Investing

As Dow Surges Near Record, Microsoft Leads The Way

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: June 22, 2019 6:59 am

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 7:24 pm

The Dow (DJIA) nearly closed at a record this week. It fell just short but is up 14.54% to 26,791.13. The stock at the head of the 30 companies which make up the index is Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), its shares higher by 34.85% to $136.97. Its market cap is over $1 trillion.

Some recent comments about the stock:

From Barron’s:

Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne reiterated his Outperform rating on Tuesday, citing the company’s large opportunity in the gaming market.

“Microsoft is one of the few companies that have the potential to be both a leading content provider as well as a leading platform for gaming publishers,” he wrote. “Ultimately, we believe gaming can become the next major narrative as it relates to Microsoft’s long-term growth opportunity.”

From Morningstar:

Since taking over as CEO in 2014, Satya Nadella has reinvented Microsoft into a cloud leader that has become one of only two providers that can deliver a wide variety of platform-as-a-service/infrastructure-as-a-service solutions at scale. Microsoft has accelerated the transition from a traditional perpetual license model to a subscription model and embraced the open-source movement.

From MarketWatch:

“Microsoft has stepped up the game,” said Maribel Lopez, principal analyst of Lopez Research. “The competitive pressure for both Salesforce and Tableau is the fact that the Microsoft story is hanging together much better than it was in the past.”

According to Gartner Research, Microsoft is listed as a leader in a recent report on analytics and business-intelligence platforms, with cautious comments noting that the company only offers its software on its Azure cloud service.

Based on recent news out of and about the company, its rise is likely to continue