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Microsoft Shareholders Unhappy After Annual Meeting
Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Microsoft shareholders left today's annual meeting grumbling about the 15 minute Q&A period with Bill Gates and Steve Balmer and the lack of any real specifics about corporate direction. Many shareholders are concerned about Microsoft's static share price over the last decade."
Simple solution to a simple problem. SELL THE STOCK.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MSFT+Interactive#symbol=MSFT;range=my
Just look at that chart. Look at it, guys. It's been down and flat since 2000. Yes, that chart is split-adjusted. All Y! stock charts are split adjusted. If you want growth, Microsoft is not where you want to be.
And the outlook is not encouraging. Just look at Windows 8.
--
BMO
Doesn't MSFT pay dividends? You can't just look at the chart of the stock price. The fair way to construct such a chart would be a graph of an investor's money assuming he reinvested the dividends.
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/microsoft-shareholder-meeting
I would have left too if those were the best answers I could come up with for those questions.
That makes Microsoft a blue-chip stock, like GM or IBM. They are not a bubble rally pump and dump stock. The ultimate value of a company is not what a wall street casino game of money chicken assigns to it, and listening to the gamblers is hardly the course that will find improvement.
Static share price for the past decade, but:
revenue:
2000: 22.96 billion
2011: 69.94 billion (ms ends their year on 6/30.. so this is 6/30/10 - 6/30/11)
profits:
2000: 9.42 billion
2011: 23.15 billion
Yep.. shareholders are stupid. Not Microsoft's fault they don't want to reward their success.
2000 income announcement
2011 income statement
http://www.fark.com/comments/6722426/If-Fark-went-public-it-would-need-to-publish-an-annual-report-to-shareholders-Photoshop-cover
Substitute Microsoft for Fark.
--
BMO
3% yield on dividend is relatively poor. But there are worse places to put one's money.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Microsoft should pay out much larger dividends. It's clear that the R&D isn't turning out good results. Their last good new product was the XBox. If they paid shareholders instead of spending money on silly things like buying Yahoo, then those shareholders wouldn't complain.
So all this crap about the corporation [required] to serve the interests of the shareholders and all that is simply crap. Shareholders express their dissatisfaction all the time like this only to be ignored by the people who maintain the majority controlling interest... and yet somehow the actions a corporation takes isn't the responsibility of the people who steer the company and often make the very decisions which they are somehow neither responsible nor accountable for.
On the long list of the 99%'s complaints should be a reform of what corporate leaders can be held liable for.
You'd think that after the first 5 years of static share price they would no longer be shareholders. Only the dumb money is left.
So, lets see. A static share price over the past decade...
In that decade they've done the following major things: (IMO) ... and a few minor but interesting things...
- Released Windows XP
- Released XBOX and XBOX Live Network
- Released Window Vista
- Released XBOX 360
- Reached Novell Agreement
- Let Bungie split away
- Showed off Microsoft Surface
- Redefine Microsoft Search with 'bing'
- Released Windows 7
- Released XBOX Kinect
- Released continuously updated versions of Office and Server and misc. software packages, including improving* IE. (Will versions ever end? Bring on rolling release! Or is that what already exists...)
So in point, what has Microsoft done? Kept the industry moving along, business as usual, that's what. Have they come up with game-changing innovation? Obviously not. Have they sunk the ship? No. They're keeping in the game. They're big enough, and have enough clout, that they don't have to redefine themselves every few years.
And, just so you know, I say this as someone who hasn't given MS a dime in over 11 years.
p.s. I'm probably missing some 'biggie events' by some peoples standards. The above are just off the top of my head.
As much as I'm not terribly impressed with many of Microsoft's products, their sense of taste, or anything resembling a semblance of strategy; the whining of 'zOMG why aren't the numbers getting bigger???!!?!?!' investors annoys me far more.
C'mon, fucktards, Microsoft has been dead flat(but dividend bearing) for years now. Quit. Fucking. Whining.
If you want to go bubble chasing, sell the boring stuff and invest the proceeds in something wildly volatile. You've got plenty of choices. If you just want your pet stock to go up and up and up, go see if the magic pony you will shortly be receiving for Christmas can take you back a decade or so so you can make smarter buying choices; but, FFS, don't just sit there, holding on to a stock with predictable behavior, and demanding that it make you rich immediately.
If I didn't know otherwise, I'd be inclined to believe that the world's major monotheisms (used to) condemn usury just because people like them were so damn annoying...
In my mind, the last real Microsoft innovations that happened were in the year period between late 1995 and early 1996. That is when Windows 95 came out and Windows NT 4.0. Windows 95 had a lot of things going for it - it had Internet capability included, so people didn't have to go through a rigmarole with Hyperterminal to download Trumpet Winsock from somewhere via X-modem. It had a nice, Mac-like GUI. It was nice - they even had Mac-like touches, like hiring Brian Eno to do the sound for when the computer started, a launch campaign with a Rolling Stones sound etc. Insofar as NT 4.0 - it was the first Windows server which wasn't total garbage. I had to administer a NT 3.51 server for a while, to my chagrin. 4.0 wasn't great, but it wasn't complete garbage like previous efforts. NT 4.0 also introduced the Terminal Services Client, later called Remote Desktop.
SQL Server began coming out before any of this. I don't really like Exchange Server or Outlook, but they came out in 1996 and 1997 respectively. What has Microsoft really come out with since then? They completely missed the boat on smartphones and tablets - they are less than 1% market share for both markets. I just finished reading Job's biography - he mentions that Microsoft had been working on tablets forever. He blames their focus on the stylus, and compatibility with the existing Microsoft monopoly, I mean framework, as the drawbacks to it. Microsoft just seems to be unable to anything new. They started by porting an existing product, BASIC. Then they ripped of CP/M - some say in a straight pirate-like fashion. Then they rip off Apple's Mac interface (which Apple themselves ripped off from Xerox). Microsoft is great at copying others ideas and doing all the back end, support, marketing, licensing business stuff, they are not so great at inventing stuff. A then much smaller company like Apple was able to eat their lunch in the tablet and smartphone space. Google bought Android, and helped it grow to where it now owns smartphones, and is doing respectably on tablets, at least more respectably than Microsoft.
Microsoft has just been resting on its monopoly and sitting on its laurels. They put out garbage that technicians hate to use, but are sometimes forced to. With Windows 95, I used to get a CD where I could reinstall Windows if I wanted. Then they started that horrible OEM recover CD, where you couldn't just fresh install Windows like you wanted to - like you can with a CD of Linux or FreeBSD or whatnot. I mean, they took a step backwards, to protect themselves from piracy - a concern people making Debian CD's have no concern about. Other people are out innovating, they are at work crippling your ability to do things you were able to do with previous installations of Windows.
Putting stock price aside and looking at technology alone, Microsoft has been stagnant for 15 years. NT4 with Office 95 and a quick install of the latest Firefox would give users 90% of the functionality they use today. Fast forward to Office 97 to get 96% functionality (file format compatible with Office 2010). Add a commercial third-party NT4 USB driver and get 99% functionality that is commonly used today.
In 2002, Microsoft came up with a Java/Flash/RIA/HTML5 killer, .NET, and then decided to not make .NET RIAs mainstream until five years later with Silverlight, when it was too late. This was, in my opinion and guess, a stock market driven decision to avoid killing Windows and Office. Microsoft employed the short-term thinking that results from our stock market system that rewards and demands next quarter's profits and short-term planning.
In the early 1990's, Lotus Notes was taking the world by storm until the web came along. Lotus Notes was a database system that allowed end "power" users to develop GUI database apps that they could immediately share with their coworkers. The web came along and IBM fumbled Notes. Microsoft had a popular web page designer, FrontPage. If they had integrated database capability into it, FrontPage would have ruled the world. Alternatively, Microsoft could have added web capability to Access, or just made it capable of handling more than 1000 records. Access was/is another phenomenal end-user database tool. It's nothing less than an intentional retarding of progress that Microsoft never made it work as an actual database. Undoubtedly, this was again stock-market driven to avoid cannibalizing SQL Server sales. Imagine the productivity the world economy could have experienced over the past decade if SQL Server Lite backend and Access front end were installed on every machine by default (e.g. SQL Server Lite installed with Windows, Access installed with the most basic version of Office). Now further imagine if Microsoft had deeply integrated FrontPage into that bundle!
It's too late now. Drupal et al are, finally after 15 years, the Lotus Notes replacement. Microsoft missed the boat. Goodbye, Microsoft.
Umm, the current forward dividend rate is $0.80 per share. So if you hold $100k of of MS stock, you stand to make $3076 this year, or around 3% for doing nothing but owning a small piece of the company. That's not bad considering this economy. And if you don't like it... Sell! Sell! Sell!
Even the small collection of CSci that actually likes Microsoft has huge misgivings about the way the company operates. Compare against the two listed rivals, Apple, who's goal is just to make the best electronics in the world, and Google's is simply to Do No Evil. Maybe making crappy operating systems, and then when no ones buys it, trying to villainishly force their hand wasn't the best choice? Or trying to rip off Apple without adding anything of real value, or being so evil that people don't care if Google collaborates with China, or holding back technical progress in the name of short-term wins, or producing Operating Systerms that give more power to billionaire executives then it does to the people who actually BOUGHT THE PRODUCT, or try to sue rivals out of existence with massively spurious claims,
or, from a privately-owned company perspective, holding back dividends from stock holders, (who collectively OWN THE COMPANY), because you like having a money vault to dive into.
No, you're the idiot. You obviously don't understand the point I was making.
Microsoft doesn't control the price their stock trades for in the market. They have been doing their part -- increasing profits -- but the shareholders have decided the stock is worth exactly the same amount. THEREFORE shareholders are stupid.
What do you expect Microsoft to do? Have Ballmer go down to Wall Street and scream Developers! Developers! Developers! ?
MS makes 3x the amount Google does in profits. For 2010, MS made 50% more than Apple. Only this past year has Apple matched Microsofts profits. Yet, Apple and Google get bid up to insane levels based almost solely on emotions.
So if shareholders want to base Microsoft's share price on their emotions, instead of Microsoft's financials, then that's their problem, not Microsoft's.
After all, those poor shareholders expected INFINITE GROWTH and the company failed to deliver. They should apologize.
Seriously though, just like the first poster said they already have the answer: sell your stock. But the greedy fucks keep on looking for more. They should get what they deserve when people finally start to realize (probably right after 8 launches) that they shouldn't have to constantly pay for an OS upgrade and Microsoft's software division finally tanks like they already should have.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Do what other comapies do when they think that their stock is undervalued. Buy up their own stock in the market.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
idiot. microsoft pays dividends.
Yield is 3 percent, being generous, and this is nothing when considering the growth of other companies in the same sector - I get modded down for pointing this out.
Stock price is down and flat, especially considering other companies in the same sector. - I get modded down for pointing this out.
There is no sign of this changing any time soon. Windows 8 is the biggest news, and it makes everyone who is not a fanboy yawn, at best - I get modded down for pointing this out.
Yet none of the above is false. So much butthur at the truth. Don't blame me, guys, look at your god, Ballmer, the guy who is only there because of the amount of voting stock he owns. Welcome to the same doldrums that befell Apple in the 90s. Unless something serious happens, the best you can hope for is that the wind does not go completely out of the sails leaving Microsoft adrift in a Sargasso of status-quo or sinking from shipworm.
Break up Microsoft. It needs it. The profit sucking divisions need to sink or swim on their own. The company also needs to make things that people actually want, rather than view Microsoft products as "necessary evils." Apple has been doing it the right way. Microsoft, not so much.
--
BMO
Anything that makes Microsoft or Microsoft shareholders unhappy is a good thing, IMHO.
Until one considers people with a pension plan, IRA, or 401K. For many of these people with the later two they don't pick individual stocks, they pick funds that are managed by a "pro". Many of these funds own Microsoft.
And that's what microsoft has been doing... Geeez!
They pay dividends. They buy back stock. Microsoft is just not "sexy" stock these days. Speculators have moved away from Microsoft over the last decade. I would say Microsoft is kind of at the "bottom", like IBM was in the doldrums back in the early 1990s when Microsoft was all the hype.
This guy is upset because BMO was impolite back there... Rating him -1 while BMO gets the automatic "1" will not improve the climate here.
Offices still use 10 year old IE 6, XP, and Office 2003 and refuse to upgrade.
MS once had a sizeable portition of the PDA/Smart phone market with Windows CE. They now own 2%! Bing is lossing billions every year. XBOX just broke even 10 years after release and billions thrown in, and Vista. Worse MS bought marketing securities as its assets (stocks of other companies) which tanked in 2009 that hurt Microsofts stock price, in which Wall Street looks at liquidity and $ in assets.
Right now Microsoft is doing a turn around and making the right decisions. Bill Gates is the one who did the focus on Windows 8 Metro/WP7 UI after seeing the IPhone and panicking that MS was about to lose their beloved tablets to the IPAD. Windows 7 is a decent OS that businesses are just finally begining to adopt. IE 9/10 actually do not suck and MS is doing a total turn around and supporting open standards such as HTML 5 and leaving their crappy silverlight and IE 6/7 proprietary things behind.
I believe in 2-3 years MS will be making more profits as XBox is now making money, Windows Phone will increase in popularity as it actually is good (no I am not trolling here as it is a rewrite), and Bing is starting to see some revenue and traction, and businesses are finally upgrading and using sharepoint or will soon switch to it.
MS fucked up with bad project managers and infighting and it showed. The 2000's were terrible and stagnated after XP, IE 6, XBOX 1 as they had no vision. I do not know how much of it was Balmer hiring the right executives or Bill Gates advising him and the board on where to lead the company. If it was Bill Gates ideas that saved it then Balmer should step down.
http://saveie6.com/
Dividends are not growth. Learn stock basics.
Stock basics would include that there are growth investors and value investors. Hint: the later are not looking for growth.
No, you're a vacuous idiot. I didn't understand whatever point you were trying to make because you didn't write anything. You just wrote some bullets about revenues and profits. What is the point? English isn't your first language, is it?
Now, of course the problem is with MSFT. The stock price is not going up because shareholders do not see any upside in growth. That is the fundamental problem. On the other hand, look at IBM, another megacorporation. They've reinvented themselves over the last five years, going from a hardware company to a services company. Shareholders see the upside in IBM, and their stock reflects that. See: MSFT vs IBM over last 5 years.
So if MSFT does not have growth upside, then their stock will stagnate. And since that is indeed the case, then MSFT has choices to increase shareholder value: (1) buy back shares to increase EPS, or (2) pay (more) dividends.
You bastards are making me 10% for breathing. I'm taking my money to China!
Never got over that name calling phase did you?
That sure sounds like a bubble to me. Run, run now, get all your money out of Apple!
Think of all the covered call options you could have written. If you wrote them far enough out of the money the shares never would have been called away. There had to be plenty of people on the other side thinking MSFT would start climbing again.
"We do whatever Apple|Google|Oracle do, but we do it with a lotta clout and in Windows."
Look at this chart showing how IBM, a blue-chip stock, is able to return value to its shareholders while MSFT cannot.
With IBM, you just illustrated my point. Let's see:
IBM profits in 2000: 8.1 billion (source)
IBM profits in 2010: 14.8 billion (source)
Your chart shows IBM has been rewarded for it's growth. MICROSOFT GREW EVEN FASTER THAN IBM (from 9b to 24b during the same period).
Yet you say the problem is Microsoft? Really?
Whaddya mean? Aren't you forgetting all the little companies Microsoft bought in order to claim authorship for the innovations that were really brainstormed and brought to fruition outside Redmond, oh... and which had properly protected IP so MS couldn't just rip them off?
And look at Bing!? There's a huge innovation proving, of course, that Johnny-come-lately in the tech sector is really Johnny-sit-your-ass-down and take it like a man.
The mere mention of the world innovation, in the context of Microsoft, even though they have plenty take credit for, makes me break out in hives after hearing Bill Grates abuse the term sooo many times.
Perhaps they need to innovate some social corporate concern here on this continent... That would really be something to crow about.
I might be wrong but expecting infinite growth in stock prices doesn't sound sustainable. The biggest scam Wall Street has pulled is making investors focus on stock prices instead of dividends.
Focusing in dividends might be boring but they are a passive form of income, a good way to build wealth.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
If people with stock don't like the performance of the stock, they need to sell or shut up. They are in this situation because they put themselves there. MSFT really doesn't need them at the end of the day anyway. MSFT has a solid, consistent income, and more than enough money in the bank to deal with a loss of a large number of shareholders.
Also, in the next 10 years I'd bet on MSFT's products to significantly turn the tide against the apple growth. Their next generation of phone/tablet/pc OS's is exactly the direction they need to be heading, and they're going to beat apple to market with it. (WORA apps across all windows devices, pc & phone alike)
I was first certified on MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 and most recently on Windows Server 2XXX so I have been watching "Little Blue" for about 20 years now. (I ran Windows 1.0 on my 8088.) As Robert Metcalfe (3Com founder) recommended in the late '90s during the Department of Justice monopoly case against Microsoft, Bill Gates should have been fired, just as he and so many other company founders had been when their companies passed the early stages where the "Cowboy Entrepreneur" was the ideal CEO. Steve Ballmer was Gates' handpicked successor and has proven just as awful as most such second acts prove to be when the "Great Man" steps aside. Other than Steve Jobs, how many tech company founders stayed on as CEO "forever" leading their firms to greater and greater triumphs? Larry Ellison at Oracle? Rod Canion at Compaq? Scott McNealy? While Bill Gates was visionary about the future in many very accurate ways (smaller devices, triumph of the tablet, ubiquitous computing, intuitive familiar interfaces aka "Windows Everywhere"), he and Ballmer have been utterly incapable of making Microsoft a viable part of that future.
First, the few accomplishments during the long twilight of MSFT: 1 - share of the server market has risen from a few percent to over half. 2 - Xbox and a major share of the enormous gaming market. 3 - Hanging onto the desktop platform and office suite crowns/cash cows.
Now, the long list of failures, many spectacular, which have left Microsoft a profligate spectator while tech has conquered the world using much of the framework Microsoft contributed to so much: 1 - Miniscule share of the ubiquitous computing market: Windows Phone, tablet, and even netbook pieces are abysmally small. 2 - Windows Millenium Edition debuted in 2000 and was a dinosaur that was DOA. Many many heads should have rolled when that was unconscionably foisted on consumers and MSFT shareholders. It was another bloated, pretty version of a product that was perfect for 1998 and out of its league well before 2002. 3 - Windows Vista. Extreme bloat, countless useless, unwanted features, utter unsuitability for corporate use/support; many firms skipped straight from XP to Windows 7 which should have been Vista all along - Win 7 is basically the good version of Vista and even it is not a good tablet or netbook OS, missing massive parts of the market. 4 - MSN - a horror show and black hole for shareholder funds. 5 - Because It's Not Google (BING) - a poor shadow of Google. At least it finally does a decent job of finding Microsoft TechNet articles, something I relied on Google to handle for nearly 10 years. 6 - Live.com - you may not have heard of this, but it is Microsoft's free offering in cloud computing. Naturally it assumes your clients will be Internet Explorer which means Microsoft OS-based platforms, and those in turn are limited to PC's and laptops. Tablet and smartphone users (iPhone, Android, Symbian) - better luck next time; guess you will turn to an alternative. 7 - Microsoft.com - after about the third complete redesign I gave up on finding anything there without Google. Like I said, BING finally has some handle on the site, but it was mostly chaos for about 10 years when the Internet was getting rather important. 8 - The .NET architecture - yet again, Microsoft arrogance assumes its platform to be omnipresent and refuses to play well with others while "others" continue to grow at geometric rates while desktops and laptops remain stagnant in the saturated markets of developed countries. I could go on and on.
Seriously, for the defenders of a company that's biggest accomplishment of the last 10 years was milking two cash cows and finally sharing a bit of the milk with long-suffering investors, you need your investing heads examined. Whether or not MSFT is brilliantly run, it is part of a universe of potential investments and has had remarkably little to offer while many of its competitors have enjoyed far greater success: AAPL, GOOG, ORCL, IBM, and so on. I used to lau
In principio erat Verbum.
His exact point. You should invest in your reading comprehension skills you fucktard.
Umm, all faggots do that, not just muslim faggots. TV likes to pretend that gay men just spend all their time acting catty and giving fashion advice. Wrong. They spend most of their time doing something that involves some combination of asshole, mouth, and penis. Penis to mouth. Penis to asshole. Mouth to asshole. You get the idea.
If you control utterly a multibillion dollar international corporation through direct equity ownership there are a variety of quite legal ways to separate the control from the value such that you can still control it utterly while eliminating your exposure to risk if it should collapse. You can do it in such a way through blind investments that your control is not seen. You can even sell your ownership of it several times over through holding companies. A major holder began learning these lessons a quarter century ago.
One upon a time they would pretend to care to keep up appearances, but that need is gone now as we approach the end game. There is just no point in sitting around listening to the outcry of these trivial owners when all together they could not rally enough votes to be even remotely interesting. In years past they would linger and listen with satisfaction to the bleating to the lambs as they're led to slaughter - but no more. They're not emotionally attached enough any more even for that. They've checked out.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I WANT EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. NO MATTER WHAT.
IF THAT GRAPH DOESN'T REACH INFINTITY THEN YOUR DOING A BAD JOB.
Honestly the MS shareholders should shut their pieholes. They should be grateful the stock hasn't dipped and dived like the rest of them.
Microsoft has been buying up vast quantities of their own stock for a very long time. In a pinch, they can sell that - which would drive the price down on the market. That's not very safe.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Some here will be offended. While I wouldn't care to have to deal with the guy, I like his vision. "Windows yesterday, today and forever" is just the message I want him to have here. He should stay focused on a strong defense of his core business - an iron fort unassailable by all. To stay the course on his miserable failures online, in mobile, in acquisitions is more than I could hope for, but it does appear to be the plan.
So when we move the trade route so it passes nowhere near his precious fort he won't be able to react.
I hope they make him chairman after Mr. Gates finally finishes divesting and retires. He's taking the company just where I want it to go.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
they give out nearly 6% yearly dividend (compare to the current share price). Tell me where you can find a blue chip company that gives out anything over 5%? REITs (Real Estate Investment Trust) does not count.
New Economic Perspectives
Microsoft pays a dividend. Not a big one, but about 3%. Compare Google, whose stock peaked in 2007, does not pay a dividend, and has a two-tier stock structure which prevents investors from controlling the company.
IBM stock is at an all-time high, and they pay a dividend. They're a mature company that performs like a growth company.
I hope Bill Gates continues his growth with Microsoft. I think Linux has far more capabilities than Windows, however ease of use and popularity come to play with Microsoft. Windows is also a power house, Linux is used mainly for hackers with backtrack to crack WEP's with GrimWEPA. Yes i had fun with backtrack but other than cracking WEP's and seeing all your HTTPS passes and bank account and shit i will stick with Windows. http://www.theftauto4.blogspot.com/ PS- THE US GOVERNMENT USES BACKTRACK SO DONT BE MAD AT ME FOR USING IT!
A very well respected money manager stated quite a long time ago that microsoft is where money goes to die. Perfectly good money, dies! Their market is saturated because of their monopolistic practices (which the US government granted in 1999). Company executives are making money hand over fist because of salaries, allowances and bonuses. If you have ten million shares, you can cash them out and make a lot of money in doing so (and many have). But merely buying shares and then hoping for a dividend is folly. Their shares haven't changed price in more than a decade, there are no more stock splits, and any money you put in, is what you get when you cash out, less broker fees. I can understand stockholder unhappiness. If I owned their stock, I'd be unhappy too. If I owned their stock, I would cash it out and put it somewhere it would grow. There is no more up for them. They have peaked, plateaued. Its no different that other tech. Look at HP after the founders died. Look at SUN Microsystems after all the founders left. Look at Digital Equipment Corporation, Apollo Computer, Control Data, Wang. M$ is waiting to lose market share and die. Bing and Bob and clippy and zune. Social inertia is all they have protecting their monopoly. Their biggest customers are looking at better, cheaper technologies. Some older managers who picked them and won't change are being replaced/retiring. New people are more tech savvy. When they collapse, they will look like the Windows Phone 7 market share compared to the rest of the cell phone market (compare the Phone 7 market share compared to Android for example).
Microsoft is no longer a start-up. They can't reasonably expect to get massive exponential growth. What they can do is to pay out modest dividends year after year while increasing capital value a little over the rate of inflation (which, currently, is virtually nil). Shareholders are unreasonable to expect anything else from a company as long-standing and mature as Microsoft. You should buy Microsoft stock if you want a safe investment, not one that gives a 10%+ annual return.
well the main reason why ms is not out there anymore
is because Bill chose to save the chimps in africa instead
of doing what he does best destroying competition and winning!
for anyone who cant remember Bill Gates
was pretty much the Devil back in the days
when MS experienced its bigger growth
is that a coincidence i highly doubt that
Nice that you brought this up. The whole buy-back business makes my head hurt. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't quite understand how it's supposed to work.
Let's say a company "buys back" X shares. Do those shares get extinguished? And your extreme case is a good thought experiment. A company owns itself? And the owner of the company? The company. Turtles all the way down.
Any stock market people want to help?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
This line says it all:
"My granddaughters don't even know what Microsoft does."
Starring Bill Gates as Himself (Score:4, Interesting)
by FatLittleMonkey (1341387) on Friday July 01, @08:19AM (#36632230)
I wonder what would happen to Microsoft's share price if Gates himself stepped back into the role?
Re:Starring Bill Gates as Himself (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01, @08:42AM (#36632400)
The same thing what happened to Micheal Schumacher as he returned to F1 ? (aka. disaster)
Re:Starring Bill Gates as Himself (Score:2) :))
by rbrausse (1319883) on Friday July 01, @08:49AM (#36632462)
it worked for Apple, you can find existing examples for every possible outcome (rule 34 of business-leadership
Re:Starring Bill Gates as Himself (Score:2)
by Machtyn (759119) on Friday July 01, @09:28AM (#36632780) Homepage
Yes, but where does this rule fall in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?
Stock investor for big institution have the lack of foresight that they only like stock for growth , and they try to foresee that with various indicator. Problem is MS has completely filled its market and so has no potential for growth , and has to go out of its own market (think XBOX which was jsut such an attempt). This is why despite past growth nobody bet on MS having a bigger growth in the future, which means the stock stagnate.
I kid, I kid.
I hope.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Also, in the next 10 years I'd bet on MSFT's products to significantly turn the tide against the apple growth.
unfortunately, no-one else agrees with you - by that I mean all the investors in the marketplace. They collectively have decided that MS will not grow, their products will not take over the world, and in fact are much more likely to become less and less of a player in a market increasingly filled with alternatives.
That's why the shareprice is going nowhere, they make enough revenue to keep the sp static, but no-one thinks their business will go anywhere. That's the only real reason I can think of where a company can make increasingly large revenues yet the SP stays still. Nobody believes it will last.
Currently, looking at the consumer purchasing decisions, Windows strategy is a failure (ie doesn't matter how good WinPho7 will be, if no-one buys it. It is would be the betamax of mobile phones). For businesses, MS's future strategy doesn't look good either as they do not want to replace their newly-replaced Win7 PCs with Win8, or replace all their programs with Win8 'apps'.
History says that very large companies with established 'monopoly' positions disappear overnight. Look at DEC for the prime example.
So, you own both Microsoft and Apple. As a shareholder, how do you feel about their war against Android and Linux? Do you, as a shareholder, feel that you are contributing to that war by owning the stock? Do you feel a personal investment in the battle against Linux and software freedom pursued by Apple and Microsoft?
I ask this because I believe that people who own stock in Apple and Microsoft have little interest in software freedom and would rather trade that freedom for a nice dividend.
What are your thoughts?
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
By putting the relationship between operating systems in terms of war, you demonstrate that you are not interested in actually getting my thoughts on anything and only want to make your little point.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The "war" I observe is widely documented in the press. For example, quotes from Steve Jobs' biography indicated that he wanted to "destroy" Android. That fairly smacks of war. The relationship I observe is not between operating systems, it's between humans who have made certain decisions about how to live with software.
If you want to belittle me for the point I wish to make, that is your choice. I only wanted to see if you recognize any connection between your investments and their effect on software freedom and if you wished to share your thoughts on that relationship. Clearly, you are not interested in sharing your views and I respect that.
Good day to you, too.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
That's understandable. if I had to listen to either of them for more than 30 seconds I'd chew my own toes off.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
MS stock these days is just a place to park cash. It's doubtful you'll lose money in the near term at least but it isn't going to be a moneymaker.
Before Flash, Adobe was known to make some extremely useful products, and FrameMaker is right up there for long, heavily-referenced documents.
If people with stock don't like the performance of the stock, they need to sell or shut up.
That kind of goes against the whole idea of having shareholder meetings - maybe some of those people have an interest in seeing the company do better and are using their stock options to try and bring that about. If you had a kid who got a low mark at school would you try and help them improve, or dump them outside the orphanage?
One should point out that in the current market static is pretty good.
If the stockholders are expecting to get answers in a presentation, they're clueless and need to start reading the company info broadcasts. The idea that you can summarize a multi-billion dollar, thousands of employees corporation in 15 minutes and give meaningful answers even in 30 minutes or an hour is absolutely asinine.
Tempest in a teapot, methinks. Big money involved, but still just lazy-assed sheeple complaining instead of learning how to work within the system.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think the special $3.00/sh dividend Microsoft paid back in 2004 (?) is throwing everyone off. The normal yield for MSFT has been around 2-3%. However, in that one year - 2004, I think - they had a one-time $3.00 dividend. It stands out in my mind because I sold my MSFT stock 2 days later and that was a smart move to take my money and run. At no time has MSFT ever had a yield above 3%, aside from that one year.
MSFT is a dog. Has been since 2001. From a stock standpoint, there are MUCH better dividend plays if you are looking for stable dividends: MO, KFT, T, VZ, etc, etc
The stock was priced for growth a decade ago and is now priced for value.
So let me get this right: the multiple compresses (P/E goes down) and you explain it away by saying they were a growth stock 10 years ago but now they are a value stock? Sir, there is a word for that in the financial industry. It's called a value trap and under no conditions is it a good thing.
There are hundreds of mutual funds that hold Microsoft stock; these include technology mutual funds and large-cap funds. Furthermore, since Microsoft is part of the S&P 500 and sold on the NASDAQ market, its stock is part of tracker funds, like ETFs and index funds. So if you have a 401K or even a few mutual funds somewhere, then most likely YOU OWN MSFT SHARES. If you don't have a 401k or any investments, then you must be extremely poor, which is in alignment with the fact that you're extremely ignorant.
If its earning less than inflation while you're holding it, DUMP it. Its costing you money.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
So, you own both Microsoft and Apple. As a shareholder, how do you feel about their war against Android and Linux? Do you, as a shareholder, feel that you are contributing to that war by owning the stock? Do you feel a personal investment in the battle against Linux and software freedom pursued by Apple and Microsoft?
I ask this because I believe that people who own stock in Apple and Microsoft have little interest in software freedom and would rather trade that freedom for a nice dividend.
What are your thoughts?
I think this reflects a fundamental ignorance of how securities work.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
They have about 45B in cash. Their market cap is about 220B. Does this mean that if their share price dropped below $5.20 that Microsoft could potentially buy out Microsoft?
I think ownership of stock reflects a philosophical value. I would only invest in that which I believe in. Maybe you're different, investing for different reasons.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Microsoft has been a rather stable investment over the years, and held its value well during the recent
crunch.
That said, some years ago, after Microsoft paid off my house and put my kid thru college, I jumped ship to Apple.
Now I'm looking for somewhere else to jump, because I figure Apple has run its course.
On the Y! finance boards, what you just did is called "chartin' the charts" and is a known logical fallacy. You need to ask Microsoft "what have you done for me lately and what are you going to do in the future?" Charts from 3 decades ago tell you nothing. How about you get into the current century?
You supercilious punk, he "got with the current century" when he sold his MS high and bought Apple low. Now he's about to sell Apple high and buy something else low. Those charts tell us how much money he made.
If "no one else" agreed with me, MSFT wouldn't have ANYONE buying stock...and that's not the case. Obviously these people don't agree with you, or they would have sold.
Are you really comparing being a parent to owning stock in a company? You're either not a parent or you're hoping I'm not.
Selling stock of a company/product is hardly the same thing as dumping a loved one off at an orphanage...and only a blithering idiot would make that comparison.
When you buy stock in a company, you gamble with money. If you lose on that gamble, it's your own fault, and you lose your money. Money != a life.