MSFT - Microsoft Corporation
| Previous close | 137.52 |
| Open | 137.78 |
| Bid | 137.16 x 2200 |
| Ask | 137.27 x 1300 |
| Day's range | 136.57 - 138.06 |
| 52-week range | 93.96 - 141.68 |
| Volume | 23,363,057 |
| Avg. volume | 24,449,374 |
| Market cap | 1.048T |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 0.97 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 27.14 |
| EPS (TTM) | 5.06 |
| Earnings date | 22 Oct 2019 - 28 Oct 2019 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 1.84 (1.34%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-08-14 |
| 1y target est | 154.72 |
- Zacks
Dividend Growth ETFs for Long Term Investors
Dividend growth ETFs hold companies with solid balance sheets and rising earnings.
- Market Realist
Big Tech Troubles: Will Google Staff Work Hard?
This week has been rough for big tech companies. On Monday, 50 states and territories announced that they're launching an antitrust investigation into Google.
- Market Realist
Apple’s Cheapest iPad: A Better Deal than Competitors?
In terms of pricing, Apple’s seventh-generation iPad is a reasonable proposition compared to its predecessor. Now let’s see how it fares against its peers.
- Zacks
Zumiez, Vista Outdoor, GameStop, Microsoft and Sony highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day
Zumiez, Vista Outdoor, GameStop, Microsoft and Sony highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: AGCO, Alphabet, KLA, Microsoft and Lattice Semiconductor
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: AGCO, Alphabet, KLA, Microsoft and Lattice Semiconductor
- Reuters
Microsoft's Brad Smith: Tech companies won't wait for U.S. to act on social media laws
Microsoft Corp President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said on Friday that U.S. tech companies will change how they moderate online platforms in response to new laws from foreign governments, regardless of whether U.S. lawmakers take action. In an interview with Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, Smith said that other countries such as New Zealand were passing laws in the wake of events like the mass murder in Christchurch earlier this year. "The laws around the world are going to change, and because technology is so global, American companies will adopt a new approach even if the United States Congress does nothing," he said.
- Reuters
Tech companies won't wait for U.S. to act on social media laws, Microsoft's president says
Microsoft Corp President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said on Friday that technology companies are likely to change how they moderate online platforms in response to new laws from foreign governments, regardless of whether U.S. lawmakers act to change a U.S. law that has allowed social media platforms to flourish. Smith said that Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act, which says that tech companies cannot be sued for what users of their online platforms say, was a needed law in the late 1990s when it first passed but that technology companies are now more mature and should have a "new level of responsibility" for what is said on their sites. "The laws around the world are going to change, and because technology is so global, American companies will adopt a new approach even if the United States Congress does nothing," Smith said, during an interview with Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler in New York.
- Zacks
Apple Prices Arcade Aggressively: Should Gaming Players Worry?
Apple's (AAPL) subscription-based gaming platform, Apple Arcade, holds the potential to disrupt the video game space.
- Bloomberg
The Debt-Laden LBO that Wants to Be a Hot Tech IPO
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- There's a difference between leveraged buyouts and venture capital: debt. It's a distinction one European private equity firm seems to want investors to overlook. They shouldn’t let their eagerness to jump on the tech bandwagon blind them to it.London-based private equity firm Permira Holdings LLP is preparing an initial public offering of TeamViewer AG. The deal may value the German software maker at as much as 5.5 billion euros ($6.1 billion). That’s more than 17 times 2019 billings. ServiceNow Inc., a similar enterprise cloud software firm in the U.S., trades at a mere 12.5 times forward billings.That lofty valuation isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself. Investors may well fall over themselves to get a piece of what is, after all, a rarity in Europe: a fast-growing tech company that generates cash and operating profit.But they shouldn’t ignore the warning signs. All the roughly 2 billion euros of net proceeds from the IPO are going to Permira, which will also keep a 58% stake. In all, the firm could end up sitting on a return of almost 13 times its original investment.Then look at TeamViewer’s debt. Include the cost of servicing its borrowings, and the operating profit it posted last year turns into a net loss. After the IPO, the company’s balance sheet will be still laden with debt. TeamViewer expects net debt to fall to 3.1 times cash Ebitda by the end of this year, but that’s well above the level of its tech peers, which typically target lower debt ratios because they don’t have many fixed assets to fall back on should things go awry. In fact, TeamViewer had negative net assets at the end of June. That alone is cause for caution.Potential shareholders will need to have absolute faith that the company can continue to grow and avoid major bear-traps. On one hand, TeamViewer is shifting to a subscription-based business model, which should give it a more predictable recurring revenue stream. But it has also warned that larger U.S. competitors like Microsoft Corp. might try and muscle in on its territory. That could make it hard to continue the 35% annual growth in billings it posted this year.Then there’s the risk of cyberattack. TeamViewer’s key offering is software to monitor computers and equipment remotely, which makes just one major hack a big operational risk. Indeed, the prospectus confirms that in 2016 the company was the target of an attack on its IT infrastructure. The firm detected the activity – but only disclosed it in May when Der Spiegel revealed what it said was a breach by Chinese hackers.This IPO isn’t just a missed opportunity to improve TeamViewer’s balance sheet. Cloud software companies can be inherently volatile, as my colleague Shira Ovide pointed out last week, so it makes even less sense to include debt in this combustible mix. That investors are prepared to overlook all this is testament to the dearth of publicly traded technology companies in Europe. They have next to no choice. To contact the author of this story: Alex Webb at awebb25@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Alex Webb is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe's technology, media and communications industries. He previously covered Apple and other technology companies for Bloomberg News in San Francisco.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Investing.com
Stocks - U.S. Futures Near All Time-Highs as China Offers Trade Hopes
Investing.com - The Dow is set to pass its intraday record high on Friday and other indexes were also near record highs after upbeat trade news from China, while an upside surprise on core inflation wasn't seen as enough to stop the Federal Reserve cutting rates next week.
- Zacks
Buy $1 Trillion Apple (AAPL) Stock on iPhone 11 & Streaming TV Potential?
Apple (AAPL) is once again a $1 trillion company, joining Microsoft (MSFT), with shares up 8% in the past month. So is now the time to buy Apple stock after it showed off its new iPhone 11s and its streaming TV service, Apple TV+?
- Zacks
Adobe Closing In On a Support Level Prior To Earnings
Cloud powerhouse Adobe is getting ready to release its 3rd quarter earnings Tuesday, September 17th, after the bell.
- Zacks
GameStop Reports Another Dismal Quarter: How Can the Company Reinvent Itself?
GameStop (GME) shares have been sliding after the video game retailer reported disappointing Q2 earnings after the closing bell on Tuesday.
- Bloomberg
Andrew Yang Brings Silicon Valley’s Upstart Spirit to 2020 Bid
(Bloomberg) -- It’s a classic Silicon Valley story: A shoestring operation disrupts the way business has traditionally been done, smashing experts’ expectations while drawing wary glances from sober-minded analysts.Except this time the product isn’t some new gadget or app, it’s a presidential candidate. Since he began his unorthodox campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination, New York entrepreneur Andrew Yang has broken with a lot of traditional advice about campaign proposals, fundraising and public relations. And so far, it’s kind of worked.Endorsements from big names like Elon Musk, along with many small individual donations from software engineers—among the biggest givers to his campaign—have catapulted him into the middle of the winnowing pack of remaining Democratic candidates. He’s managed to win over the tech industry’s support while making its negative impact on society his central focus, and he’ll be on the debate stage on Thursday night, trying to convince everyone he can fix it. An outsider with zero political experience, Yang has outlasted a senator, two governors and three members of the House in the crowded Democratic field. He’s currently beating two senators, former liberal heartthrob Beto O’Rourke and Tom Steyer, the billionaire burning through his own cash while floundering in the polls. And Yang’s fundraising and poll numbers were strong enough to qualify for nationally televised debates three times. But it’s the next phase that proves trickiest, in both tech and politics. Yang, who is currently at 2.5% in a Real Clear Politics aggregation of polls, needs to scale up quickly, building more name recognition and financial support before the primary season starts. In short, it’s time for Yang to go public. His plan to do so involves a campaign centered on one big idea: a $1,000 check sent monthly to every U.S. citizen over the age of 18, no strings attached. But he’s also touting more than 150 other proposals such as legalizing marijuana, creating a postal banking system, paying college athletes, eliminating the penny and making Puerto Rico a state. It’s those ideas that make more traditional pundits view Yang as a fringe candidate—Yang is undoubtedly the first presidential campaign to have taken a stance on circumcision, even if he later backtracked on it. But an embrace of oddball causes may also be part of the secret to Yang’s success so far.Connor Farrell, a progressive fundraising consultant for Left Rising in Washington, D.C., said that Yang’s campaign features the kind of niche ideas with passionate fan bases that drive online donations. Those voters can be reached much more efficiently through free viral videos and memes than can, say, potential supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden who prioritize electability. And they’re easier to convert into small-dollar donors who can be tapped again and again, Farrell said.“Candidates who advertise about a specific issue have an easier time targeting the people that are likely to give to them,” he said. “You’ll make more money spending less money.” Yang recently sat down with Bloomberg in a cramped conference room in San Francisco to talk about his ideas. Surrounded by stacks of his book The War on Normal People, the former tech entrepreneur quickly launched into his case that the tech sector bears responsibility for many of America’s problems.Retail jobs vaporizing and shopping malls closing? That’s Amazon. Suicide and mental health issues on the rise? That’s Facebook. Journalism on the decline? Google’s ad network carries a bunch of responsibility for that. And, he argues, there’s worse to come, as automation comes for clerical, call center, retail, food preparation and trucking jobs. “It’s not immigrants causing these problems,” Yang said, in counterpoint to President Donald Trump. “It’s technology.”And then he turns to his solution, which his campaign calls the Freedom Dividend but Yang informally describes as a “tech check.” To help pay for its estimated cost of about $255 billion per month, he wants to ditch corporate taxes on earnings and instead institute a value-added tax, or VAT, a tax on consumption. The VAT is used by a majority of developed counties, but is considered a non-starter in the U.S. for both parties: Republicans look at it as a tax hike, and Democrats believe it’s regressive because poor people’s consumption represents more of their income. Yang argues that if the tax were set at 10% (or about half the amount Europe charges) it would easily cover his $12,000 annual stipend for every American.While Yang believes the tech sector has created a lot of problems, he also thinks it’s uniquely positioned to solve some. Yang wants to allow voting by mobile phone using blockchain security. He favors net neutrality, letting consumers have a property right to their own data and increased investment in quantum computing and encryption technologies. He wants to bolster artificial intelligence to remain competitive with China and create a new agency to monitor the addictive nature of smartphones and social media.And, more importantly, he doesn’t rail against the companies’ creators themselves. It’s a neat trick: He vilifies the effects of innovation while absolving the innovators, saying that’s a job for government regulators. “This is a natural place where the government needs to come in and set parameters,” Yang told Bloomberg. “If you ask [tech companies] to self-regulate, they would literally be doing their shareholders a massive disservice if they were to scale back in any meaningful way.”To help garner support for such policies, Yang wants to create an agency to educate elected officials on artificial intelligence, data privacy, online ad networks and other technology topics they often don’t understand but are expected to craft laws to regulate. Such misunderstanding, he suggests, is what led candidate Elizabeth Warren to propose a break up of big tech earlier this year. “She’s recommending 20th century solutions to 21st century problems,” he said of Warren. “It’s not like breaking Google up into four mini-Googles would somehow improve the marketplace because no one wants to use the fourth best search engine. There’s a reason why we’re not using Bing.” Yang has early roots in the tech industry. He grew up in upstate New York, a self-described nerd who often spent more time with computers than people. His father, who worked at International Business Machines Corp. and generated 69 patents, encouraged his son’s early interest in technology. After Yang earned a law degree from Columbia University, he found he didn’t like being a lawyer and launched a startup allowing people to donate to celebrities’ favorite charities (it failed), then he drifted to a health care startup and eventually joined an online test prep company as an employee. By the time test titan Kaplan Test Prep bought it a few years later in 2009, Yang had risen to become its chief executive. He used part of his windfall to start a non-profit called Venture For America, matching recent college graduates with tech startups in sometimes-overlooked cities like St. Louis, Detroit and Pittsburgh.The people most likely to donate to Yang’s campaign have job titles like programmer, developer and software engineer. Many of them have jobs at Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., but Yang also has a steady stream of contributions from workers with the same jobs at companies around the country, such as Capital One Financial Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Walmart Inc.He's also gotten support from tech workers at small startups, ranging from companies developing artificial intelligence platforms to apps that teach "Unified Mindfulness," a meditation technique.Workers at tech firms contributed $321,664 to Yang through the end of June, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. That was less than the $1.3 million the sector gave to Pete Buttigieg, tops among Democratic presidential candidates, and about as much as Joe Biden, who is polling far higher but whose late entry into the race gave him less time to raise money.Like most of his rivals, Yang's big three locations for raising money are the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas, but tech enclaves rank higher on his list than they do for other candidates. Seattle is fourth and the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area—the heart of Silicon Valley—is seventh.Richard Shank is one of those donors. A software developer in Beaverton, Ore., he was working on a project to automate school scheduling and listening to a Ray Kurzweil audiobook a few years ago when he had a realization that automation was going to cause a lot more disruption to the economy. After reading more on the issue, Shank, 50, settled on the universal basic income—sometimes called UBI, or in Yang’s case, the “tech check”—as a solution. He backed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 in part because he’d said favorable things about the idea, but when he heard Yang on Sam Harris’ podcast, Shank had finally found his candidate.“I was immediately sold,” he said. “UBI is probably the single most important issue in this race.” Shank listened to the audiobook of The War on Normal People and checked out every podcast interview with the Yang that he could find. He sets aside a portion of each paycheck to send to Yang’s campaign, and is about $1,000 toward his goal of hitting the Federal Election Commission maximum of $2,800.Neil Malhotra, a political economy professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, has studied political attitudes in Silicon Valley and the tech sector. One study of tech founders in Silicon Valley found that they favor low regulation to allow businesses to innovate but they also support redistributing wealth and are liberal on social issues. A separate study found similar attitudes among computer science majors at Stanford.“If you look at the Yang campaign, it’s very consistent with what we found,” Malhotra said. Yang may not like social media’s effects on society, but his campaign is certainly benefiting from them. Online, fans have blended his image with funny and sometimes outrageous messages that spread fast on Twitter and Reddit as well as more controversial sites like 4chan. Yang’s campaign staff say they try to keep tabs on the ever-multiplying memes, but have no control over what gets published, where or how fast it spreads. “As important as social media and everything is, the core driver is still email and fundraising,” said Digital Director Eric Ming, who leads the campaign’s efforts in social media, digital advertising, email and online engagement. He said he and his team don’t generally make memes, but see the power of the images in real time.When a meme strikes a chord, like the image of a boyfriend doing a double take on a new girl (Yang) while walking with his girlfriend (Trump), it spreads quickly, contributing to the candidate’s digital fame. One clip of Yang dancing the Cupid Shuffle in a women’s exercise class got 1.6 million views. A slow-motion video of Yang standing barefoot on his deck kicking off a water bottle cap without knocking over the bottle got 1.4 million. Another video shows supporters hoisting him above their heads, enabling him to crowdsurf his political rally like a rockstar.They may seem trivial, but like any media appearance, viral clips can drive voters to learn more about the candidate. These images play an outsized role in driving political decisions, according to Joel Penney, an associate professor at Montclair State University and author of The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age.Penney described memes as amateur-produced political ads that played a “massive” role in helping Trump win the last election. Their power, he says, lies in their simplicity. It’s an easy way of consuming often complex information that’s easy to share, is topical and hits emotional triggers.“Memes get votes,” Penney said. “It’s not a one-to-one correlation, but it’s absolutely what’s shaping meaning and perceptions.” (Updates with donation information in the 24th paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected a cost estimate for a universal basic income.)\--With assistance from Bill Allison.To contact the authors of this story: Lizette Chapman in San Francisco at lchapman19@bloomberg.netRyan Beckwith in Washington at rbeckwith3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Brad StoneFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Trade War Hope, ECB Stimulus, Apple Hits $1 Trillion & Buy CIO Stock - Free Lunch
The latest hopeful U.S.-China trade war news. The European Central Bank's new stimulus plan. President Trump's call to the Fed. Apple (AAPL) stock hits $1 trillion in market cap. Why City Office REIT (CIO) is a Zacks Rank 1 (Strong Buy) - Free Lunch
- Investing.com
Stocks – U.S.-China Hope Boosts Market; S&P Flirts With New Highs
Investing.com - Stocks moved higher Thursday, with the S&P; 500 briefly topping its July 24 closing high, pushed higher by a thaw in U.S.-China trade relations.
- Yahoo Finance
The one feature Apple should have added to iOS 13 and iPadOS
Apple needs to add these parental control features.
- Bloomberg
Apple’s Arcade Seeks to Upend Another Business Model
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Of the refreshed or new products that Apple Inc. talked about at its extravaganza this week, I’m most curious about Arcade, the $5 monthly subscription to video games for iPhones and iPads.The success of Arcade hinges on Apple’s ability to upend an established model for what are known as casual mobile games. These diversions — think Pokemon Go or Clash of Clans rather than lavish Xbox or PlayStation video games — tend to be free to download and play. The companies make money by showing advertisements in the games or persuading users to buy digital trinkets like an advanced virtual weapon.In short, Apple wants people to pay $5 a month for the types of games they have been getting free, but without ads or in-app purchases. The proposition makes Arcade an intriguing test of Apple’s capability to reshape an industry, consumer behavior and pricing models. (Other companies, including Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox and Google, have or are trying to create subscription models, but for higher-end games.)Apple being Apple, this just might work — or not. Among the Apple watchers on Wall Street, no one seems confident the company can make a mobile-game subscription work, but few predict it will fail. That makes Arcade the get-out-the-popcorn tech product of the moment.Apple has a generally deserved reputation for transforming consumer behavior or making niche behaviors mainstream. Apple made it commonplace to interact with computers with a mouse and a graphical representation of a desk. Apple wasn’t the first company to chop records up into digital files like MP3s, but it got the music industry on board with the idea and made song downloads easy and appealing for everyone. Today, I’m not sure Apple can shape people’s habits at will. Yes, tens of millions of people subscribe to Apple Music, but Spotify had already persuaded music executives and many millions of consumers to embrace streaming. It doesn’t seem as if Apple has persuaded many people on the merits of a subscription to digital news publications. Apple executives scarcely mention the six-month-old Apple News+, other than to acknowledge that it exists. (Disclosure: Bloomberg Businessweek is a participant in Apple News+.)And with Arcade, Apple is going back to the past. When smartphone games first took off about a decade ago, titles like Temple Run and Angry Birds cost a buck or a few dollars to purchase. But once developers made their creations free upfront, mobile games exploded in popularity. Even though a fraction of people pay for in-game items, for widely used games the small purchases add up. And many players will happily put up with a few ads. Apple isn’t about to dump free video games from its App Store. Consumers spend more than $100 billion a year on app downloads and purchases from Apple, Google’s Android and other mobile storefronts. Mobile video games generate about three-quarters of that, according to App Annie, a mobile data and market analytics firm. Think of Arcade as an add-on to an already big and successful model of free-to-play games.Apple senses an opportunity here, and it might be right. There are horror stories of mobile games that seem designed to sucker people out of their money. The industry helped pioneer psychological tricks that dangle rewards to entice players to pay for ways to get ahead in games.Apple is reportedly spending hundreds of millions of dollars to secure video games for Arcade, and the money will free developers from plotting ways to squeeze extra nickels out of players. Apple is also handpicking the titles for Arcade, and many Apple device owners trust the company to give them convenient and fun video games for their five bucks a month.If Apple can sell people on Arcade, expect copycats. Ahead of Apple’s event, Google snuck out a confirmation of its own Arcade-like subscription service for Android phones. It seems as if Apple is already bending the rest of the industry to its will.A version of this column originally appeared in Bloomberg’s Fully Charged technology newsletter. You can sign up here.To contact the author of this story: Shira Ovide at sovide@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Shira Ovide is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. She previously was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Apple Nears Record as Market Cap Again Surpasses $1 Trillion
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. shares rose for a fourth straight session on Thursday, with the iPhone maker hitting its highest level since October as investors continued to feel bullish about the company’s recent product event.Shares gained as much as 1.3% on the day and have risen nearly 17% off a low hit in August. The rally puts the company less than 3% below a record close hit in October 2018.With the day’s move, Apple further expanded its market capitalization above the $1 trillion threshold. When Apple closed in the 13-digit club on Wednesday, that was the first time it had done so this year.At current levels, Apple has a valuation of about $1.02 trillion, putting it slightly under Microsoft Corp., the largest publicly traded U.S. stock, with a valuation of $1.05 trillion.Microsoft has consistently had a valuation above $1 trillion ever since early June, and it has been larger than Apple since late April.At its product event earlier this week, Apple unveiled new versions of its iPhone that were cheaper than had been expected, along with arcade and video-streaming services that were also seen as inexpensive.Bloomberg Intelligence wrote that the iPhone price was “likely to aid unit growth,” while the Apple TV+ service “may attract new users and draw existing ones more deeply into Apple’s ecosystem.”To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Vlastelica in New York at rvlastelica1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Steven FrommFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
Former Homeland Security Secretary on Huawei: 'It's pretty clear ... they're an instrumentality' of China
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge called on Trump not to use Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei as leverage in broader trade negotiations with China, saying national security should be a “non-negotiable item.”
- Market Realist
Oracle Stock Falls Due to Q1 Earnings, Co-CEO Takes Leave
Oracle (ORCL) unexpectedly released its earnings results for the first quarter of fiscal 2020 on Wednesday after the market bell.
- Yahoo Finance
Microsoft president: Cambridge Analytica was 'the Three Mile Island for the tech sector'
As the longest serving executive at Microsoft, Former General Counsel Brad Smith knows a thing or two about the scrutiny that comes with being a global tech company.
- Zacks
5 Tariff-Sensitive Stocks to Buy as China Softens Stance
China has, recently, declared tariff exemptions on a number of U.S. goods, a move viewed by many as a show of good gesture just days ahead of planned talks to resolve a long-drawn-out trade issue.
- Zacks
Is iShares MSCI ACWI Low Carbon Target ETF (CRBN) a Strong ETF Right Now?
Smart Beta ETF report for CRBN
