Why Goldman Sachs Finally Upgraded Microsoft

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is seeing something that some investors might not have considered — it could soon be challenging all-time nominal highs. Now Microsoft has been upgraded by the prestigious Goldman Sachs. What stands out here is that this upgrade was merely to Neutral from Sell, but this removes Microsoft from the firm’s Americas Sell List.

When analysts upgrade stocks, it generally takes a Buy or Outperform rating to get investors excited. What matters here is that one more Sell rating has now been abandoned. Another interesting note about the timing of this call is that Microsoft shares just hit a multiyear high of $56.79 this week. In short, Goldman Sachs was very wrong with its prior Sell rating.

So what is it that makes Goldman Sachs less bearish on Microsoft now?

The first thing to consider is that the price target was raised to $57.00 from a prior target of $45.00 — and at one time that was $40.00 price target. Again, Goldman Sachs has been very wrong on its ratings in Microsoft of late. After all, Microsoft shares were up about 23% so far in 2015, on last look.

What the firm sees ahead is that Microsoft’s valuation seems to be safe from pressure. Satya Nadella’s continued transition to the cloud operations remains a positive for Microsoft.

Goldman Sachs also has a bullish view on gross margin expansion in Office 365 and Azure. Interestingly enough, its prior calls had been negative, largely due to Windows not being as strong as the street had expected.

As far as why Microsoft was not raised to Buy, brokerage firms are reluctant to upgrade stocks from Sell to Buy — particularly after they have been this wrong about Microsoft. Still, the firm believes that street estimates for fiscal years 2017 and 2018 may be too lofty. Again, that note may be cover for having been so negative before.
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It may matter to some investors that this call was from Goldman Sachs. It seems more like an admission that the Sell rating for close to two years was very wrong. Microsoft’s original negativity was around the company buying the Nokia handset unit. Still, that was pre-Satya, and the upside targets and projections elsewhere were way ahead of the Goldman Sachs call.

Microsoft shares were last seen down 0.1% at $55.00, in active trading for what is actually the last trading Friday of the year. Microsoft has a consensus analyst price target of $56.61 and a 52-week trading range of $39.72 to $56.79.

Microsoft’s all-time high on a split-adjusted basis appears to be $59.97, but that is before considering its dividend payments since that time. After adding up the dividend payments since 2003, when it paid its first dividend, Yahoo! Finance shows that Microsoft has paid out nearly $11.00 per share in dividends.