Microsoft CorpMSFTBUYAug 01, 2025Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Sep 18, 2026. Market Open.
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 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.)
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.
(Note the short timeframe.) Market's been hating these companies due to uncertainty about capital spending. Revenues are accelerating, yet market's ignoring that. Continues to buy more. FCF should become much higher in late 2028. Topline is growing faster than expenditures, and will overtake them at some point.
Since reporting last week, they've rallied almost 130 points. MSFT is at the epicenter of the software (SAAS) socks and ultimately is where you'll make money as these models as these models commoditize. MSFT said, this capex spending is here to stay, but software isn't going away. She didn't sell it before earnings (it had been lagging all year), because she firmly believed in the CEO who did a great job of reading the room, of not doing what Google's doing. They said they will have free cash flow and won't go to the debt market (MSFT and JNJ are the only triple-A companies). Cloud revenue beat and guided upward. Still gotta see what they're spending on capex, but they're monetizing cloud. People are looking at this in a new light as it is re-rated.
EPS of $3.65 beat estimates of $3.37; revenue of $76.44B beat estimates of $73.89. EBITDA of $45.5B beat estimates by 15%. Microsoft's commercial remaining performance obligations of $368 billion in fiscal 4Q, more than $50 billion above 3Q, gives confidence in another year of mid-double-digit sales growth. Estimates for 13% gains next year will likely move up, led by Azure, which could expand 34-36% in 2026. Capital-spending consensus including leases is another metric that may see an upward revision, with analysis suggesting $118 billion for 2026, up 34%. AI workloads gaining scale and double-digit sales growth could help lift 2026 operating margin above 2025. In addition, tight cost control, particularly on head count, could offset any gross-margin pressure from a shift in sales mix to lower-margin cloud infrastructure and greater depreciation. We think AI is a big factor here, as the company, while spending lots of money, is getting good customer traction. But we think underlying customer growth is very much a part of the good results as well.
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