Microsoft CorpMSFTTOP PICKJul 24, 2015Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Jun 22, 2026. Market Open.
Not a value company, but has become a "utility" style company due large scale adoption of products. Very strong product suite with high margins. Excellent management team. 30x earnings per / share hard to justify, but strong dividend and excellent balance sheet. Would recommend holding, or buying on weakness.
Hit record high earlier today. Makes sense especially with exposure to AI space. Cloud business is growing, subscriptions keep the money flowing. Not cheap now at 33.5x, growing at 15x, 2x PEG. Forward price to sales a bit high at 11x.
In all the right spaces and doing the right things. Hold. Be careful adding, as tech did so well last year.
MSFT is expected to grow in the mid-teens on the top-line over the next few years and trades at a forward P/E of 30.9. It trades at a premium, as it shoulld. With that said, we think the bar is high for above-average share price growth at MSFT. They are very large, being scrutinized on acquisitons, not cheap and have had a strong run in the last year. We think it is a name an investor can still do fine with over the long-term, but we might not expect 'fireworks' here either.
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IBM lacks the spread of clientele like MSFT. Also, IBM has been getting rid of their hardware business, focusing more on software with AI. In terms of quality, MSFT is better (customer loyalty, Office Suite) while IBM is inferior, offering little growth. IBM isn't a big player moving forward. Among megatech, MSFT is the top.
Recent earnings were not ideal and they really haven’t grown them over the last several years, so it is kind of a call on the new CEO righting the ship and refocusing away from their forays into other companies. They are focused more on what the world is going to look like going forward with Cloud Services, Office 365 and Windows 10 coming out. There is a refocus on what they are good at and a good vision of what the future’s going to hold. You could see multiple expansion if the earning start to grow. If you add that to some earnings growth, a couple of years out this will be a decent return. Dividend yield of 2.69%.