Morgan Stanley Reaffirms Overweight Rating for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)‘s stock had its “overweight” rating reiterated by analysts at Morgan Stanley in a research report issued to clients and investors on Tuesday, Benzinga reports. They presently have a $506.00 target price on the software giant’s stock. Morgan Stanley’s price target suggests a potential upside of 17.45% from the stock’s previous close.

MSFT has been the topic of several other research reports. Oppenheimer upped their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $450.00 to $500.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, June 7th. Piper Sandler restated an “overweight” rating and set a $485.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Wednesday, July 31st. Citigroup lowered their target price on shares of Microsoft from $520.00 to $500.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, July 31st. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $500.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Wednesday, July 31st. Finally, Tigress Financial raised their price target on shares of Microsoft from $475.00 to $550.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, June 13th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirty-two have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $494.72.

Microsoft Stock Down 1.0 %

MSFT stock opened at $430.81 on Tuesday. Microsoft has a 52-week low of $309.45 and a 52-week high of $468.35. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $421.60 and its 200-day simple moving average is $423.78. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16, a current ratio of 1.27 and a quick ratio of 1.27. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.20 trillion, a P/E ratio of 37.30, a P/E/G ratio of 2.14 and a beta of 0.90.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, July 30th. The software giant reported $2.95 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.90 by $0.05. The firm had revenue of $64.73 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $64.38 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 35.96% and a return on equity of 35.95%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 15.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $2.69 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that Microsoft will post 13.04 EPS for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Microsoft news, CMO Takeshi Numoto sold 2,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $411.04, for a total transaction of $1,027,600.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief marketing officer now directly owns 50,000 shares in the company, valued at $20,552,000. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. In other news, CMO Takeshi Numoto sold 2,500 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $411.04, for a total value of $1,027,600.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief marketing officer now directly owns 50,000 shares in the company, valued at $20,552,000. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Satya Nadella sold 14,398 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, August 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $417.41, for a total transaction of $6,009,869.18. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 786,933 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $328,473,703.53. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 190,629 shares of company stock worth $77,916,485 over the last three months. Insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Microsoft

Several institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of MSFT. Christopher J. Hasenberg Inc grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 169.2% in the second quarter. Christopher J. Hasenberg Inc now owns 70 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $31,000 after purchasing an additional 44 shares during the last quarter. Quarry LP acquired a new position in shares of Microsoft during the second quarter valued at about $45,000. Neo Ivy Capital Management acquired a new position in shares of Microsoft during the fourth quarter valued at about $58,000. Richardson Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 1,290.0% during the first quarter. Richardson Capital Management LLC now owns 139 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $59,000 after purchasing an additional 129 shares during the period. Finally, Innealta Capital LLC acquired a new position in shares of Microsoft during the second quarter valued at about $75,000. Institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Microsoft Company Profile

Microsoft Corporation develops and supports software, services, devices and solutions worldwide. The Productivity and Business Processes segment offers office, exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, office 365 Security and Compliance, Microsoft viva, and Microsoft 365 copilot; and office consumer services, such as Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other office services.