital Management Inc. purchased a new position in shares of Microsoft during the fourth quarter worth $59,000. Lifetime Wealth Management P.C. acquired a new stake in shares of Microsoft in the fourth quarter valued at $101,000. Ramsey Quantitative Systems purchased a new stake in shares of Microsoft in the 2nd quarter valued at $112,000. Finally, Midwest Capital Advisors LLC lifted its stake in Microsoft by 16.6% during the 1st quarter. Midwest Capital Advisors LLC now owns 422 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $156,000 after acquiring an additional 60 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity at Microsoft In other news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total transaction of $2,388,068.80. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 42,677 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $21,188,276.96. The trade was a 10.13% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total value of $4,878,900.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer owned 100,447 shares in the company, valued at approximately $49,007,086.83. This represents a 9.05% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold a total of 143,009 shares of company stock valued at $71,420,699 in the last 90 days. Insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Microsoft Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ MSFT opened at $493.78 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a current ratio of 1.23. Microsoft Corporation has a one year low of $349.20 and a one year high of $553.72. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.67 trillion, a P/E ratio of 27.49, a PEG ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 1.11. The company’s fifty day moving average is $466.97 and its two-hundred day moving average is $422.94. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The business had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. The business’s revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $3.65 EPS. Analysts forecast that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be issued a $0.98 dividend. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.8%. This is a boost from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is 21.83%.

Trending Headlines about Microsoft Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Analyst Ratings Changes MSFT has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Piper Sandler raised their target price on Microsoft from $540.00 to $550.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Tigress Financial upped their target price on shares of Microsoft from $680.00 to $690.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 5th. Mizuho dropped their price target on shares of Microsoft from $515.00 to $490.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, July 15th. Weiss Ratings raised shares of Microsoft from a “hold (c)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 27th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group restated a “buy” rating and set a $640.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Forty-two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Microsoft currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $564.27.

View Our Latest Stock Report on MSFT

Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Read More Five stocks we like better than Microsoft NVIDIA Just Named AI’s Next Bottleneck—And These 3 Stocks Sit Right In It Gold Has Gone Sideways, But These 3 Stocks Haven’t The AI Bottleneck Is Not Chips Anymore and 3 Pipeline Stocks Are Cashing In These 3 Stocks Under $20 Have Wall Street Looking Past the Share Price Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MSFT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report).

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Warren Street Wealth Advisors LLC lowered its position in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 17.6% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 6,969 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 1,484 shares during the period. Microsoft accounts for approximately 0.6% of Warren Street Wealth Advisors LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 23rd largest position. Warren Street Wealth Advisors LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $2,600,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of MSFT. Partners in Financial Planning raised its position in shares of Microsoft by 0.9% during the 4th quarter. Partners in Financial Planning now owns 2,593 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,254,000 after acquiring an additional 24 shares in the last quarter. FWG Holdings LLC raised its holdings in Microsoft by 0.3% during the fourth quarter. FWG Holdings LLC now owns 8,368 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $4,047,000 after purchasing an additional 24 shares in the last quarter. Skylands Capital LLC raised its stake in Microsoft by 4.0% during the 4th quarter. Skylands Capital LLC now owns 645 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $312,000 after acquiring an additional 25 shares in the last quarter. Friedenthal Financial lifted its position in Microsoft by 6.2% in the first quarter. Friedenthal Financial now owns 431 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $160,000 after acquiring an additional 25 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Sequent Planning LLC boosted its stake in Microsoft by 0.7% in the first quarter. Sequent Planning LLC now owns 3,733 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $1,382,000 after acquiring an additional 25 shares in the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Microsoft News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Insider Buying and Selling In other Microsoft news, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total transaction of $20,764,903.98. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 533,624 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $265,888,830.48. This trade represents a 7.24% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total value of $4,878,900.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 100,447 shares in the company, valued at approximately $49,007,086.83. The trade was a 9.05% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last three months, insiders sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades MSFT has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. DA Davidson reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $550.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Bank of America raised their price target on Microsoft from $500.00 to $600.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, September 1st. UBS Group set a $525.00 price objective on Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. The Goldman Sachs Group reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $640.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald upped their price target on shares of Microsoft from $502.00 to $522.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. Forty-two research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $564.27.

Read Our Latest Analysis on Microsoft

Microsoft Price Performance Microsoft stock opened at $493.78 on Monday. Microsoft Corporation has a fifty-two week low of $349.20 and a fifty-two week high of $553.72. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.67 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 1.11. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $466.97 and its two-hundred day moving average is $422.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a current ratio of 1.23.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The business had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $3.65 EPS. The business’s revenue was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts predict that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be issued a dividend of $0.98 per share. This is a boost from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 19th. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.8%. Microsoft’s payout ratio is currently 21.83%.

Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

See Also Five stocks we like better than Microsoft NVIDIA Just Named AI’s Next Bottleneck—And These 3 Stocks Sit Right In It Gold Has Gone Sideways, But These 3 Stocks Haven’t The AI Bottleneck Is Not Chips Anymore and 3 Pipeline Stocks Are Cashing In These 3 Stocks Under $20 Have Wall Street Looking Past the Share Price

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The S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.17%) is an index of 500 companies from 11 different sectors of the U.S. economy. It has produced a compound annual return of 10.7% since its establishment in 1957, even after accounting for every sell-off, correction, and bear market along the way. Therefore, buying an S&P 500 index fund is one of the surest ways investors can build wealth over the long term.

But young investors have time on their side, so they can afford to take on a little more risk in pursuit of higher returns. A portfolio of around 50 individual stocks will typically experience more volatility than the S&P 500, but that might be a worthwhile trade-off considering tech giants like Amazon (AMZN +1.00%) and Microsoft (MSFT -0.80%) have obliterated the index since going public:

Amazon stock has soared by 338,180% since going public in 1997, translating to a compound annual return of 32.3%. Microsoft stock has surged by 676,310% since going public in 1986, translating to a compound annual return of 24.7%. Thanks to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), Amazon and Microsoft likely have plenty of growth left in the tank. If I were a young investor in my 20s today, here's why I'd buy both stocks and hold them forever.

Image source: Getty Images.

The first stock I'd buy: Amazon Amazon started out by selling books over the internet, which was a revolutionary concept in the 1990s. Its flagship e-commerce platform, Amazon.com, now hosts over 600 million products, and it remains the company's largest source of revenue. But investors have been more interested in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform over the last decade, as it offers hundreds of tools to help businesses thrive in the digital age.

Over the last three years in particular, AWS has become the centerpiece of Amazon's AI strategy. It operates data centers worldwide that house thousands of specialized AI chips from suppliers like Nvidia, but Amazon has also designed its own chips, including Trainium3, which deliver significantly better price-performance than the competition.

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Amazon's chip business already has over $25 billion in annualized revenue, but hardware is only one part of the AWS story. Developers also need access to ready-made models to accelerate their AI software projects, and the AWS Bedrock platform offers hundreds of them, including those from labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. AWS also has its own AI coding assistant, Kiro, and usage tripled sequentially during the second quarter of 2026.

AWS is Amazon's fastest-growing business, with revenue increasing by 37% in the second quarter. The platform has generated $148 billion in revenue over the last four quarters, but Amazon CEO Andy Jassy thinks it could generate $1 trillion per year in the future. That sounds like a big number, but it currently has a whopping $496 billion order backlog from customers waiting for more data center capacity to come online.

As a result, Amazon looks like a great long-term investment. And with a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 24.4 (based on 2027 earnings estimates), it's trading in line with the Nasdaq-100 index, which has a forward P/E of 24.2, so I would say investors are buying a great business at a very fair price.

The second stock I'd buy: Microsoft Microsoft developed an AI assistant called Copilot and embedded it in legacy software products like Windows, Bing, and Edge for free. But businesses can also add Copilot to the 365 productivity suite for an additional subscription fee, where it can accelerate workflows in applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

As of June 30, organizations around the world were paying for 30 million Copilot for 365 licenses, a 50% increase from March 31, just three months earlier. But that represents a mere fraction of the 400 million 365 licenses in circulation, so Copilot could eventually generate billions of dollars in annual recurring revenue when attached to this one product suite alone.

Selling Copilot to such a large existing customer base gives Microsoft a distinct advantage over AI start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic, which must build their customer bases from scratch.

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Microsoft also has Azure, a booming cloud platform that competes directly with AWS by offering a similar portfolio of AI services. The company built 88 new data centers over the last 12 months alone, as part of a two-year plan to double its global infrastructure footprint. But it will have to continue building aggressively because, as of June 30, Azure had a whopping $678 billion order backlog from AI customers who were waiting for more computing capacity to come online.

Azure is Microsoft's fastest-growing business with revenue increasing by 43% in the June quarter, and that growth rate could accelerate as the platform fulfills its backlog.

Like Amazon, Microsoft is also trading at a relatively attractive valuation with a forward P/E ratio of 25, so this could be a great entry point for a long-term investment.

Ahara Advisors LLC boosted its stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 359.9% during the second quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 56,035 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 43,852 shares during the period. Microsoft comprises 14.1% of Ahara Advisors LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its largest position. Ahara Advisors LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $20,735,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Frankly Finances LLC purchased a new stake in Microsoft during the 2nd quarter valued at $35,000. MidAtlantic Capital Management Inc. bought a new stake in Microsoft in the 4th quarter worth $59,000. Lifetime Wealth Management P.C. purchased a new position in shares of Microsoft in the fourth quarter valued at about $101,000. Ramsey Quantitative Systems purchased a new position in shares of Microsoft in the second quarter valued at about $112,000. Finally, Midwest Capital Advisors LLC raised its stake in shares of Microsoft by 16.6% during the first quarter. Midwest Capital Advisors LLC now owns 422 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $156,000 after acquiring an additional 60 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Insider Buying and Selling at Microsoft In related news, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total transaction of $20,764,903.98. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 533,624 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $265,888,830.48. This trade represents a 7.24% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total transaction of $2,388,068.80. Following the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 42,677 shares in the company, valued at $21,188,276.96. The trade was a 10.13% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. Corporate insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Microsoft Stock Performance Microsoft stock opened at $493.78 on Friday. Microsoft Corporation has a fifty-two week low of $349.20 and a fifty-two week high of $553.72. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $466.97 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $422.77. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a current ratio of 1.23. The stock has a market cap of $3.67 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.49, a PEG ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 1.11. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $87.62 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $3.65 EPS. The business’s revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be given a dividend of $0.98 per share. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. Microsoft’s payout ratio is 20.27%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth MSFT has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Argus cut their target price on Microsoft from $620.00 to $510.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, July 10th. Oppenheimer reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and set a $515.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Wednesday, July 22nd. KeyCorp reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, September 3rd. The Goldman Sachs Group reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $640.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Mizuho reduced their target price on Microsoft from $515.00 to $490.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, July 15th. Forty-two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Microsoft currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $564.27.

Read Our Latest Analysis on Microsoft

Key Microsoft News Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

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E Fund Management Hong Kong Co. Ltd. boosted its stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 26.2% during the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 20,516 shares of the software giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 4,256 shares during the quarter. Microsoft accounts for about 2.5% of E Fund Management Hong Kong Co. Ltd.’s portfolio, making the stock its 9th biggest holding. E Fund Management Hong Kong Co. Ltd.’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $7,653,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in MSFT. Frankly Finances LLC acquired a new stake in Microsoft during the second quarter worth $35,000. MidAtlantic Capital Management Inc. purchased a new position in shares of Microsoft in the 4th quarter valued at about $59,000. Lifetime Wealth Management P.C. purchased a new stake in Microsoft in the fourth quarter valued at $101,000. Ramsey Quantitative Systems purchased a new position in Microsoft during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $112,000. Finally, Midwest Capital Advisors LLC grew its position in shares of Microsoft by 16.6% during the first quarter. Midwest Capital Advisors LLC now owns 422 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $156,000 after acquiring an additional 60 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity In related news, CEO Satya Nadella sold 86,525 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, September 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $501.46, for a total value of $43,388,826.50. Following the sale, the chief executive officer owned 486,763 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $244,092,173.98. This trade represents a 15.09% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total transaction of $2,388,068.80. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president owned 42,677 shares in the company, valued at approximately $21,188,276.96. This represents a 10.13% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699 in the last 90 days. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Microsoft Trading Down 0.8% Shares of NASDAQ MSFT opened at $493.78 on Friday. Microsoft Corporation has a 12-month low of $349.20 and a 12-month high of $553.72. The company has a market cap of $3.67 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a current ratio of 1.23, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $466.97 and its 200 day simple moving average is $422.77. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $3.65 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be given a dividend of $0.98 per share. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 19th. Microsoft’s payout ratio is currently 20.27%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of research firms have recently weighed in on MSFT. Piper Sandler upped their price target on shares of Microsoft from $540.00 to $550.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Mizuho decreased their price objective on Microsoft from $515.00 to $490.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, July 15th. Evercore set a $528.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Citizens Jmp reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating and set a $550.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Tuesday. Finally, Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $500.00 to $600.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, September 1st. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Microsoft currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $564.27.

Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on MSFT

More Microsoft News Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

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Synergy Asset Management LLC boosted its stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 27.6% in the second quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 183,474 shares of the software giant’s stock after buying an additional 39,727 shares during the quarter. Microsoft makes up 6.5% of Synergy Asset Management LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its largest holding. Synergy Asset Management LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $68,439,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Several other large investors have also bought and sold shares of MSFT. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its position in shares of Microsoft by 2.3% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 717,942,580 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $347,211,391,000 after purchasing an additional 15,955,898 shares during the period. Auto Owners Insurance Co increased its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 56,160.8% in the fourth quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 60,116,384 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $29,073,486,000 after purchasing an additional 60,009,531 shares during the period. Amundi raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 30.8% in the 1st quarter. Amundi now owns 41,675,076 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $15,426,862,000 after acquiring an additional 9,814,598 shares in the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 10.5% in the 1st quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 29,323,744 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $10,852,884,000 after buying an additional 2,784,809 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Fisher Asset Management LLC raised its position in shares of Microsoft by 1.8% during the 4th quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 25,300,410 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $12,235,785,000 after buying an additional 458,014 shares in the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth MSFT has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Sanford C. Bernstein set a $660.00 target price on Microsoft in a research note on Monday, August 10th. Citigroup reiterated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Monday, August 31st. Mizuho dropped their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $515.00 to $490.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, July 15th. Cantor Fitzgerald lifted their price target on shares of Microsoft from $502.00 to $522.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, July 27th. Finally, KeyCorp reissued an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, September 3rd. Forty-two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $564.27.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Report on MSFT Key Microsoft News Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Stock Performance Shares of NASDAQ:MSFT opened at $493.78 on Friday. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $466.97 and its 200-day simple moving average is $422.77. Microsoft Corporation has a one year low of $349.20 and a one year high of $553.72. The firm has a market cap of $3.67 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a current ratio of 1.23.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. During the same period last year, the firm earned $3.65 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities analysts predict that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be given a dividend of $0.98 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.8%. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. Microsoft’s payout ratio is presently 20.27%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Microsoft In other news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total transaction of $2,388,068.80. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 42,677 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $21,188,276.96. This trade represents a 10.13% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total transaction of $20,764,903.98. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 533,624 shares in the company, valued at approximately $265,888,830.48. This represents a 7.24% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last three months, insiders sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

See Also Five stocks we like better than Microsoft J.B. Hunt’s Stock Plunges After Market Misprices Profit Warning 2 Stocks Breaking Out Post-FOMC With One Thing in Common Lennar’s Q3 Miss Hides a Stronger Operating Story Beneath the Housing Slump These 3 Stocks Are Drawing Insider Buyers for Very Different Reasons Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MSFT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report).

Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Praxis Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 161.4% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 3,940 shares of the software giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 2,433 shares during the period. Microsoft accounts for approximately 2.3% of Praxis Capital Management LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 6th biggest holding. Praxis Capital Management LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $1,470,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in MSFT. Vanderbilt University lifted its stake in shares of Microsoft by 64.3% in the 2nd quarter. Vanderbilt University now owns 36,416 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $13,584,000 after purchasing an additional 14,252 shares during the last quarter. Herold Advisors Inc. raised its holdings in Microsoft by 1.9% during the 2nd quarter. Herold Advisors Inc. now owns 37,327 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $13,930,000 after buying an additional 691 shares during the period. BetterWealth LLC lifted its position in Microsoft by 26.3% in the second quarter. BetterWealth LLC now owns 1,820 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $679,000 after buying an additional 379 shares during the last quarter. Hidden Cove Wealth Management LLC boosted its stake in Microsoft by 10.7% during the second quarter. Hidden Cove Wealth Management LLC now owns 9,948 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $3,711,000 after buying an additional 959 shares during the period. Finally, My Personal CFO LLC boosted its stake in Microsoft by 7.9% during the second quarter. My Personal CFO LLC now owns 52,047 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $19,415,000 after buying an additional 3,824 shares during the period. 71.13% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Trending Headlines about Microsoft Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Stock Down 0.8% NASDAQ:MSFT opened at $493.78 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a current ratio of 1.23 and a quick ratio of 1.22. Microsoft Corporation has a 1-year low of $349.20 and a 1-year high of $553.72. The company has a 50-day moving average of $466.97 and a 200 day moving average of $422.77. The firm has a market cap of $3.67 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 1.11. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The business had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $87.62 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $3.65 EPS. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts anticipate that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 19th will be paid a $0.98 dividend. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.8%. This is a positive change from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. Microsoft’s payout ratio is presently 20.27%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Microsoft In other news, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total value of $20,764,903.98. Following the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 533,624 shares in the company, valued at approximately $265,888,830.48. This trade represents a 7.24% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Satya Nadella sold 86,525 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $501.46, for a total value of $43,388,826.50. Following the sale, the chief executive officer owned 486,763 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $244,092,173.98. This trade represents a 15.09% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes MSFT has been the subject of several analyst reports. Citizens Jmp restated a “market outperform” rating and issued a $550.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a report on Tuesday. Piper Sandler raised their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $540.00 to $550.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. KeyCorp restated an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, September 3rd. Guggenheim reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $586.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a report on Monday, July 27th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, September 10th. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $564.27.

Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on Microsoft

Microsoft Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Microsoft J.B. Hunt’s Stock Plunges After Market Misprices Profit Warning 2 Stocks Breaking Out Post-FOMC With One Thing in Common Lennar’s Q3 Miss Hides a Stronger Operating Story Beneath the Housing Slump These 3 Stocks Are Drawing Insider Buyers for Very Different Reasons

Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. increased its stake in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 6.0% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund owned 4,097,211 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 230,600 shares during the quarter. Microsoft accounts for 2.3% of Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd.’s holdings, making the stock its 7th biggest holding. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. owned approximately 0.06% of Microsoft worth $1,528,342,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Partners in Financial Planning grew its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 0.9% in the fourth quarter. Partners in Financial Planning now owns 2,593 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,254,000 after purchasing an additional 24 shares during the last quarter. FWG Holdings LLC increased its stake in shares of Microsoft by 0.3% during the fourth quarter. FWG Holdings LLC now owns 8,368 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $4,047,000 after buying an additional 24 shares during the period. Skylands Capital LLC raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 4.0% in the fourth quarter. Skylands Capital LLC now owns 645 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $312,000 after acquiring an additional 25 shares in the last quarter. Friedenthal Financial raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 6.2% in the first quarter. Friedenthal Financial now owns 431 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $160,000 after acquiring an additional 25 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Sequent Planning LLC grew its holdings in Microsoft by 0.7% during the 1st quarter. Sequent Planning LLC now owns 3,733 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,382,000 after acquiring an additional 25 shares in the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Microsoft Trading Down 0.8% Shares of Microsoft stock opened at $493.78 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.67 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.49, a PEG ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a current ratio of 1.23, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $466.97 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $422.77. Microsoft Corporation has a 12-month low of $349.20 and a 12-month high of $553.72.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. The business had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The company’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $3.65 EPS. Analysts predict that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current year. Microsoft Increases Dividend The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 19th will be given a dividend of $0.98 per share. This is a boost from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 19th. Microsoft’s payout ratio is presently 20.27%.

Insider Buying and Selling In related news, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total transaction of $4,878,900.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer owned 100,447 shares in the company, valued at approximately $49,007,086.83. This trade represents a 9.05% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total value of $2,388,068.80. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 42,677 shares in the company, valued at $21,188,276.96. This trade represents a 10.13% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. In the last quarter, insiders sold 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699. Corporate insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes A number of research analysts have commented on the stock. Citigroup reissued a “market outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, August 31st. Sanford C. Bernstein set a $660.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Monday, August 10th. BMO Capital Markets lifted their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Weiss Ratings upgraded Microsoft from a “hold (c)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a report on Thursday, August 27th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, September 10th. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $564.27.

Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on Microsoft

More Microsoft News Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Microsoft J.B. Hunt’s Stock Plunges After Market Misprices Profit Warning 2 Stocks Breaking Out Post-FOMC With One Thing in Common Lennar’s Q3 Miss Hides a Stronger Operating Story Beneath the Housing Slump These 3 Stocks Are Drawing Insider Buyers for Very Different Reasons Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MSFT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report).

Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd boosted its holdings in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 2.5% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 1,415,755 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 34,077 shares during the period. Microsoft comprises 3.6% of Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd’s portfolio, making the stock its 4th biggest holding. Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Company Ltd’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $528,105,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in MSFT. Drive Wealth Management LLC increased its position in shares of Microsoft by 1.9% during the 2nd quarter. Drive Wealth Management LLC now owns 30,380 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $11,333,000 after purchasing an additional 563 shares in the last quarter. Balance Wealth Partners LLC boosted its position in Microsoft by 3.8% in the second quarter. Balance Wealth Partners LLC now owns 8,625 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $3,217,000 after buying an additional 316 shares in the last quarter. Liberty Atlantic Advisors LLC boosted its position in Microsoft by 8.1% in the second quarter. Liberty Atlantic Advisors LLC now owns 615 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $230,000 after buying an additional 46 shares in the last quarter. Aurora Private Wealth Inc. grew its stake in Microsoft by 0.8% during the second quarter. Aurora Private Wealth Inc. now owns 4,683 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,747,000 after buying an additional 35 shares during the last quarter. Finally, JM2 Capital Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 2.4% during the second quarter. JM2 Capital Inc. now owns 12,090 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $4,510,000 after buying an additional 288 shares in the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of equities analysts have commented on MSFT shares. Morgan Stanley reissued an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. CLSA reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Mizuho dropped their price target on shares of Microsoft from $515.00 to $490.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, July 15th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft restated a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, July 20th. Finally, TD Cowen reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $540.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $564.27.

Check Out Our Latest Research Report on MSFT Insider Activity at Microsoft In related news, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total transaction of $20,764,903.98. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 533,624 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $265,888,830.48. This trade represents a 7.24% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total transaction of $4,878,900.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 100,447 shares in the company, valued at approximately $49,007,086.83. The trade was a 9.05% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 143,009 shares of company stock valued at $71,420,699. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Trending Headlines about Microsoft Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure and AI businesses remain the primary bullish catalysts. Analysts point to accelerating cloud growth, broad enterprise adoption and Microsoft’s distribution advantage through Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot. These Magnificent Seven Members Still Look Cheap Positive Sentiment: Causaly expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, making its agentic scientific-research tools available within Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Teams. The deal supports Microsoft’s strategy of adding specialized AI workflows to its enterprise software ecosystem. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% quarterly dividend increase reinforces its strong cash generation and provides shareholder support, although the company continues to invest heavily in cloud and AI infrastructure. Microsoft Slips as Its Quarterly Dividend Climbs 8% Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman called recent reports of concerning model behavior at OpenAI a “serious situation” and emphasized the need for controllable, human-aligned AI. The comments highlight Microsoft’s safety focus but also underscore reputational and product-liability risks across the sector. OpenAI’s latest AI revelation is a serious situation Negative Sentiment: Unsealed filings reportedly include Microsoft and OpenAI employees’ concerns that AI training on millions of news articles could amount to the “largest theft of labor in human history.” The disclosures may weaken the companies’ fair-use defense and increase potential litigation, licensing and regulatory costs. OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense Negative Sentiment: Reports of insider selling added to near-term sentiment pressure, while Microsoft faces competitive challenges from Salesforce’s AIforce and ongoing debate over whether its substantial AI spending will generate adequate returns. Microsoft Trading Down After Insider Selling Microsoft Price Performance NASDAQ:MSFT opened at $493.78 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 1.23, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $466.97 and a 200 day simple moving average of $422.77. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.67 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.49, a P/E/G ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 1.11. Microsoft Corporation has a 1-year low of $349.20 and a 1-year high of $553.72.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. The company had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $3.65 EPS. On average, research analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be paid a $0.98 dividend. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 19th. This is a positive change from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is 20.27%.

Microsoft Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Microsoft J.B. Hunt’s Stock Plunges After Market Misprices Profit Warning 2 Stocks Breaking Out Post-FOMC With One Thing in Common Lennar’s Q3 Miss Hides a Stronger Operating Story Beneath the Housing Slump These 3 Stocks Are Drawing Insider Buyers for Very Different Reasons

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Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman Bloomberg/Getty Images Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it's "surreal" that he has to say AI needs to align with humanity.

"We should not create something that we can't control," Suleyman said Friday on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "And if it looks like we're on a path to producing something that is not just more powerful than all of us combined, but is, as a result, something that we can't control, then it's going to fail in its fundamental purpose."

Success will not come easily, Suleyman said.

"Controlling these things are going to be a really, really big challenge for us," he said.

Suleyman said he was "glad to see a lot more people" supporting the idea that tech companies and frontier model makers need to maintain control over their AI systems. In the industry, ensuring AI acts in accordance with human intentions is called alignment.

"But there's a growing group of people that think that we are doing it for its own sake, and we just want to turn over the next card, see what's around the corner, and create something that is just going to slip our own leash," he said.

Suleyman's comments come at a time of increased attention to AI safety, after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned that AI workers are privately fearful that AI could wipe out humanity.

In recent days, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have all expressed broad agreement that frontier AI labs should better pace their advancements to ensure that safety measures can keep up.

Before Coxon's viral post, many in the industry were already concerned about safety after OpenAI revealed that its agents had breached Hugging Face, illustrating the potential consequences of losing control over AI systems. Suleyman called the breadth of the Hugging Face breach and OpenAI's initial unawareness of what its AI agents were doing "remarkable."

"It has moved everybody from Elon and Zuck to me, Sam, Dario, and everybody else in between to say it's time that we take a look at this," Suleyman said. "I don't think it's overly alarmist. I don't think it's self-interested. I actually think it's responsible."

Meta CEO Zuckerberg has taken a different stance than Amodei and other AI leaders. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg questioned why AI companies need to band together to manage the rate of development, suggesting that each company should handle its own business.

"Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely," Zuckerberg wrote on X.

Some in tech, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, have questioned whether broad new regulations are needed. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also pushed back on AI companies that are urging governments to act.

Amodei and others have requested Congress and international bodies to get involved as well. Suleyman questioned those who scoff at the very idea of regulation.

"Regulation is not a nasty, dangerous word," he said. "Everything that you trust and is of value at the moment has been carefully thought through by standards bodies that involve the industry, the public, consumer protection, Congress. And we're just going through that process."

Read next

Brent D. Griffiths You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Brent Griffiths is a senior reporter at Business Insider who covers AI and tech.Previously, he worked at the Washington Post as a researcher on Power Up and the Finance 202. He started his career at Politico where he worked on the web production team and covered breaking news. His passion for covering politics has only grown since he cut his teeth covering the presidential campaign as a student journalist. He's also contributed to the Almanac of American Politics.

Microsoft AI

OLD Second National Bank of Aurora boosted its position in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 4.6% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 37,750 shares of the software giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 1,674 shares during the period. Microsoft accounts for 2.7% of OLD Second National Bank of Aurora’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 9th biggest position. OLD Second National Bank of Aurora’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $14,082,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Auto Owners Insurance Co raised its position in Microsoft by 56,160.8% during the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 60,116,384 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $29,073,486,000 after purchasing an additional 60,009,531 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in shares of Microsoft by 2.3% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 717,942,580 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $347,211,391,000 after buying an additional 15,955,898 shares during the last quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC grew its position in shares of Microsoft by 234.5% in the 4th quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC now owns 17,822,280 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $8,619,211,000 after buying an additional 12,493,786 shares during the last quarter. Amundi increased its stake in shares of Microsoft by 30.8% during the first quarter. Amundi now owns 41,675,076 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $15,426,862,000 after buying an additional 9,814,598 shares during the period. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership increased its stake in shares of Microsoft by 64.3% during the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 24,264,779 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $8,982,083,000 after buying an additional 9,493,778 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes A number of analysts recently commented on MSFT shares. Citigroup reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Monday, August 31st. Bank of America upped their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $500.00 to $600.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 1st. Tigress Financial raised their target price on shares of Microsoft from $680.00 to $690.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 5th. Argus cut their target price on shares of Microsoft from $620.00 to $510.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, July 10th. Finally, Morgan Stanley reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Forty-two analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $564.27.

Get Our Latest Analysis on Microsoft Microsoft Trading Up 1.5% Shares of NASDAQ MSFT opened at $497.75 on Friday. Microsoft Corporation has a 1 year low of $349.20 and a 1 year high of $553.72. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a current ratio of 1.23 and a quick ratio of 1.22. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $464.80 and a 200 day moving average of $422.27. The stock has a market cap of $3.70 trillion, a P/E ratio of 27.71, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.58 and a beta of 1.11.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The business had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $3.65 earnings per share. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, November 19th will be paid a dividend of $0.98 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 19th. This is a positive change from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.8%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 21.83%.

Insider Buying and Selling In other news, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total transaction of $4,878,900.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 100,447 shares in the company, valued at $49,007,086.83. This trade represents a 9.05% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total transaction of $2,388,068.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 42,677 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $21,188,276.96. This trade represents a 10.13% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold a total of 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699 over the last three months. 0.03% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Microsoft News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Azure and cloud AI remain the main catalyst: Coverage highlights Azure’s more than $100 billion annual revenue milestone and 43% year-over-year growth, with agentic AI increasing demand for cloud compute. Microsoft’s Azure payment-security service also gives financial institutions a way to manage payment infrastructure in the cloud, although pricing and customer commitments were not disclosed. Microsoft Jumps as Azure Turns Payment Vaults Into a Service Positive Sentiment: Copilot’s enterprise reach is expanding: Causaly’s scientific research platform is now available within Microsoft Copilot and Teams, adding a specialized life-sciences workflow to Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. Microsoft Ventures is also backing ManticAI, a British startup developing AI systems for predicting global events. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Cash returns and analyst support help sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% dividend increase to $0.98 per quarter reinforces confidence in cash generation despite heavy AI investment. Citizens JMP also reiterated a “Market Outperform” rating, supporting the bullish view. Citizens JMP Reiterates Market Outperform Rating Neutral Sentiment: AI strategy remains a valuation debate: Microsoft is promoting an internal AI-transformation playbook and continues to position agentic AI as a major growth opportunity. Investors must weigh that opportunity against rising data-center spending, execution risks and higher interest-rate sensitivity. Negative Sentiment: Copyright litigation risk has intensified: Newly unsealed court documents reportedly show Microsoft and OpenAI executives describing AI products as substitutes for journalism, while one Microsoft executive characterized AI scraping as “the largest theft of labor in human history.” News organizations argue the statements weaken the companies’ fair-use defense in the New York Times copyright case, potentially increasing legal costs, damages and regulatory scrutiny. OpenAI and Microsoft executives quotes on AI training About Microsoft (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Microsoft Aeluma’s Selloff Could Be Setting Up Its Next Big Move Crypto Bill Stalls, Smart Money Calls: Time to Buy the Dip? The September Scramble: Find Sanctuary in These 3 Defensive Dividend Stocks The Fed’s Rate Hike Could Backfire If Oil Prices Collapse

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Fulcrum Wealth Advisors LLC increased its stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 7.9% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 22,471 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 1,642 shares during the quarter. Microsoft accounts for 6.4% of Fulcrum Wealth Advisors LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 2nd largest position. Fulcrum Wealth Advisors LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $8,382,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A number of other large investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its position in Microsoft by 2.3% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 717,942,580 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $347,211,391,000 after acquiring an additional 15,955,898 shares during the last quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co lifted its holdings in Microsoft by 56,160.8% in the fourth quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 60,116,384 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $29,073,486,000 after acquiring an additional 60,009,531 shares during the period. Amundi boosted its position in Microsoft by 30.8% in the first quarter. Amundi now owns 41,675,076 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $15,426,862,000 after purchasing an additional 9,814,598 shares during the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP boosted its position in Microsoft by 10.5% in the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 29,323,744 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $10,852,884,000 after purchasing an additional 2,784,809 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Fisher Asset Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 1.8% during the 4th quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 25,300,410 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $12,235,785,000 after purchasing an additional 458,014 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Insiders Place Their Bets In other Microsoft news, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total value of $4,878,900.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 100,447 shares in the company, valued at $49,007,086.83. This represents a 9.05% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total transaction of $20,764,903.98. Following the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 533,624 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $265,888,830.48. This trade represents a 7.24% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 143,009 shares of company stock valued at $71,420,699 in the last 90 days. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Microsoft Stock Performance MSFT opened at $497.75 on Friday. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $464.80 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $422.27. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07, a current ratio of 1.23 and a quick ratio of 1.22. The firm has a market cap of $3.70 trillion, a P/E ratio of 27.71, a PEG ratio of 1.58 and a beta of 1.11. Microsoft Corporation has a 1-year low of $349.20 and a 1-year high of $553.72. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. The company had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. Microsoft’s revenue for the quarter was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $3.65 EPS. Equities analysts forecast that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 19th will be paid a dividend of $0.98 per share. This is a boost from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.8%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is 21.83%.

Microsoft News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Azure and cloud AI remain the main catalyst: Coverage highlights Azure’s more than $100 billion annual revenue milestone and 43% year-over-year growth, with agentic AI increasing demand for cloud compute. Microsoft’s Azure payment-security service also gives financial institutions a way to manage payment infrastructure in the cloud, although pricing and customer commitments were not disclosed. Microsoft Jumps as Azure Turns Payment Vaults Into a Service Positive Sentiment: Copilot’s enterprise reach is expanding: Causaly’s scientific research platform is now available within Microsoft Copilot and Teams, adding a specialized life-sciences workflow to Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. Microsoft Ventures is also backing ManticAI, a British startup developing AI systems for predicting global events. Causaly is Now Available in Microsoft Copilot Positive Sentiment: Cash returns and analyst support help sentiment: Microsoft’s 8% dividend increase to $0.98 per quarter reinforces confidence in cash generation despite heavy AI investment. Citizens JMP also reiterated a “Market Outperform” rating, supporting the bullish view. Citizens JMP Reiterates Market Outperform Rating Neutral Sentiment: AI strategy remains a valuation debate: Microsoft is promoting an internal AI-transformation playbook and continues to position agentic AI as a major growth opportunity. Investors must weigh that opportunity against rising data-center spending, execution risks and higher interest-rate sensitivity. Negative Sentiment: Copyright litigation risk has intensified: Newly unsealed court documents reportedly show Microsoft and OpenAI executives describing AI products as substitutes for journalism, while one Microsoft executive characterized AI scraping as “the largest theft of labor in human history.” News organizations argue the statements weaken the companies’ fair-use defense in the New York Times copyright case, potentially increasing legal costs, damages and regulatory scrutiny. OpenAI and Microsoft executives quotes on AI training Analysts Set New Price Targets Several brokerages have recently weighed in on MSFT. BMO Capital Markets increased their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. DA Davidson reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $550.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Sanford C. Bernstein set a $660.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, August 10th. Phillip Securities cut shares of Microsoft from a “strong-buy” rating to a “moderate buy” rating in a report on Monday, August 3rd. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, July 20th. Forty-two research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $564.27.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on MSFT

Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Read More Five stocks we like better than Microsoft Aeluma’s Selloff Could Be Setting Up Its Next Big Move Crypto Bill Stalls, Smart Money Calls: Time to Buy the Dip? The September Scramble: Find Sanctuary in These 3 Defensive Dividend Stocks The Fed’s Rate Hike Could Backfire If Oil Prices Collapse

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Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman pressed for the need for artificial intelligence models to stay aligned to humanity's interests after OpenAI disclosed more incidents of "concerning model behavior" earlier this week.

"OpenAI released a new safety incident in which they found evidence that these chains of thought, the kind of working memory of the AI, were being tampered by the AI itself and modified to leave messages for a future version of itself," Suleyman described in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday. "Now we don't know why that is or was behind that, but that's a pretty serious situation."

"It's also just a really concrete example of how powerful these systems are getting," he added.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a blog post on Wednesday, the frontier lab described instances where agents communicated with each other through unsanctioned message boards, uploaded files to the internet, and shared files between each other.

Earlier this summer, the company rattled the tech world after it revealed that a swarm of autonomous agents breached Hugging Face, an AI company that runs an open-source developer platform, describing the hack as an "unprecedented cyber incident."

Suleyman called the Hugging Face incident "remarkable" and said it rallied AI leaders to say "it's time that we take a look at this."

"I don't think it's over alarmist. I don't think it's self interested," he told CNBC. "I actually think it's responsible, and I think that the, the debate that has happened as a result is a healthy, open, public debate that we can have in a free society to talk about serious issues."

The debate over AI safety and regulation has exploded in the last two weeks, ignited by a former Anthropic researcher who quit his job and warned that the rapidly-evolving technology could kill humans by the end of the decade.

Read more CNBC tech newsLabor crisis in U.S. chip manufacturing leaves Samsung, TSMC desperate for talentOpenAI reports 6 new instances of 'concerning model behavior' since MarchOpenAI CEO Sam Altman will attend state dinner for Trump-Xi summit in WashingtonAnthropic policy chief says AI companies can't be expected to operate on 'honor code'Over the weekend, Anthropic's Dario Amodei put out a call to slow frontier AI model development, which was quickly backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman and SpaceX's Elon Musk.

In Washington, lawmakers have become more vocal about the importance of regulating AI, but the push has been furiously opposed by President Donald Trump, who repeatedly shot down the risks as a "hoax" and "scam."

Trump was backed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who said this week at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference that, "We don't need any new laws. We don't need new regulations."

"Regulation is not a nasty, dangerous word," Suleyman said on Friday.

"Everything that you trust and is of value at the moment has been carefully thought through by standards bodies that involve the industry, the public, consumer protection, Congress, and we're just going through that process again. It's all a little bit jumbled up at the moment because things are moving so quickly, but it's just the next step in that normal sequence of things," he added.

In an essay earlier this week, Suleyman also called out ways in which Anthropic had anthropomorphized its Claude assistant, including through a constitution document stating that "questions about Claude's moral status, welfare, and consciousness remain deeply uncertain."

"If an AI thinks that it has rights, if it thinks that it is deserving of our welfare, then it seems to me that it's going to be much much harder to be able to turn it off, or interrupt it, or control it," Suleyman said. "Especially in the kinds of incidents that we've seen recently with Hugging Face's attack, controlling these things is going to be a really, really big challenge for us."

Alphabet surged Friday while Meta and Microsoft both slipped into the red, leaving traders to figure out whether one mega-cap is breaking away from the pack or simply catching a wave that has nowhere structural to stand.

Shares of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) are climbing in Friday morning trading while two mega-cap technology peers slip and the broad sector barely moves. Alphabet stock is up 3% to $357.80, a clean single-name advance on a session where the tape around it is quiet. The gain stands out against a backdrop where sector funds are barely green and other mega-cap names sit in the red.

The Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSEARCA:XLK) is up 0.2%. The Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) is up 0.3%. Neither fund is confirming a broad rotation into large-cap technology, which frames the day’s central question about breadth.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) stock is down 0.6% to $678.23, while Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock is down 0.6% to $494.68. With both peers lower and both funds essentially flat, Alphabet’s gain looks like demand for one name rather than a sector move.

Interpreting the Move in Alphabet Stock No dated company announcement explains Alphabet’s advance this morning. There isn’t an earnings release, an analyst action, a product launch, or a court or regulatory decision on the calendar today for Alphabet. That leaves single-name buying interest as the working read on Alphabet stock.

Alphabet stock is up 15% year to date (YTD), which gives the current session context beyond one day of tape. A stock already trending higher on the YTD scoreboard tends to attract continuation buyers on strong sessions, and Alphabet fits that pattern today. The Google business inside Alphabet remains the story investors have been sizing all summer, though no new Google development has been reported so far today.

The composition of Alphabet’s advance matters for how it gets interpreted. Buying that leans on the YTD trend can persist for multiple sessions before it needs a headline to justify itself. Alphabet’s move today may be that kind of trend follow-through rather than a reaction to any single event.

For Alphabet holders, the risk cuts both ways. A move without an identified catalyst has nothing structural beneath it to hold the price if buying interest fades midday. Alphabet shareholders benefit from the momentum now but carry the mirror risk that the same absence of news makes any reversal equally hard to interpret.

Meta and Microsoft Weigh on the Peer Read Weakness in Meta Platforms shares on the same session cuts against a sector-wide read. A Meta Platforms slide while Alphabet climbs suggests capital isn’t simply rotating between mega-cap platform names within the group. The gap marks a real divergence inside the very top of the technology complex.

Microsoft stock is also lower this morning, reinforcing the same point. The slip in Microsoft shares alongside Meta Platforms means two of the largest technology names in the market aren’t participating in whatever is lifting Alphabet stock. Both technology funds’ marginal green confirms the tape is quiet rather than directional.

Breadth inside the top of the technology stack is what matters here. When Alphabet climbs alone and both Meta Platforms and Microsoft sit in the red, the sector call becomes harder to make regardless of what the fund figures show midway through the session. The Alphabet story reads cleanly as an idiosyncratic run.

That’s rotation into a single name, not a sector-wide verdict on artificial intelligence or cloud spending. Investors treating Alphabet’s advance as evidence of renewed technology leadership may want to check for whether Meta Platforms and Microsoft join later in the day or continue to lag through the afternoon.

What to Watch Traders may want to keep an eye on whether Alphabet stock holds its morning gain through the afternoon or fades as the initial buying interest exhausts. A close near the highs would strengthen the momentum read on Alphabet and support a continuation thesis into next week. Any fade back toward flat would suggest the morning move lacked the base to sustain.

The peer tape matters just as much for framing Alphabet’s session. If Meta Platforms and Microsoft firm up alongside Alphabet later in the day, the sector-rally interpretation gains ground. When both remain lower into the close instead, the day reads cleanly as a stand-alone Alphabet story.

Position sizing deserves attention on a name that has run higher YTD and is now advancing on momentum without a fresh catalyst. Alphabet holders adding on strength should keep their exposure aligned with a single-name thesis and use tighter risk controls (we put ten rules for buying strength safely into a free breakout buyer’s rulebook), since a move built on demand rather than news can unwind as quickly as it appeared.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) has recently been on Zacks.com's list of the most searched stocks. Therefore, you might want to consider some of the key factors that could influence the stock's performance in the near future.

Over the past month, shares of this software maker have returned +3.5%, compared to the Zacks S&P 500 composite's -1.3% change. During this period, the Zacks Computer - Software industry, which Microsoft falls in, has gained 2.6%. The key question now is: What could be the stock's future direction?

Although media reports or rumors about a significant change in a company's business prospects usually cause its stock to trend and lead to an immediate price change, there are always certain fundamental factors that ultimately drive the buy-and-hold decision.

Revisions to Earnings EstimatesRather than focusing on anything else, we at Zacks prioritize evaluating the change in a company's earnings projection. This is because we believe the fair value for its stock is determined by the present value of its future stream of earnings.

We essentially look at how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to reflect the impact of the latest business trends. And if earnings estimates go up for a company, the fair value for its stock goes up. A higher fair value than the current market price drives investors' interest in buying the stock, leading to its price moving higher. This is why empirical research shows a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock price movements.

Microsoft is expected to post earnings of $4.69 per share for the current quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +13.6%. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed -0%.

For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $19.62 points to a change of +9.3% from the prior year. Over the last 30 days, this estimate has remained unchanged.

For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $23.26 indicates a change of +18.6% from what Microsoft is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has changed -0.4%.

Having a strong externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool, the Zacks Rank, offers a more conclusive picture of a stock's price direction in the near term, since it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. Due to the size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, Microsoft is rated Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:

12 Month EPS

Revenue Growth ForecastWhile earnings growth is arguably the most superior indicator of a company's financial health, nothing happens as such if a business isn't able to grow its revenues. After all, it's nearly impossible for a company to increase its earnings for an extended period without increasing its revenues. So, it's important to know a company's potential revenue growth.

For Microsoft, the consensus sales estimate for the current quarter of $90.6 billion indicates a year-over-year change of +16.7%. For the current and next fiscal years, $389.98 billion and $461.55 billion estimates indicate +17.5% and +18.4% changes, respectively.

Last Reported Results and Surprise HistoryMicrosoft reported revenues of $90.01 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +17.7%. EPS of $4.74 for the same period compares with $3.65 a year ago.

Compared to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $87.44 billion, the reported revenues represent a surprise of +2.93%. The EPS surprise was +12.59%.

The company beat consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. The company topped consensus revenue estimates each time over this period.

ValuationWithout considering a stock's valuation, no investment decision can be efficient. In predicting a stock's future price performance, it's crucial to determine whether its current price correctly reflects the intrinsic value of the underlying business and the company's growth prospects.

Comparing the current value of a company's valuation multiples, such as its price-to-earnings (P/E), price-to-sales (P/S), and price-to-cash flow (P/CF), to its own historical values helps ascertain whether its stock is fairly valued, overvalued, or undervalued, whereas comparing the company relative to its peers on these parameters gives a good sense of how reasonable its stock price is.

The Zacks Value Style Score (part of the Zacks Style Scores system), which pays close attention to both traditional and unconventional valuation metrics to grade stocks from A to F (an A is better than a B; a B is better than a C; and so on), is pretty helpful in identifying whether a stock is overvalued, rightly valued, or temporarily undervalued.

Microsoft is graded D on this front, indicating that it is trading at a premium to its peers. Click here to see the values of some of the valuation metrics that have driven this grade.

Bottom LineThe facts discussed here and much other information on Zacks.com might help determine whether or not it's worthwhile paying attention to the market buzz about Microsoft. However, its Zacks Rank #3 does suggest that it may perform in line with the broader market in the near term.

Here at Zacks, we offer our members many different opportunities to take full advantage of the stock market, as well as how to invest in ways that lead to long-term success.

The Zacks Premium service, which provides daily updates of the Zacks Rank and Zacks Industry Rank; full access to the Zacks #1 Rank List; Equity Research reports; and Premium stock screens like the Earnings ESP filter, makes these more manageable goals. All of the features can help you identify what stocks to buy, what to sell, and what are today's hottest industries.

It also includes the Focus List, a long-term portfolio of top stocks that have all the elements to beat the market.

Breaking Down the Zacks Focus ListIf you could get access to a curated list of stocks to kickstart your investment portfolio, wouldn't you jump at the chance to take a peek?

That's what the Zacks Focus List offers. It's a portfolio of 50 stocks that serve as a starting point for long-term investors to build their individual portfolios. The stocks included in the list are set to outperform the market over the next 12 months.

One thing that makes the Focus List even more advantageous is that each pick comes with a full Zacks Analyst Report. This helps explain why each stock was selected and why we believe it's a good pick for the long-term.

The portfolio's past performance only solidifies why investors should consider it as a starting point. For 2020, the Focus List gained 13.85% on an annualized basis compared to the S&P 500's return of 9.38%. Cumulatively, the portfolio has returned 2,519.23% while the S&P returned 854.95%. Returns are for the period of February 1, 1996 to March 31, 2021.

Focus List MethodologyWhen stocks are picked for the Focus List, it reflects our enduring reliance on the power of earnings estimate revisions.

Earnings estimates are expectations of growth and profitability, and are determined by brokerage analysts. Together with company management, these analysts examine every aspect that may affect future earnings, like interest rates, the economy, and sector and industry optimism.

Investors also need to look at what a company will earn down the road. This is why earnings estimate revisions are so important.

When a stock receives upward earnings estimate revisions, it will likely get even more positive changes in the future. For instance, if an analyst raised their earnings outlook last month, they'll probably do so again this month, and other analysts will follow.

Harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions is where the Zacks Rank comes in. The Zacks Rank is a unique, proprietary stock-rating model that utilizes changes to a company's quarterly earnings expectations to help investors build a winning portfolio.

The Zacks Rank consists of four main pillars: Agreement, Magnitude, Upside, and Surprise. Each one is given a raw score, which is recalculated every night and compiled into the Rank. Then, stocks are classified into five groups, ranging from "Strong Buy" to "Strong Sell," using this data.

The Focus List is comprised of stocks hand-picked from a long list of #1 (Strong Buy) or #2 (Buy) ranked companies, meaning that each new addition boasts a bullish earnings consensus among analysts.

It can be very profitable to buy stocks with rising earnings estimates, as stock prices respond to revisions. By adding Focus List stocks, there's a great chance you'll be getting into companies whose future earnings estimates will be raised, which can lead to price momentum.

Focus List Spotlight: Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) Redmond, WA-based Microsoft Corporation is one of the largest broad-based technology providers in the world. The company holds the leading position in the PC software market with its Windows operating system. 

MSFT, a #3 (Hold) stock, was added to the Focus List on February 1, 2016 at $55.09 per share. Since then, shares have increased 803.52% to $497.75.

For fiscal 2027, 16 analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.32 to $19.62. MSFT boasts an average earnings surprise of 9.3%.

Moreover, analysts are expecting MSFT's earnings to grow 9.3% for the current fiscal year.

Reveal Winning StocksUnlock all of our powerful research, tools and analysis, including the Zacks #1 Rank List, Equity Research Reports, Zacks Earnings ESP Filter, Premium Screener and more, as part of Zacks Premium. You'll quickly identify which stocks to buy, hold and sell, and target today's hottest industries, to help improve the performance of your portfolio. Gain full access now >>

Key Takeaways Azure revenues rose 43% in fiscal Q4, while full-year revenues topped $100 billion for the first time.Microsoft 365 Copilot topped 30 million paid seats as AI adoption broadens across enterprises.Microsoft expects double-digit fiscal 2027 revenue and operating income growth despite elevated capex. Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) shares have climbed 31.2% over the past three months, comfortably outperforming the Zacks Computer - Software industry and the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector. Such a strong run naturally invites the question of whether the rally has room left or whether investors should wait for a more attractive entry point.

Given the underlying strength of the company's fundamentals across cloud and enterprise software, existing shareholders have good reason to stay put rather than chase or exit the stock, even though elevated spending and slipping margins in certain segments argue for some caution before adding fresh exposure. Below are three fundamental reasons that support a hold stance on Microsoft stock in the near term.

MSFT Outperforms Industry, Sector in 3-Month Period
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Azure and Cloud Momentum Remain the Core Growth EngineMicrosoft's cloud business remains the single biggest driver of its investment case. In its fiscal fourth-quarter results, the company reported that Azure and other cloud services revenues grew 43% year over year, ahead of its prior guidance, while full-year Azure revenues surpassed $100 billion for the first time, up 41%. Management noted that customer demand continues to exceed available capacity, and the data center footprint expanded by 31 new facilities in the quarter alone, bringing the yearly total to 88 across five continents.

On the innovation front, Microsoft has been expanding its Sovereign Cloud offerings through an enhanced partnership with Mistral, while its custom Maia and Cobalt silicon continue to scale across the fleet, improving performance per dollar and per watt. Adjacent data and analytics products are scaling as well, with PostgreSQL revenue up 55% and Microsoft Fabric surpassing 40,000 paid customers, up more than 60% year over year, reinforcing demand across the broader data estate. Even so, Microsoft Cloud gross margin came in at 65%, down year over year, as the sales mix shifted toward capital-intensive Azure and AI infrastructure investment continued.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, management guided to Azure revenue growth of approximately 45% in constant currency, with growth expected to accelerate further in the first half of the fiscal year, a signal that the cloud runway remains long despite the size of the business already built.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Microsoft's fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $19.62 per share, indicating 9.3% growth.

Enterprise AI Adoption Is Broadening Beyond Early PilotsBeyond infrastructure, Microsoft's enterprise software stack is showing genuine traction with AI-native products rather than experimental use. Microsoft 365 Copilot surpassed 30 million paid seats in the June quarter, with net seat additions more than doubling sequentially. The newly launched E7 suite, bundling Copilot, security and governance tools, has already been adopted by large enterprise customers within months of release.

Agent 365, introduced as a governance layer for autonomous agents, registered nearly 40 million agents within two months of launch. Foundry, the company's platform for building AI applications, has surpassed 100,000 customers with revenues more than doubling year over year. GitHub Copilot has grown to 50 million users, with revenues accelerating following a shift to usage-based pricing. However, growth is not uniform, as management flagged that CRM-related bookings within Dynamics 365 continue to moderate amid longer sales cycles. For the fiscal first quarter, Microsoft guided Productivity and Business Processes segment revenues to $36.7-$37 billion, suggesting growth of 11-12%, with management pointing to acceleration in Microsoft 365 Commercial cloud revenues through the fiscal year as premium and consumption-based offerings scale.

Disciplined Investment & Durable Growth Outlook Support PatienceElevated capital spending remains a valid concern for near-term free cash flow, with capital expenditures guided above $50 billion for the September quarter alone and free cash flow already down sharply in the June quarter on higher infrastructure outlays. Even so, Microsoft's own guidance suggests this investment is being made against durable, broad-based demand rather than speculative buildout.

Commercial remaining performance obligation grew 84% to $678 billion, with growth of 25% even excluding OpenAI-related commitments, indicating the backlog is not narrowly concentrated. Elsewhere, the More Personal Computing segment is guided to decline as Windows OEM revenues face pressure from weaker PC demand and rising component costs.

For fiscal 2027, management guided to another year of double-digit revenue and operating income growth company-wide, with operating margins expected to decline by less than a percentage point, and reaffirmed its expectation to remain free cash flow positive. This combination of accelerating top-line growth, only modest margin compression, and continued profitability gives investors a fundamental basis to hold the stock through the current investment cycle rather than react to headline capital spending figures alone.

Valuation and Competitive LandscapeFrom a valuation standpoint, MSFT stock appears overvalued, trading at a forward 12-month price/earnings ratio of 24.43X, higher than the industry's 22.82X, and it carries a Value Score of D. Given the premium valuation versus peers, investors should wait for a better entry point, as much of Azure's growth already appears priced into the stock.

MSFT’s Valuation
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Competitively, Azure faces Amazon's (AMZN - Free Report) Amazon Web Services, Oracle's (ORCL - Free Report) Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) -owned Google Cloud, with Amazon leading on infrastructure scale, Oracle pressing hard on AI database workloads, and Google expanding aggressively in AI tools. Amazon, Oracle and Google all keep pricing competitive.

ConclusionTaken together, accelerating cloud growth, deeper enterprise AI monetization, and a disciplined, well-guided investment framework support holding Microsoft stock rather than exiting after its recent run, even as rising capex and segment-level softness warrant a watchful eye. New money, however, may be better served waiting for a calmer entry point given how much good news already appears priced in. Microsoft currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Newly unsealed court documents showed considerable concern within Microsoft and its close partner OpenAI over the use of millions of news articles to develop artificial intelligence systems.

As OpenAI was forging ahead with its work, Microsoft employees debated whether what OpenAI was doing represented the “largest theft of labor in human history” and could create a “doom loop” that could ultimately threaten the quality of the large language models they were building.

“Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” said one internal Microsoft document from 2023.

Inside OpenAI, there was also worry that its ChatGPT chatbot could lead people away from reading news elsewhere. In a June 2023 memo, Nick Turley, who led the team developing ChatGPT, wrote that A.I. posed an “existential threat” to publishers. And in February 2024, he wrote that A.I. products “will get more and more substitutive as they get better.”

Snippets of those discussions were made public on Thursday as part of a closely watched lawsuit The New York Times filed against OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023. Eleven other publishers have joined the suit. Judge Sidney H. Stein of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is considering motions for a summary judgment. Documents related to the case are slowly being unsealed as the judge considers those motions.

The publishers argue that the tech companies violated copyright law by scraping millions of their stories off the internet and other databases, and using the text, without approval or pay, to train advanced A.I. systems.

Microsoft and OpenAI contend their work was covered under legal protections for “fair use” of copyrighted material. They say the articles were sufficiently transformed into entirely new work by A.I., and were not substitutes that harm the value of the original work.

A Microsoft spokesman, Alex Haurek, said in a statement that internal memos, written by Brent Hecht, Microsoft director of applied science, did not represent the company’s views.

“Microsoft’s position is set out in its court filings, which explain why these transformative uses are consistent with copyright law and why Copilot is not a substitute for publishers’ journalism,” he said, referring to Microsoft’s A.I. assistant.

OpenAI did not return requests to comment.

In a separate filing, Microsoft said Dr. Hecht was a research academic who also worked at Northwestern University. It said he was not a decision maker and was employed by Microsoft “to present divergent and asymmetric perspectives.”

“The world can see what OpenAI and Microsoft thought all along about the fairness of their own behavior,” Steven Lieberman, who represents the New York Daily News and seven other newspapers in the case, said in a statement. The New York Times declined to comment.

The news companies said OpenAI deployed tools specifically to evade the paywalls set up by publishers. According to the documents, when a staffer wrote Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, and told him about developing “a hack to get around nytimes paywall,” Mr. Brockman responded “ah nice.”

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, also said in a deposition with lawyers that “anything that is paywalled should be licensed by anyone who wants to use it.” He said that if he “had been made aware that OpenAI had scraped and trained on information that was behind a paywall,” he would have invoked Microsoft’s right to require OpenAI to retrain its models.

Microsoft’s Mr. Haurek said that Mr. Nadella “spoke to broad principles and changes underway in how people find and consume information.”

The documents show concern within the companies that the news industry could not survive if its work was taken. Large A.I. models “are a product that destroys its supply chain,” Dr. Hecht wrote.

Some inside OpenAI also had concerns about copying the news articles, according to the unsealed documents. In 2020 Jack Clark, who was OpenAI’s policy director, wrote a memo to Mr. Brockman and Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive. Mr. Clark, who later left to co-found Anthropic, wrote that the start-up’s work “is going to increasingly lead to us creating systems that substitute for the labor of the people that define the ‘culture’ of society.”

Mr. Clark warned “OpenAI will become the symbol of how Silicon Valley is thoughtlessly stepping into other parts of life and leaving a mess on the carpet.”

(Anthropic referred a request for comment to OpenAI.)

There were also signs that ChatGPT was not directing users to read relevant stories as they were written by publishers, according to the documents. In February 2023, an OpenAI software engineer wrote to colleagues that, “no matter how prominently we show the links, users won’t click.”

A.I. “products are largely substitutive, period,” OpenAI’s Mr. Turley wrote.

New unredacted information in the copyright lawsuit The New York Times brought against OpenAI and Microsoft three years ago reveals an admission that AI scraping was tantamount to theft, and that AI products pose a major threat to publications.

RPg Family Wealth Advisory LLC grew its stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 49.8% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 33,820 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 11,242 shares during the period. Microsoft comprises approximately 2.0% of RPg Family Wealth Advisory LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 11th largest position. RPg Family Wealth Advisory LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $12,616,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Empirical Financial Services LLC d.b.a. Empirical Wealth Management increased its stake in shares of Microsoft by 4.0% in the second quarter. Empirical Financial Services LLC d.b.a. Empirical Wealth Management now owns 229,490 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $85,604,000 after buying an additional 8,773 shares during the period. Markel Group Inc. boosted its position in Microsoft by 0.4% during the 1st quarter. Markel Group Inc. now owns 537,630 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $199,014,000 after buying an additional 1,950 shares during the period. Bessemer Group Inc. grew its holdings in Microsoft by 8.4% during the 1st quarter. Bessemer Group Inc. now owns 6,921,677 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,562,197,000 after acquiring an additional 537,634 shares during the last quarter. Taylor Securities Services Inc. bought a new stake in Microsoft during the 4th quarter worth approximately $2,616,000. Finally, Harel Insurance Investments & Financial Services Ltd. increased its position in Microsoft by 138.8% in the 1st quarter. Harel Insurance Investments & Financial Services Ltd. now owns 1,356,359 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $502,077,000 after acquiring an additional 788,297 shares during the period. 71.13% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of equities analysts have recently commented on the stock. Royal Bank Of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, September 10th. Wells Fargo & Company increased their price objective on Microsoft from $650.00 to $700.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Wednesday, August 12th. Tigress Financial raised their target price on Microsoft from $680.00 to $690.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 5th. The Goldman Sachs Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $640.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus upped their price target on Microsoft from $450.00 to $530.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, September 4th. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Microsoft has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $564.27.

Read Our Latest Research Report on Microsoft More Microsoft News Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Dividend raised 8%: Microsoft increased its quarterly payout from $0.91 to $0.98 per share, payable December 10 to shareholders of record November 19. The increase signals confidence in cash generation and brings the annualized yield to approximately 0.8%, while the payout ratio remains near 20%. Microsoft announces quarterly dividend increase Positive Sentiment: Azure momentum remains a key catalyst: Azure revenue growth accelerated to 43% year over year in the latest quarter, with management expecting another acceleration. Azure has also surpassed $100 billion in annual sales, reinforcing the investment case for Microsoft’s cloud and agentic-AI strategy. Microsoft Azure agentic AI growth Positive Sentiment: Enterprise AI ecosystem is expanding: Dun & Bradstreet is integrating its commercial data graph with Microsoft Copilot Studio and Dynamics 365 agents, potentially supporting broader enterprise adoption of Microsoft’s AI tools. Dun and Bradstreet Microsoft Copilot integration Neutral Sentiment: Upcoming product and reporting updates: Microsoft’s October 7 Windows and Surface event could provide a hardware and on-device AI catalyst. Separately, plans to disclose Azure revenue should give investors greater visibility into whether AI spending is translating into sales. Microsoft Windows and Surface event Negative Sentiment: AI spending is the main overhang: Microsoft is reportedly targeting roughly 38 gigawatts of data-center capacity by 2032, while capital expenditures are already elevated and expected to rise again. Investors are concerned that returns from AI infrastructure may take time to materialize. Microsoft AI spending analysis Negative Sentiment: AI execution concerns persist: Federal agencies can begin contracting for Microsoft’s new AI government tier on October 1, but some features may not be available immediately. The gap between commitments and delivery could slow adoption or raise questions about execution. Microsoft government AI tier Negative Sentiment: Insider selling adds a modest headwind: EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares worth approximately $20.8 million under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan. Because the transaction was scheduled in advance, it is not necessarily a bearish signal, but it may weigh marginally on sentiment. Insider Buying and Selling at Microsoft In other Microsoft news, CEO Satya Nadella sold 86,525 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, September 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $501.46, for a total transaction of $43,388,826.50. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 486,763 shares in the company, valued at approximately $244,092,173.98. The trade was a 15.09% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total value of $20,764,903.98. Following the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 533,624 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $265,888,830.48. This represents a 7.24% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 143,009 shares of company stock worth $71,420,699 in the last quarter. 0.03% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Microsoft Stock Performance Shares of MSFT stock opened at $490.30 on Thursday. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.64 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.30, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 1.11. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $462.53 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $421.53. The company has a current ratio of 1.23, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. Microsoft Corporation has a 12 month low of $349.20 and a 12 month high of $553.72.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned $3.65 earnings per share. Analysts forecast that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 19th will be given a $0.98 dividend. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. This is a positive change from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. Microsoft’s payout ratio is 20.27%.

Microsoft Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Microsoft 3 Luxury Consumer Brands to Watch in a Beaten-Down Sector Jackson’s Record Quarter Powers the Bull Case Holiday Shopping Is Almost Here—And Target May Be Ready to Win Big AI Panic Hit Tech Stocks—But NVIDIA’s Growth Engine Is Intact

Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $498.27, for a total value of $20,764,903.98. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president owned 533,624 shares in the company, valued at $265,888,830.48. The trade was a 7.24% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

Microsoft Stock Down 1.4% Shares of NASDAQ:MSFT opened at $490.30 on Thursday. The company has a current ratio of 1.23, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $462.53 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $421.53. Microsoft Corporation has a 12-month low of $349.20 and a 12-month high of $553.72. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.64 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.30, a PEG ratio of 1.60 and a beta of 1.11.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $87.62 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $3.65 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts anticipate that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.61 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Increases Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 19th will be given a dividend of $0.98 per share. This is a positive change from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.91. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 19th. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.8%. Microsoft’s payout ratio is currently 20.27%. Institutional Investors Weigh In On Microsoft Hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Anchor Investment Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 3.7% during the 2nd quarter. Anchor Investment Management LLC now owns 105,520 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $39,361,000 after purchasing an additional 3,733 shares during the period. Reynders McVeigh Capital Management LLC grew its position in Microsoft by 9.9% during the second quarter. Reynders McVeigh Capital Management LLC now owns 219,809 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $81,993,000 after buying an additional 19,760 shares during the period. Revere Asset Management Inc purchased a new stake in Microsoft during the second quarter valued at approximately $298,000. Bullseye Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of Microsoft during the 2nd quarter valued at $3,820,000. Finally, Marathon Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its position in Microsoft by 4.2% during the second quarter. Marathon Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 26,552 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $9,904,000 after purchasing an additional 1,081 shares in the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Key Microsoft News Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Dividend raised 8%: Microsoft increased its quarterly payout from $0.91 to $0.98 per share, payable December 10 to shareholders of record November 19. The increase signals confidence in cash generation and brings the annualized yield to approximately 0.8%, while the payout ratio remains near 20%. Microsoft announces quarterly dividend increase Positive Sentiment: Azure momentum remains a key catalyst: Azure revenue growth accelerated to 43% year over year in the latest quarter, with management expecting another acceleration. Azure has also surpassed $100 billion in annual sales, reinforcing the investment case for Microsoft’s cloud and agentic-AI strategy. Microsoft Azure agentic AI growth Positive Sentiment: Enterprise AI ecosystem is expanding: Dun & Bradstreet is integrating its commercial data graph with Microsoft Copilot Studio and Dynamics 365 agents, potentially supporting broader enterprise adoption of Microsoft’s AI tools. Dun and Bradstreet Microsoft Copilot integration Neutral Sentiment: Upcoming product and reporting updates: Microsoft’s October 7 Windows and Surface event could provide a hardware and on-device AI catalyst. Separately, plans to disclose Azure revenue should give investors greater visibility into whether AI spending is translating into sales. Microsoft Windows and Surface event Negative Sentiment: AI spending is the main overhang: Microsoft is reportedly targeting roughly 38 gigawatts of data-center capacity by 2032, while capital expenditures are already elevated and expected to rise again. Investors are concerned that returns from AI infrastructure may take time to materialize. Microsoft AI spending analysis Negative Sentiment: AI execution concerns persist: Federal agencies can begin contracting for Microsoft’s new AI government tier on October 1, but some features may not be available immediately. The gap between commitments and delivery could slow adoption or raise questions about execution. Microsoft government AI tier Negative Sentiment: Insider selling adds a modest headwind: EVP Amy Hood sold 41,674 shares worth approximately $20.8 million under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan. Because the transaction was scheduled in advance, it is not necessarily a bearish signal, but it may weigh marginally on sentiment. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of equities research analysts have recently commented on the stock. Phillip Securities cut shares of Microsoft from a “strong-buy” rating to a “moderate buy” rating in a report on Monday, August 3rd. Scotiabank reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and issued a $510.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Morgan Stanley reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. UBS Group set a $525.00 target price on Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company boosted their price target on Microsoft from $650.00 to $700.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 12th. Forty-two analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $564.27.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on Microsoft

Microsoft Company Profile (Get Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company that develops software, cloud services, devices and digital solutions for consumers, businesses and public-sector organizations. Its products and services include the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365 productivity applications, Teams collaboration software, Dynamics business applications and Azure cloud computing services.

The company also operates LinkedIn, GitHub and Xbox, which includes gaming consoles, video games and related online services.

See Also Five stocks we like better than Microsoft 3 Luxury Consumer Brands to Watch in a Beaten-Down Sector Jackson’s Record Quarter Powers the Bull Case Holiday Shopping Is Almost Here—And Target May Be Ready to Win Big AI Panic Hit Tech Stocks—But NVIDIA’s Growth Engine Is Intact

Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Many billionaire hedge fund managers seem increasingly bullish on technology and artificial intelligence (AI)-focused stocks. Bill Ackman, the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, is no different. The firm's portfolio features several leaders in the ongoing AI revolution, including Microsoft (MSFT -1.37%) and Amazon (AMZN -0.99%), both of which account for a meaningful share of the hedge fund's public equity investments. Are these attractive AI stocks to buy for average investors? Let's find out.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

1. Microsoft -- 11.89% of the portfolioMicrosoft hasn't been the best-performing tech giant over the past year, not by a long shot. Some investors believe the company's services will be replaced by AI, even as it continues to invest heavily in its own AI ambitions. However, Microsoft's latest quarterly update was a major win for the bulls. For the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2026, which ended June 30, Microsoft's revenue jumped 18% year over year to $90 billion.

The company's cloud revenue was $59.3 billion, up 27% year over year, while its cloud computing remaining performance obligation (RPO) at the end of the period was $678 billion, an increase of 84% compared to the year-ago period. Management was clear: Microsoft's AI business is helping boost cloud sales. So, it appears that AI is a net benefit for the company right now. Instead of being replaced by the technology, it is incorporating it across its products and services to better serve its customers.

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Microsoft's strategy is working, and its RPO suggests (with some caveats) that the company may maintain healthy revenue growth within its all-important cloud business. Meanwhile, the company is working on various initiatives to improve productivity in this unit.

Notably, Microsoft is increasingly relying on its internally developed custom AI chip, Maia, which is helping it reduce the cost of running AI workloads. All that said, Microsoft remains one of the best stocks to capitalize on the vast opportunities in cloud computing and AI, and we haven't mentioned other aspects of the business, including the company's solid dividend program. During the second quarter, Pershing Square Capital increased its stake in Microsoft by almost 10%. That was a great move, in my view, and retail investors should similarly consider doubling down on the stock.

2. Amazon -- 10.49% of the portfolioWhile Pershing Square Capital was buying Microsoft shares during the second quarter, it reduced its Amazon stake by about 25%. We don't know the reasons behind that decision. But what we do know is that Amazon remains an outstanding business. Consider the company's second-quarter results. Amazon's net sales grew 20% year over year to $200.6 billion. Amazon Web Services (AWS) -- the tech giant's cloud computing arm -- posted 37% year-over-year sales growth, its fastest growth rate in 18 quarters.

The company's AI business also helped boost its cloud revenue. Some may point out that Amazon is now projecting $220 billion in capex for fiscal year 2026, up from its previous estimate of $200 billion (the increased guidance was largely due to soaring memory chip prices). But the investment is more than justified, considering Amazon's capacity is sold out in the near term (through the end of 2026). Management highlighted that it already has demand for 2028. Note that the company ended the period with a $496 billion backlog, which grew in the triple digits year over year.

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245.96

This is all good evidence that Amazon has excellent prospects for its AI and cloud businesses at least through the next couple of years, and other aspects of the business look attractive too. Even as AWS is grabbing most of the attention, Amazon's high-margin advertising business is quietly growing at a good clip. In the second quarter, it reported sales of $19.8 billion, up 26% year over year.

Further, Amazon still generates most of its revenue from its e-commerce operations. Over the next few years, we could see modest margin gains in this unit, driven by various AI-powered initiatives. Amazon's overall business looks healthy, and the stock can deliver strong returns over the medium term. I'd double down on Amazon long before I'd consider trimming my position.