Lorne SteinbergMicrosoft CorpMSFTTOP PICKMar 13, 2023

Largest security company in the world. Though, obviously, not a pure play. Look at this instead of CRWD.

Wonderful operator. Likes it, but sold recently as it came close to his team's estimate of FMV. But that selling is not a reflection on the CEO or on the actual business. Its products are ubiquitous. Generates a lot of free cash. Doing all the right things.

Copilot could steer MSFT higher. More users use it than ChatGPT now, and leads ChatGPT and Claude on trust. MSFT is already a trusted company among businesses. Shares have jumped 40% over 6 months. They have good governance.

It's starting to recoup its large data centre investment. He stuck with MSFT the whole way down earlier this, because he had fait in the CEO who understood the need for data centres from their customers and was willing to ride the dip.

The revenue growth from Microsoft's Azure's cloud computing platform is incredible. Microsoft CoPilot is getting better. People use Microsoft for many things such as email, writing memos, doing presentations and it is tied into institutional businesses. It is integrating AI into a lot of their businesses.      Buy 69  Hold 3  Sell 0

It already bounced around its lows in the summer. The question is bigger-picture. It's the 800-pound gorilla. Enormous amounts of cash. Backing AI to the hilt, so they won't be left behind.

If you like technology, and the United States at all, just own MSFT. It's the core stock that will participate in whatever the next big thing is. They missed the internet, and they're not going to do that again.

Likes it. It's been volatile. He has no idea if it's going to pull back, but his firm's timeframes are multi-year. Hit by the SaaSpocalypse along with the rest. Not as cheap as it was, but not as expensive as a couple of years ago. Still a long-term compounder. 

About a 5% position for them, among 40 stocks, so above the average weight of 2.5%.

AMZN is well-positioned because of its partnership with Anthropic. In third place is MSFT, which really hasn't come up with a differentiated strategy. With the selloff in hardware any of those three is at an attractive entry point, with GOOG definitely first, followed by the other two.

She owns no hyperscalers at the moment.

A classic example of buying off a base in a trading range. The chart broke out recently then sold it at $460, making 15-20% in a month. He got out to avoid being greedy.

A lot of the concerns were overstated. Software malaise has sort of passed, but you'll have to look at it company by company. Some real concern about its involvement with OpenAI, but it posted some very impressive sequential growth numbers yesterday. The horse race is in early stages, so don't draw any conclusions too quickly.

Cloud services doing very well, Azure growing YOY ~40% clip. Still trades at only ~25x PE. He'd put new $$ in today. (If he owns any stock, he'd be a buyer of that stock.)

It flatlined for much of the year and he PE has come in quite a bit. It's one the highest-quality, broad-based tech companies. Delivered a strong last quarter. It's delivering.

He's at maximum weight today. Both divisions, software + Azure, are successful and growing fast. Software just has to be "good enough", and Fortune 500 companies climb aboard. Doing a decent job to win the future AI game. No problem starting a new position today.

Loved it around $420 but is expensive now. No, thanks. He bought many shares around $400, then exited.

Before earnings, the stock was flat because they were perceived as behind the curve in AI, even though they own half of OpenAI, and Co-Pilot has been a bust. But a Chinese open-source is coming soon to compliment Co-Pilot, which raise the profile of MSFT's AI.

Thinks this name, as well as a lot of the big tech names (perhaps with the exception of GOOG), will go sideways for the next several years. Highs of $500-550 are what we'll get. He loved it in the last 6 months. Now he's out. Thinks you'll get a chance to buy again at $400 or below.

Likes it at 20-25x PE, but not at 30-35x. It's that simple. Too expensive for what it's likely to deliver.