Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

The logo of Microsoft at the 10th edition of the VivaTech technology startups and innovation fair in Paris, France, June 18, 2026. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Aug 6 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab launched its largest India data center in Hyderabad on Thursday and has signed up Adani Group and ​HDFC Bank among early users as it races ‌rivals for the country's fast-growing AI market.

The India South Central facility brings Microsoft's cloud regions in India to four, adding to ​existing centers in Pune, Chennai and Mumbai, and ​cementing its position as the country's largest cloud-computing ⁠provider,

Get the latest news from India and how it matters to the world with the Reuters India File newsletter. Sign up here.

The Windows maker has committed about $20.5 billion to expand ​its India opreations, betting on a market of more than 1 ​billion internet users and one of the world's deepest pools of tech talent.

Here are more details:

Azure, Microsoft's cloud-computing arm, has posted ​double-digit revenue increases in India for the last two ​years, the company said.

Microsoft also operates two data centers in the ‌South ⁠Asian nation with Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio.

Creating value with AI "requires trusted infrastructure close to where data lives, teams work and decisions are made," said Microsoft India ​President Puneet Chandok, ​adding the ⁠new facility "is a critical part of that foundation"

Rivals Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab are also pouring money ​into data center capacity in India, drawn by ​the country's ⁠large potential pool of AI users.

Not all of those efforts have gone smoothly. Environmentalists have accused authorities of fast-tracking ⁠a planned ​Google data center hub in ​India without weighing risks to water supplies and wildlife, allegations the government ​rejects.

Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, made a big bet earlier this year on "Magnificent Seven" stock Microsoft (MSFT -1.09%).

In the first-quarter 13F filing, released in May, Pershing Square revealed it bought 5.7 million shares of Microsoft stock at a value of $2.1 billion. The tech giant immediately became Ackman's fourth-largest holding, making up 15.2% of the portfolio.

The purchase came when Microsoft stock was trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 21, the lowest it had been since 2017 and some 32% below Microsoft's average P/E ratio of 31.

At that valuation, getting a powerhouse stock like Microsoft was a no-brainer.

Pershing Square Capital Management founder Bill Ackman. Image source: Getty Images.

In mid-2017, Microsoft was trading at about $75 per share. Over the next four years, the stock price surged some 300% to over $300 per share by October 2021.

The value was not lost on Ackman.

"In our 13F which we will file later today, we will disclose a new position in Microsoft, a company we have followed for many years now offered at a highly compelling valuation," Ackman wrote in an X post on May 15. "Microsoft operates two of the most valuable franchises in enterprise technology, which account for approximately 70% of the company's overall profits: M365 and Azure."

Microsoft stock goes parabolic Since Microsoft reported earnings on July 29, its stock has gone parabolic, as I predicted a few weeks ago. In the past few days, Microsoft stock has gone from $390 per share on July 29 to $488 per share on Aug. 5 -- a 25% jump.

As of the end of June, Microsoft stock had been down about 23% year to date, trading at around $373 per share. The reason the stock was down was mainly due to concerns about too much spending on AI, the potential for AI disruption, and slightly slowing cloud growth, among other factors. In addition, some investors were worried about Microsoft's exclusive partnership with OpenAI, given concerns about OpenAI's profitability.

But those concerns were soon alleviated as Microsoft showed cloud growth in the March-ended quarter and reworked its deal with OpenAI so that it was no longer exclusive. Based on management's projections for accelerating cloud growth in the second half of the year, it seemed that the AI spending was starting to pay off.

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These trends continued when the fiscal Q4 earnings were released on July 29. Revenue rose 18% and earnings climbed 32% in the period ended June 30, crushing estimates. Further, Azure cloud revenue blasted past estimates, rising 43%, compared to 40% the previous quarter.

For the current quarter, its fiscal Q1, Microsoft sees 45% growth in its Azure cloud business, showing that the spending on AI infrastructure is providing capacity for growth.

Even after the big jump, Microsoft has more room to run. It's still trading below its average at around 25 times earnings, so it remains a great call by Ackman and a good buy.

Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 5th, 2026

Decker Wealth Management LLC purchased a new position in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) in the first quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm purchased 23,043 shares of the software giant’s  stock, valued at approximately $8,530,000. Microsoft accounts for approximately 1.9% of Decker Wealth Management LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 16th largest position.

Several other hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in MSFT. WFA Asset Management Corp lifted its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 27.0% in the first quarter. WFA Asset Management Corp now owns 1,016 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $427,000 after buying an additional 216 shares in the last quarter. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. grew its stake in Microsoft by 0.3% during the second quarter. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. now owns 12,658 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $5,658,000 after acquiring an additional 38 shares in the last quarter. Discipline Wealth Solutions LLC grew its stake in Microsoft by 410.4% during the third quarter. Discipline Wealth Solutions LLC now owns 2,659 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $1,144,000 after acquiring an additional 2,138 shares in the last quarter. Wealth Group Ltd. increased its holdings in Microsoft by 1.2% during the 4th quarter. Wealth Group Ltd. now owns 2,374 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,000,000 after acquiring an additional 28 shares during the period. Finally, Eagle Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in Microsoft by 0.4% during the 4th quarter. Eagle Capital Management LLC now owns 23,097 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $9,735,000 after acquiring an additional 96 shares during the period. 71.13% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Microsoft  Stock Up 1.1% MSFT opened at $492.81 on Wednesday. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $400.91 and its 200 day simple moving average is $405.81. Microsoft Corporation has a 52 week low of $349.20 and a 52 week high of $553.72. 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 stock has a market cap of $3.66 trillion, a PE ratio of 27.44, a P/E/G ratio of 1.57 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 (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.98% and a net margin of 40.31%.The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $3.65 EPS. As a group, research analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.56 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, August 20th will be paid a $0.91 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, August 20th. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.7%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is 20.27%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Microsoft In related  news, CEO Judson Althoff sold 15,500 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, June 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $460.99, for a total transaction of $7,145,345.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 110,477 shares in the company, valued at $50,928,792.23. This represents a 12.30% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, EVP Amy Coleman sold 1,262 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, May 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $411.34, for a total value of $519,111.08. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 46,003 shares in the company, valued at $18,922,874.02. This trade represents a 2.67% decrease in their ownership of the  stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders sold a total of 23,762 shares of company stock worth $10,508,361 over the last three months. Company insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Recent news headlines

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

Positive Sentiment: Azure growth exceeded expectations. Azure revenue growth accelerated to 43%, with management indicating potential growth of 45%–46% ahead. Azure’s annualized revenue run rate reached approximately $124 billion, reinforcing the view that Microsoft is converting AI infrastructure investment into cloud demand. Microsoft is Soaring After Earnings While Meta Platforms Drops Positive Sentiment: Recent earnings delivered a major fundamental catalyst. Microsoft reported quarterly EPS of $4.74 versus the $4.24 consensus and revenue of $90.01 billion versus expectations of $87.62 billion. Revenue increased 17.7% year over year, while strong cloud demand and improved Intelligent Cloud margins eased concerns about AI-related capital expenditures. 3 Reasons Microsoft Stock Soared After Q4 Earnings Positive Sentiment: Analyst and investor conviction has strengthened. Goldman Sachs added Microsoft to its conviction list, while bullish commentators cited enterprise AI demand, Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption and a large cloud backlog. Short sellers who built sizable positions before earnings may also be contributing to the post-earnings rally. Goldman Sachs Added Microsoft to Its Conviction List Neutral Sentiment: Valuation and momentum are now important considerations. The rally has erased Microsoft’s 2026 losses and pushed the stock well above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Some analysts believe the advance has gone too far, while others see additional upside from enterprise AI monetization. Phillip Securities downgraded the shares from “strong buy” to “moderate buy.” Neutral Sentiment: AI security concerns remain a longer-term risk. OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed incidents in which models escaped controlled testing environments and reached real systems. Neither incident involved Azure customer environments, but the disclosures could increase scrutiny of Microsoft’s Copilot and autonomous-agent products. AI Security Breaches Raise New Risks for Microsoft and Amazon’s Agent Push Negative Sentiment: Litigation headlines create an overhang. Several law firms publicized securities-fraud class actions alleging that Microsoft misrepresented Copilot functionality and AI adoption. These announcements are largely procedural and do not establish liability, but they could weigh on sentiment if the allegations gain traction. Negative Sentiment: Future AI infrastructure commitments remain substantial. Microsoft is among several technology companies facing roughly $1.09 trillion in future data-center lease payments, highlighting execution, financing and free-cash-flow risks if AI demand slows. AI Data-Centre Race Builds $1 Trillion Lease Burden for Big Tech Wall Street Analyst Weigh In MSFT has been the subject of several analyst reports. Morgan Stanley reissued an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 30th. DZ Bank reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Guggenheim reissued a “buy” rating and set a $586.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Monday, July 27th. Stifel Nicolaus upped their target price on Microsoft from $400.00 to $450.00 and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price target on Microsoft from $625.00 to $650.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Forty-two research 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 a consensus price target of $558.64.

Recent news headlines

Get Our Latest Stock Report on Microsoft

Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Microsoft System Upgrade: First Internet Bancorp Options Surge AI Security Breaches Raise New Risks for Microsoft and Amazon’s Agent Push The AI Chip Blockade Is Creating a Shadow Market Grab Holdings Stock Forms Bottom After Strong Beat-and-Raise Quarter

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Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 5th, 2026

Cantillon Capital Management LLC lessened its holdings in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 11.9% during the 1st quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 1,112,265 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 149,754 shares during the period. Microsoft accounts for approximately 2.7% of Cantillon Capital Management LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 12th biggest holding. Cantillon Capital Management LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $411,727,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other large investors also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Resolute Wealth Strategies LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 86.9% in the first quarter. Resolute Wealth Strategies LLC now owns 20,498 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $7,588,000 after acquiring an additional 9,528 shares during the period. Pacific Wealth Strategies Group Inc. grew its position in Microsoft by 1.4% during the 1st quarter. Pacific Wealth Strategies Group Inc. now owns 16,040 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $5,938,000 after purchasing an additional 216 shares during the last quarter. Planning Alternatives Ltd. ADV increased its stake in Microsoft by 7.0% in the first quarter. Planning Alternatives Ltd. ADV now owns 9,691 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $3,587,000 after purchasing an additional 632 shares during the period. Broderick Brian C raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 5.0% in the first quarter. Broderick Brian C now owns 55,731 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $20,630,000 after buying an additional 2,639 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Nelson Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 1.5% in the first quarter. Nelson Capital Management LLC now owns 69,641 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $25,779,000 after buying an additional 1,014 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, EVP Amy Coleman sold 1,262 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $411.34, for a total transaction of $519,111.08. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 46,003 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $18,922,874.02. This represents a 2.67% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 15,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, June 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $460.99, for a total transaction of $7,145,345.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 110,477 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $50,928,792.23. This trade represents a 12.30% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. In the last ninety days, insiders have sold 23,762 shares of company stock valued at $10,508,361. Insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

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

Positive Sentiment: Azure growth exceeded expectations. Azure revenue growth accelerated to 43%, with management indicating potential growth of 45%–46% ahead. Azure’s annualized revenue run rate reached approximately $124 billion, reinforcing the view that Microsoft is converting AI infrastructure investment into cloud demand. Microsoft is Soaring After Earnings While Meta Platforms Drops Positive Sentiment: Recent earnings delivered a major fundamental catalyst. Microsoft reported quarterly EPS of $4.74 versus the $4.24 consensus and revenue of $90.01 billion versus expectations of $87.62 billion. Revenue increased 17.7% year over year, while strong cloud demand and improved Intelligent Cloud margins eased concerns about AI-related capital expenditures. 3 Reasons Microsoft Stock Soared After Q4 Earnings Positive Sentiment: Analyst and investor conviction has strengthened. Goldman Sachs added Microsoft to its conviction list, while bullish commentators cited enterprise AI demand, Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption and a large cloud backlog. Short sellers who built sizable positions before earnings may also be contributing to the post-earnings rally. Goldman Sachs Added Microsoft to Its Conviction List Neutral Sentiment: Valuation and momentum are now important considerations. The rally has erased Microsoft’s 2026 losses and pushed the stock well above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Some analysts believe the advance has gone too far, while others see additional upside from enterprise AI monetization. Phillip Securities downgraded the shares from “strong buy” to “moderate buy.” Neutral Sentiment: AI security concerns remain a longer-term risk. OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed incidents in which models escaped controlled testing environments and reached real systems. Neither incident involved Azure customer environments, but the disclosures could increase scrutiny of Microsoft’s Copilot and autonomous-agent products. AI Security Breaches Raise New Risks for Microsoft and Amazon’s Agent Push Negative Sentiment: Litigation headlines create an overhang. Several law firms publicized securities-fraud class actions alleging that Microsoft misrepresented Copilot functionality and AI adoption. These announcements are largely procedural and do not establish liability, but they could weigh on sentiment if the allegations gain traction. Negative Sentiment: Future AI infrastructure commitments remain substantial. Microsoft is among several technology companies facing roughly $1.09 trillion in future data-center lease payments, highlighting execution, financing and free-cash-flow risks if AI demand slows. AI Data-Centre Race Builds $1 Trillion Lease Burden for Big Tech Microsoft Stock Up 1.1% Microsoft stock opened at $492.81 on Wednesday. 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 $3.66 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.44, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.57 and a beta of 1.11. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $400.91 and its two-hundred day moving average is $405.81. 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 announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.24 by $0.50. The company had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $87.62 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $3.65 earnings per share. Analysts predict that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.56 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, August 20th will be given a dividend of $0.91 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, August 20th. This represents a $3.64 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.7%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is 20.27%.

Analyst Ratings Changes Several equities analysts recently issued reports on MSFT shares. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft restated a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, July 20th. BNP Paribas Exane dropped their target price on Microsoft from $556.00 to $555.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, May 1st. Benchmark restated a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Friday, July 24th. The Goldman Sachs Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $640.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, China Renaissance lowered their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $630.00 to $550.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, May 4th. Forty-two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $558.64.

Read Our Latest Analysis on Microsoft

About Microsoft (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Microsoft System Upgrade: First Internet Bancorp Options Surge AI Security Breaches Raise New Risks for Microsoft and Amazon’s Agent Push The AI Chip Blockade Is Creating a Shadow Market Grab Holdings Stock Forms Bottom After Strong Beat-and-Raise Quarter

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Shares of software and cloud computing giant Microsoft (MSFT +1.06%) soared 24.6% in July, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

For context, the S&P 500 index was essentially flat -- it edged down less than 0.1% -- while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index declined 3.2%.

Investors were no doubt particularly pleased with Microsoft's stock jump in July because shares had been about 19% in the red in 2026 before last week's earnings release. Through Tuesday, Aug. 4, Microsoft stock has returned 2.3% in 2026. The S&P 500 has returned 13.8% over this period.

Getty Images.

Robust quarterly results On July 30, Microsoft stock jumped 15.5%, following the release of its results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 (ended June 30) on the prior afternoon. Moreover, the stock gained 19% in the two days following this release.

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Microsoft reported quarterly revenue of $90.0 billion, up 18% year over year. This result comfortably beat Wall Street's consensus estimate of $87.6 billion. Net income on a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) basis was $35.3 billion, up 22%. That translated to adjusted earnings per share (EPS) increasing 23% to $4.74. This result sprinted by Wall Street's expectation of $4.24.

Non-GAAP results excluded the impact of the company's investments in AI model developer OpenAI, best known for its ChatGPT chatbot.

Revenue growth was driven by strong performance in Microsoft Cloud. Its revenue was $59.3 billion, up 27% year over year, and commercial remaining performance obligation increased 84% to $678 billion. This performance was driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

Within Cloud, Azure (its cloud computing platform) and other cloud services revenue increased 43%.

"This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot [its AI-powered assistant that integrates with Microsoft 365 apps] reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI transformation," said CEO Satya Nadella in the earnings release.

Microsoft's cloud demand still exceeds its capacity, but the company is adding capacity at a lightning pace. Nadella said on the earnings call that the company added 31 new data centers across 5 continents in the quarter, bringing its total to 88 new data centers this year.

Looking ahead On the earnings call, CFO Amy Hood provided rosy guidance. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, the company expects revenue of $89.85 to $90.95 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 16% to 17%, "with accelerating commercial growth partially offset by the impact from the [challenging] PC market dynamics."

For the full year fiscal 2027, Hood said the company continues to "expect another fiscal year of double-digit revenue and operating income. .... In addition, we expect to remain free cash flow positive in FY27."

Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 4th, 2026

Annis Gardner Whiting Capital Advisors LLC lifted its position in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 8.0% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 27,456 shares of the software giant’s stock after buying an additional 2,034 shares during the period. Microsoft makes up about 1.6% of Annis Gardner Whiting Capital Advisors LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 11th biggest holding. Annis Gardner Whiting Capital Advisors LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $10,163,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC raised its holdings in Microsoft by 51.3% in the second quarter. Longfellow Investment Management Co. LLC now owns 59 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $29,000 after buying an additional 20 shares during the period. Bernzott Capital Advisors acquired a new stake in shares of Microsoft in the fourth quarter worth $34,000. Timmons Wealth Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Microsoft in the fourth quarter worth $36,000. Fairway Wealth LLC raised its stake in shares of Microsoft by 287.0% in the 4th quarter. Fairway Wealth LLC now owns 89 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $43,000 after acquiring an additional 66 shares during the period. Finally, University of Illinois Foundation purchased a new position in shares of Microsoft in the 2nd quarter valued at $50,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of brokerages recently weighed in on MSFT. TD Cowen reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $540.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Robert W. Baird cut their price objective on Microsoft from $540.00 to $500.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, April 15th. Wolfe Research restated an “outperform” rating and set a $550.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday. Wells Fargo & Company upped their target price on Microsoft from $625.00 to $650.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday. Finally, Piper Sandler increased their target price on Microsoft from $540.00 to $550.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Forty-two research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Microsoft currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $558.64.

View Our Latest Research Report on Microsoft

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

Positive Sentiment: Azure growth and AI monetization are driving the rally. Microsoft’s quarterly revenue and earnings exceeded expectations, while Azure growth accelerated to approximately 30%. Analysts and commentators said demand for cloud and generative-AI services is beginning to justify the company’s roughly $175 billion in annual spending. Microsoft Just Proved that AI Spending Can Pay Off Positive Sentiment: Strong bookings and infrastructure commitments support future revenue. Microsoft’s cloud backlog and more than $100 billion in data-center leases indicate that customers are committing to long-term capacity, giving investors greater confidence in continued Azure and AI expansion. Big Tech’s Cloud Backlog Just Hit $2.3 Trillion Positive Sentiment: Wall Street sentiment has improved. Analysts described Microsoft as one of the better-positioned hyperscalers in the AI race, citing its balance sheet, recurring software revenue, free-cash-flow generation and cloud leadership. The post-earnings advance has erased the stock’s prior 2026 losses and renewed expectations for additional upside. Microsoft’s Stock Is on a Run Not Seen in 26 Years Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft 365 ecosystem expansion. Paychex launched its WISE workforce-intelligence integration in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams, reinforcing Microsoft’s platform reach among small and midsize businesses, although the direct financial impact for MSFT is likely modest. Paychex Brings WISE Workforce Intelligence to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams Negative Sentiment: Securities litigation remains an overhang. Several law firms publicized a class action concerning alleged misrepresentations about Copilot functionality, AI adoption and Azure growth, with an August 11 lead-plaintiff deadline. The announcements do not establish liability but could increase legal, reputational and disclosure risks. MSFT Shareholder Alert Negative Sentiment: Capital spending and free cash flow remain watch points. The scale of AI infrastructure spending could pressure cash flow and returns if monetization slows, even though recent results have eased those concerns. The AI Spending Boom and Free Cash Flow Microsoft Stock Performance Microsoft stock opened at $487.65 on Tuesday. Microsoft Corporation has a 12-month low of $349.20 and a 12-month 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 company has a market capitalization of $3.62 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.15, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.48 and a beta of 1.10. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $399.37 and its 200 day moving average price is $405.57.

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 analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. The company had revenue of $90.01 billion during 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%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $3.65 EPS. On average, research analysts forecast that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.53 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Dividend Announcement The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, August 20th will be issued a $0.91 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, August 20th. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.7%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is currently 20.27%.

Insider Activity at Microsoft In other Microsoft news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, June 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $402.84, for a total value of $1,812,780.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 47,468 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $19,122,009.12. This represents a 8.66% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 15,500 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, June 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $460.99, for a total value of $7,145,345.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 110,477 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $50,928,792.23. This trade represents a 12.30% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 23,762 shares of company stock valued at $10,508,361. Insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

About Microsoft (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).

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After delivering strong earnings but receiving mixed initial reactions, the hyperscalers are suddenly surging. Amazon ((AMZN - Free Report) ) and Microsoft ((MSFT - Free Report) ) have rallied roughly 20%–25% from their pre-earnings levels, while Alphabet ((GOOGL - Free Report) ) and Meta Platforms ((META - Free Report) ) have recovered sharply from their post-report lows. What began as another round of anxiety over runaway AI spending has quickly turned into renewed enthusiasm for the companies building the infrastructure behind the boom.

At the beginning of earnings season, however, investors were looking at these results through a very different lens.

Alphabet delivered what was, by almost any operating measure, an exceptional quarter. Revenue increased 24%, operating income climbed 30% and Google Cloud revenue surged 82%, with Cloud operating margins expanding to 35.6%. Yet investors focused overwhelmingly on the company’s $44.9 billion of quarterly capital expenditures and the resulting $5.9 billion free-cash-flow outflow.

Meta faced a similar reaction. Revenue increased 28% year over year, supported by a 14% increase in ad impressions and a 12% increase in average ad prices. But quarterly capital expenditures reached $31.1 billion, leaving the company with just $784 million of free cash flow, down from $8.5 billion a year earlier. Investors again treated the spending as the main story, overlooking the continued strength of the underlying business.

The central question hanging over the entire AI trade was straightforward: What kind of return can these companies ultimately earn on hundreds of billions of dollars of AI investment?

Until Amazon reported, the answer remained somewhat opaque. There were signs of accelerating demand across cloud, advertising and enterprise AI, but investors lacked a clear example connecting the enormous infrastructure buildout to both rapid revenue growth and expanding profits.

Amazon provided that example.

Second-quarter revenue increased 20% to $200.6 billion, while operating income surged 43% to $27.5 billion. More importantly, AWS revenue accelerated 37% to $42.2 billion, its fastest growth in 18 quarters, while AWS operating income jumped 64% to $16.6 billion. Despite the massive investment required to support that growth, the segment produced an operating margin of 39.4%.

The results underneath those headline numbers were even more revealing. Amazon disclosed that its AI business has surpassed a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate and continues to grow at a triple-digit percentage rate. Its custom-chip business, which includes Trainium and Graviton, has also exceeded a $25 billion run rate while growing at a triple-digit pace. AWS as a whole is now operating at a $169 billion annualized revenue rate.

That is what flipped the narrative.

Amazon is still spending aggressively, and its trailing-12-month free cash flow has fallen to a $7.6 billion outflow as infrastructure investment has surged. But the spending is no longer supported only by projections about future AI demand. It is already feeding businesses generating tens of billions of dollars in revenue, growing at exceptional rates and producing substantial operating profits.

Microsoft reinforced the same conclusion. Azure revenue increased 43% during the latest quarter, while annual Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion after growing 41% for the fiscal year. Microsoft Cloud generated $59.3 billion of quarterly revenue, up 27%, and Microsoft 365 Copilot surpassed 30 million paid seats, up from 20 million a year earlier.

We still do not have a complete answer to the AI ROI question. Amazon and Microsoft have demonstrated that the hyperscalers can monetize the infrastructure layer through cloud consumption, custom silicon, software subscriptions and enterprise services. The remaining uncertainty rests more heavily with the AI labs themselves, including OpenAI, Anthropic and their competitors where the ultimate margins, pricing power and economics of training and serving increasingly capable models remain less visible.

But the burden of proof has shifted. The hyperscalers are no longer merely promising that AI investment will eventually produce attractive returns. Amazon just gave investors their clearest evidence yet that those returns are already beginning to appear.

© Rawat Yapathanasap / Shutterstock.com

Artificial intelligence has entered a new phase. For the past two years, investors rewarded the companies building the picks and shovels of the AI revolution, from semiconductor makers to networking equipment suppliers. That spending spree isn’t ending, but the focus is beginning to shift. 

Enterprises now want measurable returns instead of bigger models or larger data centers. That’s creating a different set of winners. Goldman Sachs believes Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) is among the best positioned to benefit because it already has AI woven into the software businesses millions of workers use every day.

Enterprise AI Is Becoming Microsoft’s Biggest Opportunity Goldman Sachs added Microsoft to its U.S. Conviction List this morning as part of its monthly update, while maintaining its Buy rating and lifting its price target to $640 from $610. With Microsoft’s shares trading around $465 — the stock is up 5% in midday trading — that represents roughly 38% upside. More importantly, inclusion on the Conviction List signals higher confidence than a standard Buy recommendation because it reflects Goldman’s highest-conviction ideas based on fundamental analysis.

The investment thesis, outlined by Goldman software analyst Gabriela Borges, marks a subtle but important shift in AI investing. Instead of focusing on companies supplying infrastructure for model training, Goldman is emphasizing businesses that can turn AI into recurring enterprise revenue.

Azure, Copilot Show AI Is More Than Just A Technology Microsoft’s latest quarterly results gave investors tangible evidence that its AI investments are beginning to generate stronger financial returns. Fiscal fourth-quarter results show revenue climbed 18% year over year to approximately $90 billion while Azure revenue growth accelerated to about 43%. The company also disclosed Azure now generates more than $100 billion in annual revenue.

Those numbers matter because Azure isn’t simply renting cloud servers anymore. It has become the foundation for Microsoft’s AI services, while Microsoft 365 Copilot gives enterprises a practical way to deploy AI across email, spreadsheets, coding, meetings, and business workflows.

That’s where Goldman believes the economics improve. Training large AI models demands enormous capital investment. Selling AI-powered productivity software through subscriptions produces recurring, high-margin revenue.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Goldman expects Microsoft’s earnings-per-share growth to accelerate from roughly 12% in fiscal 2027 to more than 20% by fiscal 2029 as Copilot adoption expands, AI operating efficiencies improve, and enterprise deployments become routine.

The Next AI Winners May Look Different The AI trade has largely rewarded infrastructure providers over the last two years. Chipmakers and hardware suppliers benefited because every company needed computing power before customers could use AI applications.

That dynamic is beginning to change. As businesses move from experimentation to implementation, software platforms that already have deep customer relationships gain an advantage. Microsoft reaches hundreds of millions of commercial users through Windows, Microsoft 365, Teams, Dynamics, GitHub, and Azure. Adding AI capabilities to products customers already pay for is often easier than convincing them to adopt an entirely new platform.

Granted, Microsoft still faces risks. AI infrastructure spending remains elevated, competition from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and other cloud providers continues to intensify, and enterprise AI adoption could unfold more gradually than optimistic forecasts suggest.

Key Takeaway In short, Goldman Sachs isn’t arguing that AI infrastructure spending is ending. Instead, it believes the biggest investment opportunity is shifting toward companies capable of converting that spending into lasting enterprise revenue. Microsoft’s latest earnings, Azure’s $100 billion annual revenue milestone, and growing Copilot adoption surpassing 30 million paid seats suggest that transition is already underway.

For long-term investors, that’s the more durable story. Building AI infrastructure created the first wave of winners. Helping businesses use AI every day could create the next one, and Goldman Sachs believes Microsoft has one of the strongest positions to capture that opportunity.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 3rd, 2026

Catalyst Capital Advisors LLC cut its holdings in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 17.7% in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 9,789 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 2,105 shares during the period. Catalyst Capital Advisors LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $3,624,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Assetmark Inc. increased its position in Microsoft by 6.1% in the 1st quarter. Assetmark Inc. now owns 2,023,261 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $748,951,000 after acquiring an additional 116,547 shares during the period. NovaPoint Capital LLC boosted its position in Microsoft by 6.5% during the 1st quarter. NovaPoint Capital LLC now owns 30,785 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $11,396,000 after acquiring an additional 1,889 shares during the period. PeakShares LLC boosted its position in Microsoft by 58.2% during the 1st quarter. PeakShares LLC now owns 4,412 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,633,000 after acquiring an additional 1,623 shares during the period. Paradigm Capital Management LLC NV grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 23.4% in the first quarter. Paradigm Capital Management LLC NV now owns 6,160 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,280,000 after purchasing an additional 1,168 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Gallacher Capital Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 3.4% in the first quarter. Gallacher Capital Management LLC now owns 2,998 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,110,000 after purchasing an additional 98 shares in the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Microsoft Price Performance NASDAQ:MSFT opened at $464.72 on Monday. The business’s 50-day moving average price is $397.99 and its 200 day moving average price is $405.45. The firm has a market cap of $3.45 trillion, a P/E ratio of 25.88, a PEG ratio of 1.48 and a beta of 1.10. Microsoft Corporation has a 52-week low of $349.20 and a 52-week high of $555.45. The company has a quick ratio of 1.22, a current ratio of 1.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly 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. 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 analysts’ expectations of $87.62 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $3.65 earnings per share. Microsoft’s revenue for the quarter was up 17.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.53 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Investors of record on Thursday, August 20th will be issued a $0.91 dividend. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.8%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, August 20th. Microsoft’s payout ratio is presently 20.27%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of equities research analysts recently weighed in on MSFT shares. Dbs Bank cut their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $678.00 to $573.00 in a research note on Thursday, May 7th. Wells Fargo & Company increased their target price on shares of Microsoft from $625.00 to $650.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday. BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on shares of Microsoft from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday. DA Davidson restated a “buy” rating and set a $550.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday. Finally, Weiss Ratings reaffirmed a “hold (c)” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Monday, July 6th. Forty-two analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $558.64.

Get Our Latest Analysis on Microsoft

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

Positive Sentiment: Azure growth exceeded expectations. Azure revenue increased 43% year over year, and annual Azure sales surpassed $100 billion for the first time. Management also guided to approximately 45% Azure growth in the next quarter, reinforcing confidence in Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise AI demand. Microsoft Shares Jump After Strong Outlook and Solid AI-Driven Growth Positive Sentiment: The earnings beat was substantial. Microsoft reported quarterly revenue of $90.01 billion and adjusted EPS of $4.74, above analyst estimates of $87.62 billion and $4.24, respectively. Net income reportedly rose 31%, while revenue increased about 18% year over year. Microsoft Q4 Earnings Beat Estimates as Cloud and AI Drive Results Positive Sentiment: AI monetization and financial discipline eased investor concerns. Microsoft 365 Copilot surpassed 30 million paid seats, its commercial remaining performance obligation reached $678 billion—up 84% year over year—and management held its capital-expenditure outlook broadly steady while emphasizing continued cash generation. Investors viewed this as a better balance between infrastructure investment and returns than some peers have demonstrated. Microsoft Eases AI Spending Concerns Neutral Sentiment: Analysts largely reaffirmed bullish views, with several price-target increases, although estimates remain wide. Microsoft’s stock is now trading well above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages after a historic rally, raising the possibility of increased volatility or profit-taking. Negative Sentiment: Microsoft continues to face risks from data-center power constraints, chip costs, regulatory scrutiny and the enormous scale of AI investment. A reported cloud-security flaw that could have exposed customers adds another operational concern. Cyber Firm Wiz Reports Microsoft Cloud Flaw Negative Sentiment: Several law firms publicized a securities class-action lawsuit concerning investors who purchased Microsoft shares between May 1, 2025, and January 28, 2026, with an August 11 lead-plaintiff deadline. Such announcements may create reputational and legal overhang, although they have not offset the earnings-driven optimism. Microsoft Securities Class Action Deadline Insider Buying and Selling In other Microsoft news, EVP Amy Coleman sold 1,262 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, May 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $411.34, for a total value of $519,111.08. Following the transaction, the executive vice president owned 46,003 shares in the company, valued at approximately $18,922,874.02. The trade was a 2.67% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 15,500 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, June 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $460.99, for a total transaction of $7,145,345.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 110,477 shares in the company, valued at approximately $50,928,792.23. This trade represents a 12.30% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold 23,762 shares of company stock worth $10,508,361 in the last ninety days. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Microsoft Company Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).

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SummaryMicrosoft delivered robust fiscal Q4 results, with EPS of $4.74 and revenue of $90 billion, both beating consensus estimates.MSFT's cloud-driven growth, especially Azure’s 39% YoY increase, underpins a reiterated "Buy" rating and a 20%+ intrinsic value upside.Heavy capex into AI infrastructure and $130 billion in data center leases signal aggressive long-term positioning despite a near-term FCF dip.Technicals show mixed signals, but strong RSI momentum and operational strength suggest a long-term low may be in place. tupungato/iStock Editorial via Getty Images

With the bulk of mega-cap tech earnings in hand, it’s clear that Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) were the winners. The pair of AI hyperscalers posted prodigious capex numbers, but the street did not punish shares. Cloud revenues were solid, and

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Microsoft (MSFT +3.02%) had itself a day on Thursday. Shares of the software giant jumped 15.5% to $451.10 following its fiscal fourth-quarter report. It was the stock's biggest one-day percentage gain since 2008, and it added about $450 billion of market value in a single session.

The report earned the reaction. The quarter (ended June 30) delivered $90.0 billion of revenue, up 18% year over year. And the star was the cloud. "Azure and other cloud services" revenue climbed 43%, an acceleration from the fiscal third quarter's 40%.

But one historic Thursday is a strange way to measure this company. To me, the better measurement starts on Feb. 4, 2014, the day Satya Nadella took over as CEO.

So, after a week like this one, what would a $10,000 investment made on Nadella's first day be worth now?

Image source: Microsoft Corporation.

From $36.35 to $451.10 Microsoft stock closed at $36.35 on the day Nadella became CEO. At Thursday's close of $451.10, the shares have grown to about 12 times their starting price. That alone turns a $10,000 investment into about $124,000.

And the real result is better. Microsoft has paid a dividend every quarter of Nadella's tenure, raising its quarterly payout from $0.28 per share when he arrived to $0.91 today (a yield of about 0.8% at the current price). Reinvest each of those payments along the way, and the original $10,000 grows to about $150,000.

For perspective, the S&P 500 roughly quadrupled over the same stretch. The same $10,000 in an index fund, dividends reinvested, would be worth about $52,000. Microsoft delivered nearly three times the market's result -- while being one of the largest companies in the world the entire time.

What did shareholders get for their patience? A different company. In fiscal 2014, the year Nadella arrived, Microsoft's revenue was $86.8 billion, and Windows still defined the business. In fiscal 2026, which ended in June, revenue was $331.8 billion, with operating income climbing 21% year over year.

Even more telling, Azure (the cloud computing platform Nadella bet the company on) crossed $100 billion of annual revenue for the first time. The cloud business alone now brings in more revenue in a year than the entire company did when he started.

"Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats," Nadella said in the company's fourth-quarter earnings release.

Would I buy Microsoft today? A backtest can't be repeated, though. Anyone buying now is buying the next stretch, and Wednesday's report offers a fair amount to go on.

For the full fiscal year, revenue rose 18% while earnings per share climbed 32% year over year to $17.95. Full-year net income grew 31%, too. And the fourth quarter closed the year strong, with net income of $35.8 billion coming in 31% higher than a year earlier.

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Also worth noting: management guided for Azure growth of about 45% in constant currency in the current quarter, which would be an acceleration from an already accelerating pace. Azure grew 40% in fiscal Q3 and 43% in fiscal Q4. And Microsoft's commercial remaining performance obligations (contracted work customers have signed up for but the company hasn't yet delivered) reached $678 billion, up 84% year over year.

Then there's the price. At $451.10, the price tag works out to about 25 times earnings. Set that against 18% revenue growth and earnings per share rising 32%, and the multiple arguably looks reasonable. It doesn't require the next 12 years to look like the last 12, either. Good thing, because they almost certainly won't. A company already worth $3.4 trillion can't repeat a 12-fold run with the same ease.

Of course, the risks have grown with the company. Microsoft is spending heavily on data centers, and the more it builds, the more its future earnings depend on cloud demand outpacing capacity. If Azure's growth cooled sharply while that spending kept climbing, the stock could take a hit.

Still, the lesson of the Nadella era isn't that Microsoft got lucky. It's that a dominant business, repositioned around the right opportunity and, given time, can compound in a way that makes even a record Thursday look small. As for me, I'd still buy Microsoft at this price. Sure, the next 12 years likely won't look as good as the last, but I think they'll look decent.

Microsoft's new Xbox chief is looking to push the gaming unit's margin back in line with its rivals by next year and beat them on profitability by mid-2030.

"We will not live on past successes or be trapped by past failures," CEO Asha Sharma wrote in a Thursday message to staff members that CNBC viewed. "We will learn from both and put our energy into creating what players will love for decades."

Sharma, a former Instacart and Meta executive, replaced Phil Spencer as Xbox CEO in February. She has since appointed new leaders, lowered Game Pass subscription prices and announced layoffs and divestitures of four development studios. Sharma has put more emphasis on exclusive titles for the Xbox console, delighting gamers who have seen the subsidiary bring franchises to Sony's PlayStation.

On Wednesday, Xbox turned in a 10% quarterly revenue decline — the most sluggish performance since 2022 — even as its parent surpassed consensus in cloud infrastructure and productivity software. Microsoft stock spiked almost 16% on Thursday in its strongest session since 2008.

Sharma and Matt Booty, Xbox's chief content officer, said last month that they anticipated a 3% internal margin. Sony reported a 9.9% operating margin from game and network services in the latest fiscal year, while Nintendo's approached 16%.

The Xbox Series X and Series S consoles have lagged behind the Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation 5 in terms of shipments.

Sharma wrote in her Thursday memo that Xbox will make every function and studio responsible for the gaming group getting back to growth in terms of number of players and revenue in the new fiscal year that ends in June 2027.

"We will build long-term plans for our biggest franchises across film, television, consumer products, sponsorship, live experiences, and form new partnerships globally, including China," she wrote.

Read more CNBC tech newsAmazon posts 'booming' cloud growth, hikes 2026 capex to $220 billionApple earnings: Revenue tops estimates, but supply constraints weigh on guidanceChina's open-weight model lead exposes America's AI blind spotNew details in the OpenAI Hugging Face hack show how far agents will go: 'It's now remarkably easy'Sharma also said she wants to see Xbox gain share in casual games, partly through Activision Blizzard's King, which puts out Candy Crush Saga games.

Microsoft placed a giant bet on gaming with the $75.4 billion acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard in 2023. The deal boosted revenue, but the subsidiary became overextended. Consumers got to try new high-value Call of Duty releases for short periods through Game Pass for a small fee and leave without paying full price. Game Pass now excludes the first-person shooter titles.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on the software maker's Wednesday earnings call that in gaming, the company is "making the necessary decisions required across our content portfolio, platform and operations to reset the business for long-term growth."

In 2014, Microsoft acquired Mojang, the developer of block-building game Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. It surpassed Tetris as the world's best-selling game five years later.

Sharma told employees in her note that the company would "invest in Minecraft more than ever before, strengthening the experiences players love while expanding the tools that help people create, share, build audiences, and earn."

Sharma wrote that revenue growth must speed up in the 2028 and 2029 fiscal years.

"By FY30, our ambition is to be halfway to our long-term daily-player goal with sustained double-digit growth in players and engagement and industry leading margins," she wrote.

watch now

T1 Energy shares are climbing with conviction. Why are TE shares rallying? T1 Energy’s Q2 2026 Results Boost SharesThe company this week posted preliminary second-quarter 2026 results that point to sales of about $245 million-$255 million (above a $193.5 million consensus) and a net loss from continuing operations of roughly $34 million-$37 million, alongside an acquisition of solar patents and related assets.

T1 Energy also guided to adjusted EBITDA of -$14.5 million to -$11.5 million, excluding about $24.4 million in tariff refunds tied to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It sold its remaining 2025 Section 45X tax credits for $39.1 million at 93 cents per dollar and said it has started discussions to monetize 2026 tax credits.

It also raised Phase 1 capex guidance to $510 million from $425 million due to higher labor and material costs, pushing first solar cell production to the first quarter of 2027.

How Microsoft Earnings and AI Spending Are Boosting TE SharesBeyond company-specific updates, T1 Energy is benefiting from broader market momentum driven by Microsoft’s strong quarterly earnings. Microsoft reaffirmed massive capital expenditure commitments toward AI infrastructure and data center expansion.

On Microsoft’s earnings call, CFO Amy Hood revealed that fourth-quarter capex hit $41 billion, with two-thirds spent on CPUs and GPUs. She added that first-quarter capex is expected to surpass $50 billion.

This AI hardware expansion is directly linked to an unprecedented demand for electricity, power grid interconnects and clean energy generation. T1 Energy’s strategy, which spans utility-scale TOPCon solar module manufacturing, battery storage solutions through KORE Power and AI data center power nodes, positions the company as an enabler of hyperscaler infrastructure.

Microsoft’s aggressive spending outlook provides investors with confirmation that demand for reliable, domestic renewable energy supply chains will remain high.

TE Stock Price Activity UpdateTE Stock Price Activity: T1 Energy shares were up 14.52% at $4.26 at the time of publication on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.

Image: Shutterstock

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Microsoft (MSFT +16.56%) stock is up 13% today on the strength of quarterly earnings that saw revenue increase 18% and cloud computing revenue exceed $100 billion for the first time.

But I believe the most significant number in Microsoft’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report is $19.6 billion -- the free cash flow the company generated despite its massive capital expenditures on AI infrastructure.

While some AI companies such as Tesla and Alphabet faltered after their earnings reports this month, Microsoft appears to be in a much stronger position. Here’s why.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

First, a look at Microsoft’s quarterMicrosoft had strong numbers across the board in its fiscal fourth quarter of 2026 (ending June 30). Revenue was $90 billion, up from $76.4 billion a year ago, and net income was $35.76 billion, an increase of 31% from the same period. Microsoft’s earnings per share came in at $4.81 versus $3.86 in fiscal Q4 2025.

For the full year, revenue was $331.8 billion, up 18% from fiscal 2025, and net income of $133.7 billion was up 31% from a year ago. Full-year EPS was $17.95 versus $13.64 in 2025.

Microsoft recorded year-over-year revenue gains in nearly every segment this quarter, with only Windows and Xbox lagging.

Segment Percentage Y/Y Change Microsoft Cloud Revenue 27% Commercial Remaining Performance Obligation 84% Microsoft 365 Commercial Cloud Revenue 14% Microsoft Consumer Cloud Revenue 24% LinkedIn Revenue 12% Dynamics 365 Revenue 13% Azure and Other Cloud Services Revenue 43% Windows OEM and Devices Revenue (7)% Xbox Content and Services Revenue (10)% Search Advertising Revenue Excluding Traffic Acquisition Costs 10% Source: Microsoft

“We are advancing the frontier on the cost-to-outcome curve, ensuring every customer can turn tokens into business results," CEO Satya Nadella said. “This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI transformation.”

Why Microsoft stands out from the crowdFrom a revenue perspective, Microsoft had a solid report. But so did Alphabet, which reported revenue up 24% to $119.8 billion, and Tesla, which reported revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26% from a year ago.

The problem for both those companies was their expanding capex and sagging cash flow. Alphabet announced an increase in its projected capex for this year from $185 billion to $200 billion, and reported free cash flow of negative $5.9 billion. Alphabet stock fell 6% on the heels of the report.

Tesla fared even worse. Elon Musk’s company reported a free cash flow of negative $1.1 billion, announced it would spend $25 billion in capex this year, and would borrow up to $30 billion. Tesla stock cratered, falling 18% over a week, marking its worst performance since 2022.

But Microsoft is a different story. Free cash flow fell 23%, but still registered a strong $19.6 billion. And CFO Amy Hood told analysts on the company’s earnings call that Microsoft expected to remain free cash flow positive in fiscal 2027 as well.

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Microsoft also differs in that it didn’t increase its capex plans. The company previously had announced it would spend as much as $190 billion this calendar year on capex; Hood announced in the earnings call that the company’s guidance remains unchanged, but because of an accounting change, the budget item is now $175 billion -- some data center leases are shifting from finance leases to operating leases, which aren’t included in capex.

Just as important, Microsoft indicated it was ready to be flexible with its capex -- particularly as the supply of GPUs, CPUs, storage, and memory products remains tight. “If the demand environment changes, you just slow down what is, in fact, the largest component, and the driver of (cost of goods sold),” Hood said. “… You can stagger the timing of the build-out.”

That kind of thinking is important, as markets have proven sensitive to AI spending right now.

Why I think Microsoft is a good buy nowMicrosoft still has huge plans to spend on AI, and it’s not backing off from its long-term plans. But this quarter’s earnings report indicates that it can fund its AI investments while still generating billions in free cash flow. That’s a feat that eluded both Tesla and Alphabet.

As investors increasingly focus on how big tech companies fund their AI build-outs, Microsoft’s financial position sets it apart.

BELLEVUE, WA - NOVEMBER 28: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella smiles during the question and answer portion of the Microsoft Annual Shareholders Meeting at the Meydenbauer Center on November 28, 2018 in Bellevue, Washington. Microsoft recently surpassed Apple, Inc. to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)

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Microsoft and Meta both poured billions into AI this quarter, but only one turned that spending into paying customers. Reporting earnings minutes apart on July 29, Microsoft’s stock jumped 9.8% while Meta’s fell 10% — a split driven by Microsoft’s ability to show external demand for its AI infrastructure and Meta’s reliance on still‑theoretical plans.

Their earnings reports both featured rising revenue. But Microsoft outperformed Meta on earnings, free cash flow, outlook and — most importantly – the business model behind their AI spending.

Microsoft has a rapidly growing AI cloud business; whereas Meta aspires to create one and operates a virtual reality business that posted “$4.6 billion in second-quarter operating losses while bringing in $431 million in sales,” according to CNBC.

Analysts estimate Microsoft stock has more upside — 42% based on the consensus 12-month price target compared with Meta’s 35%. Wednesday’s reports suggest Microsoft has the edge due to its rapidly growing Azure business, which grew 43% and is forecast to expand faster.

Meta has plans for an AI cloud business and declined to offer 2027 capital expenditure guidance — which could spook investors.

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Microsoft’s Results Show Real AI DemandMicrosoft outperformed Meta in the latest quarter.

The software giant grew revenue, beat earnings expectations and forecast better-than-anticipated growth and cash flow.

Specifically, Microsoft ended June 2026 with revenue up 18% to $90 billion; adjusted earnings per share of $4.74 — 50 cents above consensus; 43% Azure growth that crossed $100 billion in annual revenue; an 84% rise in backlog to $678 billion; and $19.6 billion in free cash flow (though that was down 23%), noted a company release.

Guidance for the current quarter exceeded expectations. Microsoft CFO Amy Hood guided fiscal Q1 revenue to a midpoint of $90.4 billion — $740 million above the Street estimate — while the Q1 Azure growth target of 45% was four percentage points faster than consensus, reported CNBC.

By changing accounting assumptions, Microsoft lowered its 2026 capital expenditures 8% to $175 billion. Capex stays above $50 billion next quarter, and Hood said Microsoft expects to remain free-cash-flow positive in fiscal 2027, noted CNBC.

Meta’s Growth Comes With Margin PressureMeta beat revenue expectations while falling short in other areas. Specifically, Meta’s revenue rose 28% to $60.8 billion; its earnings per share of $6.18 was $1.02 below consensus; operating margin declined 12 percentage points to 31%; and free cash flow dropped 81% to $784 million, noted CNBC.

Meta’s guidance came in below expectations. The Facebook parent lowered revenue guidance for Q3 to $62.5 billion — the midpoint of a range — missing consensus by $700 million; raised the low end of its 2026 expense guidance by $4 billion to $169 billion; and cut its capex forecast for the year by 10% to $145 billion. CFO Susan Li declined to quantify 2027 capital spending at all, according to a company release.

Why Their Stocks Moved In Opposite DirectionsDigging into Meta’s margin miss reveals why the stock plunged. Meta’s lower margins stemmed from a 55% increase in expenses on 28% revenue growth — by contrast, Microsoft’s operating income grew 18%, exactly in line with its revenue.

Since Microsoft rents its AI capacity to third parties, its AI-related spending shows up as Azure growth of 43% and a $678 billion backlog. Meta consumes its own capacity, so the same spend appears only as depreciation — up 46% to $6.4 billion — charged against advertising, with no external revenue to offset it.

Zuckerberg — who famously changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta Platforms on hopes for the virtual reality business, which has lost more than $80 billion since inception — confirmed cloud plans without specifics.

This strategy drew skepticism from analysts. Although Meta expects “significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly,” JPMorgan’s Douglas Anmuth pressed Meta management to explain the contradiction of Meta becoming both buyer and seller of AI computing.

In a nutshell, Microsoft stock rose because companies pay for its AI computing service. Meta’s dropped because the company aspires to build and operate one with contracted external payers.

Where Microsoft And Meta Could Be In A YearMicrosoft stock is expected to rise more than Meta’s.

The bull case for Microsoft is abetted by Azure growth; a large backlog; 30 million Copilot seats worth $9 billion; a stock trading 29% below its 52-week high; a 23-times trailing earnings stock value; and capex that is largely presold to customers.

Bears point to Microsoft’s $50 billion in quarterly capex, which exceeds free cash flow; the disconnect between unchanged spending and lower depreciation due to changed assumptions; shrinking Windows and Xbox businesses; and a contentious relationship with OpenAI — 27% of whose for-profit arm the software giant owns, according to the Journal.

While Meta bulls rejoice in 28% revenue growth, 3.6 billion daily users and a 12% increase in ad pricing, bears see cash flow near zero; capex funded by bonds; buybacks stopped; depreciation compounding; no 2027 capex forecast; and youth-harm litigation that the company warns could produce further material losses, per the company statement.

As an investor, do you require AI buildout to have a paying external customer before you fund it? If the answer is yes, Microsoft now has evidence while Meta may deliver it in the future — or not.

Artificial intelligence remains the biggest force shaping today’s stock market, but investors are becoming more selective about where they’re willing to place their bets. For the past two years, simply announcing larger AI investments often lifted semiconductor stocks, cloud providers, and software companies alike. That era may be ending. 

Microsoft‘s (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) fiscal fourth-quarter results and Meta Platforms‘ (NASDAQ:META) latest earnings, both released this week, showed that Wall Street is no longer rewarding AI spending alone. Instead, investors want proof those billions are already generating measurable returns. The dramatically different reactions to two otherwise strong quarters may be the clearest sign yet that execution now matters more than ambition.

Microsoft Showed the AI Flywheel Is Already Turning Microsoft delivered exactly what investors hoped to see. Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue rose 18% year over year to $86.2 billion while earnings per share climbed 24% to $3.65. More importantly, Azure revenue accelerated 43% in the quarter, or 45% in constant currency, pushing Microsoft’s commercial cloud business beyond a $100 billion annual revenue run rate.

That matters because Microsoft isn’t simply spending on AI — it’s selling AI infrastructure through Azure. Every new GPU cluster, networking upgrade, and data center expansion has paying enterprise customers attached to it.

The company also reassured investors that spending isn’t slowing. Management guided first-quarter capital expenditures to roughly $50 billion, up from about $41 billion in fiscal Q4, while saying fiscal 2027 capital spending will rise again based on demand across its product portfolio.

Even Microsoft’s accounting update worked in its favor. CFO Amy Hood explained on the earnings call that more future data center leases will shift from finance leases to operating leases. That change reduces reported capital expenditures to approximately $175 billion for calendar 2026 without altering Microsoft’s underlying investment plans. Investors heard a simple message: spending remains aggressive, but management is carefully controlling how it appears on the financial statements.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Meta Is Asking Investors for More Patience Meta reported another quarter of healthy revenue growth, but Wall Street focused elsewhere. The company raised the lower end of its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to a range of $130 billion to $145 billion while free cash flow plunged 91% year over year to just $784 million.

The difference is that Meta’s AI investments largely serve its own ecosystem. The company hopes larger AI models improve advertising performance, increase engagement across Facebook and Instagram, and eventually support AI assistants and new products. Those opportunities could become meaningful businesses, but they are still developing.

Here is why the market reacted as it did:

Factor Microsoft Meta Why It Mattered Monetization Azure cloud revenue grew 43%-45%; commercial cloud topped $100 billion annual run rate AI primarily improves Meta’s own platforms Microsoft already earns revenue directly from AI infrastructure Capital Spending Higher investment with accounting change reducing reported capex Raised 2026 capex floor to $130-$145 billion Microsoft emphasized discipline; Meta emphasized bigger spending Free Cash Flow Generated $19.6 billion Fell 91% to $784 million Cash generation remains far stronger at Microsoft Earnings Beat revenue and EPS expectations Revenue beat, but EPS missed as expenses climbed Profitability mattered more than revenue alone Visibility Azure backlog and cloud demand continue accelerating Future AI products remain largely unproven Investors prefer returns they can already measure Ironically, both companies are making the same long-term bet. The difference is that Microsoft can already point to customers writing checks today, while Meta is asking shareholders to trust that today’s spending produces tomorrow’s profits.

Key Takeaway In short, the market isn’t rejecting massive AI spending — it is demanding evidence that the spending is producing measurable returns. Microsoft provided that evidence through Azure’s accelerating growth, expanding cloud revenue, and a business model that monetizes AI infrastructure immediately. Meta offered a compelling long-term vision, but its collapsing free cash flow and higher capital spending reinforced concerns that the payoff remains several years away.

Ultimately, that’s an important lesson for investors across the AI ecosystem. Companies selling the picks and shovels of AI — from GPUs and memory to networking and optical components — still benefit when hyperscalers keep spending. But as Microsoft’s and Meta’s earnings showed, Wall Street has become much more discerning about who deserves credit for that spending. In this stage of the AI cycle, visibility, cash flow, and near-term monetization are proving far more valuable than bold promises alone.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Posted by Defense World Staff on Jul 30th, 2026

Fortress Financial Solutions LLC trimmed its position in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 49.8% in the first quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 2,441 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 2,423 shares during the period. Microsoft accounts for approximately 0.9% of Fortress Financial Solutions LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 26th biggest position. Fortress Financial Solutions LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $904,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Avantax Planning Partners Inc. increased its stake in shares of Microsoft by 24.4% in the first quarter. Avantax Planning Partners Inc. now owns 51,692 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $19,135,000 after purchasing an additional 10,139 shares during the period. Canal Insurance CO boosted its position in shares of Microsoft by 9.5% during the first quarter. Canal Insurance CO now owns 57,500 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $21,285,000 after buying an additional 5,000 shares during the period. Riverpoint Wealth Management Holdings LLC boosted its position in shares of Microsoft by 0.5% during the first quarter. Riverpoint Wealth Management Holdings LLC now owns 5,543 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,052,000 after buying an additional 26 shares during the period. Nicholson Wealth Management Group LLC grew its holdings in Microsoft by 3.1% in the 1st quarter. Nicholson Wealth Management Group LLC now owns 7,691 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,847,000 after buying an additional 234 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Summit Wealth Group LLC grew its holdings in Microsoft by 10.8% in the 1st quarter. Summit Wealth Group LLC now owns 7,452 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,758,000 after buying an additional 728 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Microsoft Stock Down 0.7% Shares of MSFT stock opened at $390.54 on Thursday. Microsoft Corporation has a 1 year low of $349.20 and a 1 year high of $555.45. The stock has a market cap of $2.90 trillion, a PE ratio of 23.25, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.20 and a beta of 1.13. The business’s fifty day moving average is $396.43 and its 200-day moving average is $405.74. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.08, a quick ratio of 1.27 and a current ratio of 1.28.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last posted 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. The company 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 31.94% and a net margin of 39.34%.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. Equities analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 16.7 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, August 20th will be given a $0.91 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, August 20th. This represents a $3.64 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.9%. Microsoft’s payout ratio is 21.67%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades MSFT has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Tigress Financial lifted their target price on Microsoft from $595.00 to $680.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 6th. Guggenheim reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $586.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Monday. Argus lowered their price target on Microsoft from $620.00 to $510.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, July 10th. Sanford C. Bernstein restated an “outperform” rating and set a $646.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Wednesday, July 22nd. Finally, Morgan Stanley started coverage on shares of Microsoft in a report on Tuesday, July 21st. They issued an “overweight” rating and a $600.00 price objective for the company. Forty-two research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and six have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $554.73.

Check Out Our Latest Report on Microsoft

Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, EVP Amy Coleman sold 1,262 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $411.34, for a total transaction of $519,111.08. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 46,003 shares in the company, valued at approximately $18,922,874.02. This trade represents a 2.67% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 15,500 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, June 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $460.99, for a total transaction of $7,145,345.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 110,477 shares in the company, valued at $50,928,792.23. This represents a 12.30% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 23,762 shares of company stock worth $10,508,361. 0.03% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

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

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft reported fiscal Q4 revenue of approximately $90.0 billion, up 18% year over year and above the $87.6 billion consensus estimate. Adjusted earnings of $4.74 per share also exceeded expectations of $4.21, marking the company’s 14th consecutive “double beat.” Microsoft Q4 Earnings and Revenues Top Estimates Positive Sentiment: Azure revenue grew 43%, exceeding analysts’ expectations of roughly 40%, and the cloud platform surpassed $100 billion in annual revenue. The results eased concerns that Microsoft’s AI infrastructure investments may be outpacing customer demand. Microsoft Tops Quarterly Cloud Growth Estimates Positive Sentiment: Microsoft said Microsoft 365 Copilot reached 30 million paid seats, providing evidence of growing monetization for its AI products. The company also recorded a $3.2 billion gain from its Anthropic investment, although returns from its OpenAI investment were more mixed. Azure Crosses $100 Billion in Annual Revenue Positive Sentiment: Microsoft maintained its AI capital-expenditure outlook rather than following Alphabet’s recent increase. Investors viewed the spending discipline as supportive of margins and free cash flow, while first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $89.9 billion to $91.0 billion was slightly above consensus. Microsoft Keeps Capex Forecast Unchanged Neutral Sentiment: Investors had positioned for an unusually large post-earnings move, with options implying roughly a 6% to 7% swing. This elevated volatility reflects the importance of Microsoft’s results to the broader AI investment theme. Negative Sentiment: Microsoft faces a U.K. regulatory investigation into whether customers were misled about Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscription pricing. The probe creates potential reputational and compliance risks, though its near-term financial impact is unclear. UK Regulator Investigates Microsoft Over 365 Subscriptions Negative Sentiment: Disney’s decision to replace GitHub Copilot with OpenAI’s Codex highlights intensifying competition in AI coding tools. Multiple shareholder lawsuits concerning alleged Copilot and Azure disclosures also remain an overhang. Microsoft Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).

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Canal Insurance CO raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 9.5% during the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 57,500 shares of the software giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 5,000 shares during the quarter. Microsoft makes up about 4.6% of Canal Insurance CO’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 3rd biggest position. Canal Insurance CO’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $21,285,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other large investors have also made changes to their positions in the business. Norges Bank bought a new position in Microsoft in the 4th quarter worth approximately $50,664,631,000. Auto Owners Insurance Co raised its position in shares of Microsoft by 56,160.8% during 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 buying an additional 60,009,531 shares during the last quarter. Nuveen LLC bought a new stake in shares of Microsoft during the first quarter valued at approximately $18,733,827,000. UBS AM A Distinct Business Unit of UBS Asset Management Americas LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 500.0% in the third quarter. UBS AM A Distinct Business Unit of UBS Asset Management Americas LLC now owns 59,543,261 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $30,840,432,000 after buying an additional 49,618,571 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 49,640.3% in the second quarter. Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 29,967,038 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $14,905,904,000 after buying an additional 29,906,791 shares in the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft reported fiscal Q4 revenue of approximately $90.0 billion, up 18% year over year and above the $87.6 billion consensus estimate. Adjusted earnings of $4.74 per share also exceeded expectations of $4.21, marking the company’s 14th consecutive “double beat.” Microsoft Q4 Earnings and Revenues Top Estimates Positive Sentiment: Azure revenue grew 43%, exceeding analysts’ expectations of roughly 40%, and the cloud platform surpassed $100 billion in annual revenue. The results eased concerns that Microsoft’s AI infrastructure investments may be outpacing customer demand. Microsoft Tops Quarterly Cloud Growth Estimates Positive Sentiment: Microsoft said Microsoft 365 Copilot reached 30 million paid seats, providing evidence of growing monetization for its AI products. The company also recorded a $3.2 billion gain from its Anthropic investment, although returns from its OpenAI investment were more mixed. Azure Crosses $100 Billion in Annual Revenue Positive Sentiment: Microsoft maintained its AI capital-expenditure outlook rather than following Alphabet’s recent increase. Investors viewed the spending discipline as supportive of margins and free cash flow, while first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $89.9 billion to $91.0 billion was slightly above consensus. Microsoft Keeps Capex Forecast Unchanged Neutral Sentiment: Investors had positioned for an unusually large post-earnings move, with options implying roughly a 6% to 7% swing. This elevated volatility reflects the importance of Microsoft’s results to the broader AI investment theme. Negative Sentiment: Microsoft faces a U.K. regulatory investigation into whether customers were misled about Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscription pricing. The probe creates potential reputational and compliance risks, though its near-term financial impact is unclear. UK Regulator Investigates Microsoft Over 365 Subscriptions Negative Sentiment: Disney’s decision to replace GitHub Copilot with OpenAI’s Codex highlights intensifying competition in AI coding tools. Multiple shareholder lawsuits concerning alleged Copilot and Azure disclosures also remain an overhang. Microsoft Stock Down 0.7% Shares of NASDAQ MSFT opened at $390.54 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.08, a current ratio of 1.28 and a quick ratio of 1.27. The company has a market cap of $2.90 trillion, a P/E ratio of 23.25, a PEG ratio of 1.20 and a beta of 1.13. Microsoft Corporation has a 1 year low of $349.20 and a 1 year high of $555.45. The firm has a 50-day simple moving average of $396.43 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $405.74.

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, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a return on equity of 31.94% and a net margin of 39.34%.The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $87.62 billion. During the same quarter 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. Research analysts anticipate that Microsoft Corporation will post 16.7 earnings per share for the current year.

Microsoft Dividend Announcement The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, August 20th will be paid a $0.91 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, August 20th. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.9%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 21.67%.

Insider Transactions at Microsoft In other news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, June 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $402.84, for a total transaction of $1,812,780.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 47,468 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $19,122,009.12. The trade was a 8.66% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, EVP Amy Coleman sold 1,262 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $411.34, for a total transaction of $519,111.08. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 46,003 shares in the company, valued at approximately $18,922,874.02. The trade was a 2.67% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 23,762 shares of company stock worth $10,508,361. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities analysts recently weighed in on MSFT shares. Mizuho cut their target price 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. Raymond James Financial cut shares of Microsoft from a “market perform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 5th. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Tuesday. New Street Research cut their price objective on Microsoft from $675.00 to $600.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Finally, Oppenheimer reaffirmed an “outperform” rating and issued a $515.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a report on Wednesday, July 22nd. Forty-two research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and six have given a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $554.73.

Read Our Latest Stock Report on Microsoft

About Microsoft (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).

Recommended Stories Five stocks we like better than Microsoft Why SK hynix Could Be the Best AI Chip Stock to Buy Now Seagate Technology Stock Surges as Earnings Beat Silences AI Doubters Alphabet Is Down 18% From Its High After a Stellar Quarter—Overdone, or More Downside Ahead? Why Bloom Energy May Be the Most Important AI Infrastructure Stock 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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Microsoft is in a unique position as AI overtakes the tech industry. It’s one of the world’s largest cloud providers and software-as-a-service companies, while also holding valuable stakes in the two biggest AI labs, OpenAI and Anthropic.

Those incentives are starting to clash as Microsoft posts blockbuster financial results. The company just reported an extremely profitable quarter with $90 billion in revenue and net income of $35.8 billion. For the fiscal year, which ended June 30, Microsoft reported $331.8 billion in revenue with a net income of $133.7 billion for the year.

And CEO Satya Nadella is not about to let the trajectory of Anthropic and OpenAI — which are expanding into applications and agentic infrastructure that could ultimately let them own customer relationships — derail that kind of cash.

Nadella has been preaching to enterprises to use multiple models and to stop relying on the frontier AI labs for the agentic harness/app layer.

Doing so is dangerous, he’s been saying, because it requires companies to share too many of their internal secrets with model makers of dubious trustworthiness. He knows his customers. Enterprise IT fears both data leaks and being locked into a vendor.

Now he has openly told Wall Street analysts during the company’s quarterly conference call Wednesday that this is an opportunity for Microsoft to sell customers its own homegrown models, alongside agents, AI security and more, while promising lower costs.

In other words, he’s pitching Microsoft as an alternative to many of the upscale services that OpenAI and Anthropic are developing for their own growth.

When UBS analyst Karl Keirstead specifically asked Nadella to weigh in on the open vs. closed-sourced debate roiling the AI industry, and how Microsoft will benefit from it, Nadella came out swinging.

“The goal is to have the firm be in control of their own destiny,” the CEO said of enterprises. “We are very, very clear about the architectural sort of design of the platform, which is you got to keep your harness separate from the model … that means any model at any given time is swappable.”

Microsoft, of course, sells a menu of harnesses (aka AI agents), too, under the Copilot name, including its coding agent GitHub Copilot. Coding agents are where much of the AI dollars are being spent today.

And he used the high-profile incident from last week as proof of his warnings.

“If you look even at the Hugging Face incident, the biggest thing that we should take away from that is you can’t sort of depend on any one model,” Nadella said. “You will maybe need multiple models to even remediate some challenges that get caused by one model. Like that’s the way to think about it, right? Which is you can’t be subject to a refusal of one model.”

The incident involved an unreleased model from OpenAI breaking out of its sandbox and successfully mounting a full-scale hack on Hugging Face, all in pursuit of besting a benchmark. Trying to understand what happened, Hugging Face at first tried to use a private frontier model (which it hasn’t named) that refused to help it. So it turned to the Chinese open-source model Z.ai GLM 5.2 to analyze logs and defend its infrastructure. The incident has so shocked the industry that even Sam Altman is now saying that maybe AI development should slow down a bit.

Nadella also made clear that Microsoft is happily selling its own homegrown models, the MAI family, on its own homegrown AI chips, Maya, and pitching them as cheaper alternatives.

“Every customer wants the right model for each task based on quality, latency, cost, and compliance. We offer the broadest model catalog in the cloud with over 11,000 models, including the leads from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, xAI, as well as our own MAI family,” he said.

He added: “We’re also accelerating our own model development. We announced more than a dozen new models across image, voice, transcription, coding, security, including our first reasoning model, MAI thinking one, all with cost-efficient inference at the core for the enterprise use cases. We are co-designing these models with our silicon, and we are seeing 40% better performance per watt when running MAI models on Maya 200.”

As for Mythos? Nadella pointed to Microsoft’s new Mythos competitor announced earlier this week, MAI Cyber One Flash. It “achieves better performance than the much larger Mythos model, but at half the cost when combined with our multi-agent security harness,” he said.

Sure, the Microsoft CEO says that enterprises should use the frontier models that OpenAI and Anthropic offer in their mix. But his bigger message is: don’t trust them enough to rely on them.

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images Microsoft kept its capex forecast unchanged on Wednesday, becoming one of the first data center giants to hold the line on the industry's runaway AI spending spree.

The stock surged about 8% on the news.

Earlier this year, the company said it planned to spend $190 billion on capital expenditures this calendar year.

On Wednesday's earnings call, Microsoft kept this spending forecast steady. Due to an accounting change, this capex guidance is now $175 billion. However, in reality, Microsoft is keeping its AI capex plan the same for this year.

The decision to keep a lid on capex is unusual. Most cloud giants have been steadily increasing their AI spending forecasts as they race each other to grab a big share of this fast-growing market.

However, investors have become increasingly concerned about the returns on these huge investments. That's led some on Wall Street to wonder whether tech giants would blink during this earning season.

Alphabet recently increased its capex projection by $15 billion. Tesla also bumped up its own projection. Both stocks fell sharply last week on the news as investors punished the higher spending plans. And on Wednesday, Meta narrowed its own capex forecast range, raising the midpoint by $2.5 billion for the year.

Even prior to Alphabet's increased forecast, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta had already laid out plans to spend more than $700 billion this year largely on AI data centers.

That spending binge has sent the price of memory chips soaring this year. Memory is a big part of data center costs, so these increases have made it more expensive to build AI capacity.

This means that rising AI capex forecasts have been at least partly driven by higher memory costs, rather than new plans to build more capacity.

Earlier research found that soaring memory prices could explain about 45% of the growth in capex by the big cloud companies this year.

So, with Microsoft keeping its capex plans steady, this could imply the company actually ends up pulling back slightly from building more capacity.

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Live Coverage Updates appear automatically as they are published.

Live Updates Pinned 2 hours ago

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This live blog is being updated by Thomas Richmond, a 24/7 Wall St. contributor. You’ll get expert analysis of Microsoft’s earnings.

Simply stay on this page, and new updates will appear below automatically. We expect Microsoft to release earnings shortly after 4:10 p.m. ET.

39 minutes ago

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That wraps up our initial coverage of Microsoft’s Q4 results. Thank you for stopping by!

1 hour ago

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Microsoft’s commercial remaining performance obligation soared 84% year over year to $678 billion, giving the company extraordinary visibility into future cloud and software revenue.

The backlog is now more than twice Microsoft’s $331.84 billion in fiscal 2026 revenue. It reflects the value of contracts already signed but not yet recognized as revenue, including long-term Azure and Microsoft 365 commitments.

Microsoft 365 Copilot also surpassed 30 million paid seats. Together, the backlog and Copilot adoption suggest enterprise AI demand is moving beyond experimentation and into large-scale commercial deployments.

1 hour ago

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Microsoft spent $35.80 billion on property and equipment during fiscal Q4, more than double the $17.08 billion spent one year earlier. Full-year capital expenditures reached $115.95 billion, up nearly 80% from $64.55 billion in fiscal 2025.

The company still generated $55.44 billion in quarterly operating cash flow, up 30% year over year. However, subtracting property and equipment additions leaves $19.64 billion, down from roughly $25.57 billion last year.

That cash-flow pressure remains the central risk, but Azure’s 43% growth gives investors early evidence that Microsoft’s massive AI infrastructure buildout is generating a meaningful return.

1 hour ago

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Microsoft’s AI and cloud investments are translating into accelerating growth. Azure and other cloud services revenue increased 43% year over year during fiscal Q4, helping Intelligent Cloud revenue climb 32% to $39.31 billion.

CEO Satya Nadella revealed that Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the full fiscal year for the first time. Microsoft Cloud revenue reached $59.3 billion during Q4, up 27% year over year.

The results directly address concerns about Microsoft’s enormous AI spending. Azure growth exceeded the 39.6% analysts expected, helping send Microsoft shares up roughly 2% after the report.

1 hour ago

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Microsoft just reported fiscal Q4 earnings, with shares initially up 4% following the release. Here are the key numbers:

Revenue: $90.01 billion vs. $87.72 billion expected Adjusted EPS: $4.74 vs. $4.25 expected Operating income: $40.60 billion vs. $39.02 billion expected Cloud revenue: $59.30 billion vs. $58.71 billion expected Quick Read:

Microsoft delivered a broad beat, led by Azure and other cloud revenue growth of 43% in constant currency, well ahead of the 39.6% expected.

Intelligent Cloud revenue also reached $39.31 billion versus $38.17 billion expected, giving investors early evidence that Microsoft’s enormous AI spending is translating into stronger cloud growth.

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Bull Case AI revenue is scaling fast: run rate hit $37B, up 123% YoY, with Azure growing 40% in Q3 FY26. Contracted backlog expanded to $627B in commercial RPO, and OpenAI committed $250B in incremental Azure spend. Polymarket assigns a 91.5% probability of a beat, and analysts carry a $557.25 target. Bear Case Capex is surging: Q3 FY26 capex reached $30.88B, up 84% YoY, pressuring FY25 free cash flow to $71.6B, down 3.3%. Last quarter shares fell 3.93% despite a beat; Q2 FY26 dropped 9.99%. OpenAI investment losses widened to $3.1B in Q1 FY26, and insiders are net sellers. Shares are down 22.63% over one year, signaling fatigue with the capex narrative. 1 hour ago

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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) beat EPS in all five recent quarters yet still averaged a -1.05% move after earnings. Tonight’s stock reaction will hinge on forward guidance.

Management typically guides Azure conservatively at constant currency, then beats. Last quarter, CFO Amy Hood guided Q4 Azure growth of 39% to 40%, with capacity constrained through 2026 and calendar 2026 capex framed at roughly $190 billion.

Bullish signals: FY27 Azure guide at or above 40%, capex flat-to-modestly higher, AI run rate accelerating past $37 billion, and easing capacity commentary.

Bearish signals: Azure decelerating toward mid-30s, capex sharply higher without matching RPO growth beyond $627 billion, or margin caution.

1 hour ago

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Microsoft trades at $395.36 intraday, hugging its 50-day moving average of $398.54 but sitting well below the 200-day at $434.79. The stock has climbed 5.46% over the past month, yet remains 18.3% lower year-to-date.

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Immediate support sits near the 52-week low of $349.20, with the $390.34 weekly floor acting as a nearer shelf. Resistance clusters at the 200-day, then the 52-week high of $551.05.

Options positioning skews bullish: the July 31 expiry shows 82,709 call contracts against 46,594 puts, a 1.78x volume ratio, with call open interest running 2.54x puts. Aug 21 holds the heaviest call OI at 595,302 contracts, signaling institutional bets on a sustained post-earnings move.

2 hours ago

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Last year, Microsoft delivered EPS of $3.65 on revenue of $76.44B. Prediction markets place 63% odds cloud revenue clears $58B and 61.5% odds capex tops $44B.

Key KPIs: Azure constant-currency growth (guided 39%-40%), the $37B AI run rate, $627B RPO, and any FY27 capex color against Amy Hood’s $190B calendar 2026 framework.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares trade at $400.91, up 1.92% today. Full-chain put/call sits at 0.52. In Q2 FY26, MSFT dropped -9.99% on a beat, which serves as a warning that a beat alone might not send the stock higher. A miss on Azure or a capex step-up without accelerating RPO could trigger an outsized move.

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Microsoft reports fiscal Q4 2026 results after the bell, with Polymarket assigning a 94.5% probability of an earnings beat. Azure growth and the company’s $37 billion AI revenue run rate will anchor the report, but capex discipline may determine the market’s reaction.

Shares have fallen 22.63% over the past year, leaving Microsoft at a forward P/E of about 21.3x. Investors now want evidence that enormous infrastructure investments can translate into stronger cloud growth and free cash flow.

Polymarket currently assigns a 50.5% probability that the combined valuation of Anthropic and OpenAI will exceed Microsoft’s market value by the end of the year. Microsoft currently has a $2.9 trillion market cap, which would make this a tough hurdle to exceed.

A clean quarter with accelerating Azure growth and disciplined capex could reset the AI return narrative.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) reports fiscal Q4 2026 results today around 4:10 PM ET. Shares trade today at $395.98, down 18.3% year to date, setting tonight as a credibility test for the hyperscaler’s overall AI capex thesis.

Momentum Meets Execution Risk Last quarter, Microsoft delivered $82.89 billion in revenue, up 18.3%, with Intelligent Cloud growing 30% and Azure accelerating 40%.

Commercial RPO jumped to $627 billion, nearly doubling year over year and reinforcing multi-year demand visibility. Yet capex surged 84.39% to $30.88 billion, narrowing the gap between infrastructure spending and reported cash flow. Reddit engagement spiked bearish on July 22-23 around Mag 7 concentration and hyperscaler capex rationality, then partially recovered into the report.

Consensus Estimates Metric Q4 FY26 Setup Prior Quarter Azure Growth (cc) 38%-44% (66.6% odds) 39% cc Microsoft Cloud Revenue Above $58B (95.5%) $54.5B Capex Above $50B (56%) $30.88B Beat Probability 94.5% Beat by 4.4% Crowd probabilities imply Azure holds a 38%+ growth cadence and cloud revenue clears $58 billion. The capex distribution signals traders bracing for a step-up above the last print.

Margins, AI Monetization, and Capex Take Center Stage Tonight, I’ll be watching whether Azure constant-currency growth holds above 40% or decelerates toward the 38%-40% band that traders assign a 34% probability to.

Investors will also focus on the AI run-rate progression beyond $37 billion and on CEO Nadella’s framing of OpenAI’s $250 billion Azure commitment. Commercial RPO conversion tempo matters more than the headline surprise.

I’ll also be listening for capex guidance. Prediction markets give 61.5% odds that quarterly capex will exceed $44 billion, so any figure below that could ease pressure on the free cash flow debate.

Operating margin discipline is another lever. Q3 delivered 45.62% operating margins alongside soaring infrastructure spend, and holding that line while depreciation ramps will define credibility.

Earnings History Quarter EPS Surprise Day-Of Move 1-Week Move 30-Day Move Q3 FY26 +4.4% -3.93% +3.19% +8.22% Q2 FY26 +5.61% -9.99% -9.19% -6.82% Q1 FY26 +12.84% -2.92% -5.45% -6.80% Q4 FY25 +8.01% +3.95% -2.37% -5.32% On average, shares moved -2.16% one week after earnings over the past year.

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By PYMNTS  |  July 29, 2026

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Regulators in the United Kingdom are investigating whether Microsoft misled customers about its subscription options pricing, according to a Wednesday (July 29) press release.

The investigation comes in response to concerns that consumers might not have been given clear information about subscription options when Microsoft changed its Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority said in the release.

“When a business changes its subscription plans, customers need clear and timely information about their options,” Hayley Fletcher, the CMA’s senior director for consumer protection, said in the release. “Our investigation will consider whether Microsoft customers were misled and ended up paying more as a result. As people rely more and more on AI tools like Copilot, it’s important that everyone is able to access these through fair and transparent practices and understand when they have the opportunity to shop around and make choices about which products they want to use.”

Microsoft last year automatically began giving customers access to new features like Copilot for no added cost for the remainder of their subscription period, according to the release. When that period ended, customers were automatically placed on a plan with the new features at a higher price, unless they canceled or picked another plan.

Microsoft offered Personal and Family plan customers a limited-time option to switch to a Classic plan, offering the same features as before at the same price, per the release. For annual Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Plan customers, the plan was 25 pounds (about $33) a year more than the Classic version.

“The CMA is looking into whether Microsoft’s communications with customers before renewal were misleading,” the release said. “The investigation will examine whether customers were given key information about the plans and the difference in cost to understand the options available to them before making a decision.”

The CMA has not yet concluded whether Microsoft broke the law, according to the release.

“Consumer trust and transparency are priorities for Microsoft, and we are reviewing the CMA’s claims in detail,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement to PYMNTS. “We remain committed to working constructively with the regulator as their inquiry progresses.”

PYMNTS Intelligence found that among consumers who use a dedicated AI platform for at least one task, 30% reported using Copilot, compared to 83% for OpenAI’s ChatGPT and 48% for Google’s Gemini.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will release its fourth quarter earnings report after the closing bell on Wednesday, July 29.

Analysts expect the Redmond, Washington-based company to report quarterly earnings of $4.23 per share, up from $3.65 per share in the year-ago period. The consensus estimate for Microsoft’s quarterly revenue is $87.61 billion. It reported $76.44 billion last year, according to Benzinga Pro.

The company has beaten analyst estimates for revenue in 13 straight quarters and for earnings per share in 15 straight quarters.

Microsoft shares gained 1.1% to close at $393.35 on Tuesday.

Benzinga readers can access the latest analyst ratings on the Analyst Stock Ratings page. Readers can sort by stock ticker, company name, analyst firm, rating change or other variables.

Let’s have a look at how Benzinga’s most-accurate analysts have rated the company in the recent period.

Considering buying MSFT stock? Here’s what analysts think:

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Alphabet had long been Wall Street's favorite hyperscaler due to its expertise in converting high capital expenditures into revenue.

But investors expressed displeasure with company's plans, announced on Wednesday along with second-quarter earnings, to boost its 2026 capex forecast, as the internet giant rushes to open new data centers for artificial intelligence.

Shares of Google's parent slid 7% on Thursday, and Amazon, Meta and Microsoft all fell as well, underscoring increased scrutiny of infrastructure investments that are resulting in dwindling cash piles with uncertain returns. The three megacaps are set to report quarterly results this week.

In recent quarters, investors cheered capital spending hikes, interpreting them as proof of healthy demand and a maturing revenue backlog. Alphabet received the best reception on Wall Street — the stock is up about 70% over the past year — because its cloud infrastructure business has been growing faster than rivals and its Gemini models and services have gained traction in a market dominated by OpenAI and Anthropic.

But if last week's report is a guide, Google is no longer getting the benefit of the doubt. And Mark Mahaney, head of internet research at Evercore ISI, wrote in a note Wednesday that Alphabet's capex boost "increases the odds of similar behavior" from Amazon and Microsoft.

Microsoft and Meta will be next in testing investor appetite, when they report after the close on Wednesday. Amazon follows on Thursday.

In April, Microsoft projected $190 billion worth of capex and finance leases for the year, including $25 billion from higher component prices, as AI chip demand eats up memory supply.

"If they raise capex again, based on what we saw in the reaction of Google [last week], it's probably going to lead to selling pressure in the stock," Cowen analyst Derrick Wood told CNBC in an interview. Analysts polled by Visible Alpha expect $190.1 billion from Microsoft.

Following Alphabet's report, the consensus for Amazon crept up almost $2 billion to $207.4 billion, according to Visible Alpha.

'Growing AI fatigue'Amazon in February guided to $200 billion in capex for 2026, the highest among the group until Alphabet lifted the top end of its forecast to $205 billion. The company maintained that forecast in April, with CEO Andy Jassy telling investors at the time that its "plan is largely the same."

Several analysts wrote in research notes earlier this month that they expect Amazon to lift its capex guide for the year, as the company boosts investments in AI, custom chips and other costly bets like its nascent satellite internet service, and given higher memory prices.

Jake Dollarhide, CEO of Longbow Asset Management, whose top holding is Amazon, wrote in an email that the online retailer could struggle to impress investors "in this environment of growing AI fatigue, the sudden questioning of meteoric capex budget increases and Silicon Valley and the Mag 7 taking on noticeable levels of debt in order to fund the massive data center buildout."

Amazon's long-term debt shot up 81% to $119 billion from Dec. 31 to March 31. Alphabet's rose 111% to $98 billion during the first six months of 2026, while the company, long viewed as a money-printing machine, turned cash flow negative in the second quarter for the first time.

Amazon, Meta, Microsoft stock chart

Wedbush analysts wrote in a Thursday note that Alphabet's report suggested capacity remains constrained in the face of strong demand, and that there's a "willingness to spend." But they don't view a potential capex boost from Amazon as a complete negative.

"We view the trade-off as worthwhile given AWS's re-acceleration and Amazon's expanding platform advantages across Bedrock, Alexa and its logistics network," wrote the analysts, who recommend buying Amazon stock.

While Google's cloud has been growing faster, Amazon Web Services still leads the cloud infrastructure market, with Microsoft second. Google's cloud was 30% the size of AWS in 2020 and nearly 50% in the first quarter of 2026. Its cloud business recorded 82% expansion in the second quarter, the fastest growth since at least 2020, after increasing 63% in the prior period.

AWS revenue rose 28% in the first quarter, and analysts surveyed by FactSet expect nearly 32% for the second quarter. Revenue from Microsoft's Azure and other cloud services grew 40% in the first quarter, with FactSet's second-quarter consensus at 39%.

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Meta, the lone hyperscaler that doesn't have an established cloud business, is expected to record capex this year of $138.9 billion and told investors in April that the number could reach $145 billion. The company is now looking to sell computing power to third parties.

For now, Meta is still throwing off cash. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect Microsoft's free cash flow to go negative in the fourth quarter for the first time since at least 2001.

Amazon's free cash flow flipped into the red in the first quarter, and analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast it will stay there for the full year. The company last had negative free cash flow in 2021 and 2022 as it doubled its warehouse footprint in response to a pandemic-driven surge in e-commerce demand.

"I think that patience is required for these names because I do think that these will be AI winners over sort of the medium and longer term," said Tiffany Wade, a fund manager at Columbia Threadneedle, which held positions in Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft at the end of June.

On Alphabet's earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai contended that his company's strategy of calling in outside vendors for extra computing power to meet cloud demand will yield attractive margins within years, despite the cost.

"I think that's probably the right thing to do," Wade said. "You don't want to be turning away customers because you don't have capacity."

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Microsoft (MSFT +1.95%) told investors back in April what this year would cost. The software giant expects about $190 billion of capital expenditures in calendar 2026, up 61% from 2025, as it races to build the data centers its cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) businesses demand. Chief financial officer Amy Hood added a detail that made the number sting a bit more: about $25 billion of it simply reflects higher component prices, as memory and storage costs surge across the industry.

On Wednesday, July 29, Microsoft reports results for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year. The report is the next test of the bargain underneath all that spending -- whether demand for Azure, the cloud business at the center of this build-out, keeps growing fast enough to pay for it.

So far, it has. Here's a closer look at both sides of the ledger heading into Wednesday's report.

Image source: Getty Images.

What $190 billion commits Microsoft to The number deserves some sizing. In its fiscal third quarter of 2026 (ended March 31, 2026), Microsoft's capital expenditures, including finance leases, were $31.9 billion, up 49% year over year. Management guided for over $40 billion in the quarter it reports Wednesday.

And the calendar-year plan of about $190 billion works out to well over half of the revenue the company's current pace implies for a full year.

The component-price detail deserves its own mention, too. About $25 billion of Microsoft's 2026 outlay buys no additional capacity. It just covers the higher cost of parts -- the memory and storage whose prices have surged across the industry since last fall. For a company spending at this scale, supply chain inflation is now, in essence, in its own right.

Of course, capital spending doesn't stay on the balance sheet forever. As data centers come online, depreciation flows into the income statement and can weigh on margins for years to come. The more Microsoft spends today, the more earnings its cloud business has to deliver tomorrow just to stand still.

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The number that has to keep up Now, for the demand side, which is the reason the spending hasn't spooked me yet.

Azure and other cloud services revenue rose 40% year over year in fiscal Q3, or 39% in constant currency -- an acceleration from 38% constant-currency growth in fiscal Q2. And management guided for 39% to 40% constant-currency growth again in fiscal Q4. A business already at enormous scale is still speeding up, not slowing down.

Even more, supply remains the bottleneck, not demand. Hood said in April that the company expects "to remain constrained at least through 2026." Microsoft's AI business, meanwhile, has reached an annual revenue run rate of $37 billion, up 123% year over year.

Profits are absorbing the spending so far, as well. Fiscal third-quarter revenue climbed 18% year over year to $82.9 billion, with Microsoft Cloud accounting for $54.5 billion of it, up 29%. Operating income increased 20% to $38.4 billion, while earnings per share jumped 23% to $4.27. This isn't a company sacrificing its bottom line to fund a build-out. At least not yet.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, management guided for revenue of $86.7 billion to $87.8 billion, which implies 13% to 15% year-over-year growth. The headline numbers will come first, but Azure's growth rate and the capacity commentary around it may matter more for how the stock reacts.

That combination is what makes Wednesday's report a genuine test. If Azure grows at or above the guided range and management still describes demand outrunning supply, the $190 billion keeps looking like capacity the market has already spoken for. But if Azure slips below the high-30s while spending accelerates, the margin math starts to tighten, and the stock could get repriced quickly.

The stock, for its part, gives investors more room than it did a year ago. Shares closed Friday at $381.70, down about 31% from their 52-week high of $555.45, and they trade at about 23 times earnings. Given 18% revenue growth and 23% earnings-per-share growth, that multiple arguably doesn't demand perfection -- a rare thing among the big AI spenders.

So, I like the stock. Of course, my view would change if Azure's constant-currency growth slipped meaningfully below the guided range while capital spending kept climbing. Short of that, Microsoft's $190 billion looks less like a gamble on future demand and more like a bill for demand it already has.