Microsoft Shareholders Unhappy After Annual Meeting 521
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.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Simple solution.... (Score:5, Informative)
Would the term you're thinking of happen to be the sunk cost fallacy [wikipedia.org]?
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Re:Simple solution.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the reason they fail to execute the solution is because they're getting a nice dividend, strong stock price and a fair amount of peace of mind.
The people who are pissed off about the lack of constantly increasing stock price are the big institutional investors who want to play the volatility game, betting the options on both sides. Hedge funds and like that.
Most of the normal people who invested in Microsoft are not complaining because, although they're not getting huge capital gains, a nice check comes from Microsoft every quarter in dividends. Plus, there has been steady growth.
So, if you're looking for a little stable income, Microsoft a decade ago was a good way to go. Apple had more volatility, it jumped further, but when it comes to paying dividends, they've given the finger to their investors, choosing to put their enormous profits into a "war chest" instead of rewarding the people who have stuck with them. Those cocksuckers have $76billion in cash and can't pay a dividend. Assholes.
Full disclosure: I own both Apple and Microsoft stock. I sell Apple on the highs, and it's paid for a big chunk of my daughter's education. The Microsoft I keep, up or down, and those dividend checks continue to pay the real estate taxes on my Chi-town Vatican. Year after year after year. And when the day comes that my wife decides it's time to move to Montenegro and grow figs and look at the Adriatic, we'll sell off the Microsoft and it will have held up its end of the bargain very nicely. All of the Apple I bought will be gone long before then because the only way to make money with Apple is by selling the highs.
Yeah, I like to look at the Apple stock price, especially after a new iPhone is announced and all the fruits race down to stand in line at the Apple Store because I like to time the sale of some shares immediately thereafte. Then, when the inevitable battery issues or reception issues start to hit the news, I'll think about adding a few shares, but never as many as I sold because the price is too damn high. But the Microsoft, I don't even look at the price, I just dollar cost average some shares every quarter, comfortable knowing it's piling up and bringing me steady income.
To be honest, it was only sheer luck that this all worked out for me. I don't know fuck-all about investing. I just liked the products and when I got my first real job, a single guy, I bought shares.
Re:Simple solution.... (Score:5, Informative)
The dividend is currently paying 3%. That's not a nice check, that's a cost of living increase while you can't spend your core assets.
If you want a decent dividend check, look at utility stocks - 6 to 8%. So 2+ times larger checks.
Or communications companies, that are paying 6-15% dividends.
Re:Simple solution.... (Score:5, Funny)
The dividend is currently paying 3%.
Investing in MSFT is like buying government treasuries, only the yield is higher and Microsoft is less likely to default.
Re:Simple solution.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Simple solution.... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the stock is clearly increasing over time...
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MSFT+Interactive#chart2:symbol=msft;range=5y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined [yahoo.com]
Re:Simple solution.... (Score:5, Interesting)
big institutional investors who want to play the volatility game
Then why are they buying Microsoft (MSFT [fool.com]) of all things? Microsoft is a dividend safety play and has been for at least a decade now. It's not Microsoft's fault that these pension funds promised their members payouts based on 8%+ returns when the only way to get them these days is to go risk-on heavy into high yield bonds, small to mid cap stocks or options, futures and derivatives (aka the financial weapons of mass pension fund destruction). They should either man up and sell their shares so that they can make those plays and get those 8%+ returns (or not) or they should sit down, shut up and be happy that they still have their principal and the dividend was paid on time. This is the new reality of investing and personally, I don't think that things will ever get back to 8%+ consistently on average, or at least not here in the United States or Europe. We live in a world of increasing population, increased demand and increasing depletion of natural resources. We won't have another fossil fueled 20th century of growth and investors, just like everyone else, are going to have to get used to that and plan accordingly.
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Many people fail to execute the simple solution, as it might require them to admit they were wrong to buy it in the first place. It's a well known psychological shortfall who's proper term I can't recall atm. Like anti-buyers-remorse.
It's called Buyers Remorse, much the same as when a normal person becomes an Apple fanboy because they cant admit that their purchase did not meet their imagination so they need to attack anyone who disagrees with them and create an imaginary world around their purchase. Also Choice Supportive Bias.
But this isn't about Buyers Remorse. Most people buy blue chip stocks like MSFT for the long term. Not only are they supposed to grow in value (gradually year after year) but provide dividends each year. So MS
Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Wow. Expecting Microsoft to take care of them .. that's like socialism.
I'll get my coat.
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
And here's a second thought. Fire Ballmer. Whatever it takes to make a company great, it's pretty clear Ballmer doesn't have it.
To be fair, they don't do everything wrong. The Xbox is a pretty cool product. I love me that Halo.
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL - that office suite. After having bought out and/or squashed a lot of good competition, you'd think that Microsoft would have a superb office suite. And, given all the years that they've had to perfect it, it should be better than merely superb.
Maybe if they hadn't wasted all that time trying to embrace, extend, and extinguish all competing document formats, while advancing their own proprietary crap formats, they could actually have created office tools that always work, on any platform, any time and anywhere.
If that were the case, they could probably sell licenses for that suite for around ten dollars, and make a nice profit.
The shame is, I'll be fooling around with MS Office in the next couple days. I need to create a couple of documents, which are real easy to create in Open Office or LibreOffice. Unfortunately, the computers on which the documents will be used have had problems with documents that I've created in the past. The XP machines can't read ODF, and something gets lost in translation when I tell Open Office to save documents in other formats.
So - one more time, I'll be installing a pirated version of MS Office into a virtual machine, just to create a couple of simple documents. Then, I'll just revert the VM back to a snapshot taken before installation.
Life could be so much simpler, if MS actually cooperated with the rest of the world on standards.
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Actually M$ did a great job of M$ Office. Office 97/98 was great, did what it needed to do, had straight forward macros (admittedly not very secure) but real easy to program, didn't take up much space, was pretty quick even on that era's hardware, came with a manual and it wasn't annoyingly over unhelpfully helpful. M$ Office 2000 was borderline, it was starting to cross the line of being unhelpfully helpfull and was slower and more annoying to use
People who really, really liked M$ Office 97/98 are the o
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft's DOC format has been around for roughly forever and the free suites STILL have trouble saving them properly?
Microsoft Office has issues opening/saving MS Office documents; for instance, try opening a Word97 document with Word2010.
You are obviously a Microsoft shill.
but it's the industry standard for a reason.
Yes; actually, many reasons. One of those reasons is that Microsoft gave it to schools for free, and paid them to teach "office productivity" courses using Microsoft software only. Another reason is that Microsoft threatened OEMs with an inability to legally acquire Microsoft software if they installed anything other than MS Windows and MS Office on pre-installed machines.
Do you live under a rock, or are you really that deluded by the FUD?
And before you go berserk calling me an anti-MSFT troll, you should know that I'm an MCP.
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is twofold...
Firstly the formats are so complex that even with the spec, its very hard to implement them...
Secondly, the specs are not very good, they are vague, inaccurate and sometimes downright wrong in places. Not to mention the additional differences in format between different versions of ms products (even products of the same vintage, mac version is often different to windows version and service packs can break stuff too)...
When MS can't even properly interoperate between themselves, what hope has anyone else got? If you want a good laugh, try a few things:
Use ms publisher to open and save word files, not sure if it has improved lately but last time i tried this the results were garbage...
Setup different versions of word, and configure them with different printers, then try interchanging complex documents between them...
The only thing MS has going for them is lock-in, their office suite is extremely buggy and has poor interoperability even with itself while intentionally not trying to interoperate with anything else.
For the vast majority of users, something heavyweight like msoffice or libreoffice is a poor choice, and one of the lighter options would suit their needs much better.
Those who claim that ms is the best suite have generally not used anything else extensively or have niche specialised requirements.
Having used wordperfect years ago, and a mix of msoffice and libreoffice at work i can say that i definitely prefer the latter. Unlike word it doesn't choke on very large documents, it lets me write macros in several languages and i can save the files out and parse them outside of the application quite easily.
One thing that does annoy me however, is that libreoffice (and excel, which i assume its copying) truncates very large numbers, i end up having to use gnumeric instead if i want accurate results.
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:4, Informative)
Part of it comes down to the huge amount of development resources that must be wasted by any competitor to MS trying to reverse engineer and implement support for their extremely convoluted file formats...
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Interesting)
The lack of formatting tag access is a big clue... I've lost track of how much trouble I've experienced while trying to remove junk formatting artifacts from a document that has been passed around and edited by several people. (DOC files were never supposed to be distributed... that's what PDF is for!!) I often end up dumping the thing back into a text editor to get rid of ALL formatting and then paste it back into a new document and reformat from scratch.
I like document prep tools like TeX infinitely more than WYSIWYG tools like MSWord. I can focus on content while TeX handles the formatting, and I end up with a nicely done PDF. How hard is it to learn LaTeX, anyway? Even non-programmers could learn the basics over a weekend if they put their minds to it. Everyone I've met who does tech writing knows some basic HTML at least, and LaTeX syntax isn't much harder.
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The lack of formatting tag access is a big clue... I've lost track of how much trouble I've experienced while trying to remove junk formatting artifacts from a document that has been passed around and edited by several people.
For Word 2007, on the "Home" tab, under the "Paragraph" section, top row last icon which is the Pilcrow [wikipedia.org] sign. Clicky to toggle.
In Word 2003, Format menu, toggle "Show all formatting" option.
Shows all spaces, tabs, new-lines, indents, and formatting codes for bold/italic/etc and font changes.
It's far from wysiwyg or LaTex, but it helps take some pain away.
Where I work I've also pushed out CutePDF to all the workstations. It's a free app that installs a virtual printer to 'print' to PDF.
We've dictated that
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The trouble with any "print to pdf" program, is that printers cannot represent clickable links (eg indexes) among other things, so what gets sent to the printer is basically a flat document, and depending on the program being used to print may even be a giant graphic rather than text.
Try the native PDF output from LibreOffice or LaTeX and you'll see the difference... PDF files created like this have a nice clickable/searchable index, while those created poorly using a print to pdf function generally just ha
Re:Many regular people own MSFT (Score:5, Interesting)
Wordperfect twenty years ago on DOS and a 16 MHz machine was better than MS Word is today on today's machines.
In 1991-1993 I helped creating and managing documents of 500-1000 pages, technical documents with much tables.
In MS Word I never got beyond 10 tables or pictures before I started having all kinds of problems with layout and formatting.
In that respect is Open/LibreOffice a fine replacement, it handles long documents with much graphics and tables without complaining.
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Macbook Pro
found your problem.
Microsoft makes more money from software written for Apple computers than Apple does - primarily because of the MS Office Suite.
Try again.
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Actually, I have Apple hardware (among others) but prefer Java for most development (since I do use Windows, Linux and OS X as I stated, and Java covers it all).
No, Java doesn't cover it all. [apple.com]
To save people the trouble of clicking the above link to developer.apple.com, I will quote the relevant text here:
"As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the Java runtime ported by Apple and that ships with Mac OS X is deprecated. Developers should not rely on the Apple-supplied Java runtime being present in future versions of Mac OS X."
So Java works everywhere... except maybe Apple.
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Apple turned responsibility for Java on Macs over to Oracle. Oracle appears to have every intention of supporting it. But you are correct in that having an outside organization responsible for Java on Macs isn't good long term.
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Because it's impossible for someone to think that a stock while not as good as it could be is still a good investment?
And it's all or nothing right? Sell all your stock because you disagree with some things the company does and ignore the things you like.
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Company buying its own shares back is the worst of sleazy practices. The company is using YOUR money (instead of giving you dividends) to buy YOUR shares at a cheaper price than the market thinks they're worth. They're screwing the investors who are selling. If you don't think that's crazy, consider the limit case: a company buys out *all* of its shareholders.
Heck, it should be illegal for a non-investment firm to own shares of itself or other companies. Any extra money left over after operations should be
Re:Company owning itself (Score:4, Informative)
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Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MSFT+Interactive#symbol=MSFT;range=my [yahoo.com]
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.
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BMO
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Haven't there been some pretty fat dividends on occasion? I really wish the Y! charts would include an option to represent present value of a DRIP [fool.com] investment at the beginning of the period.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wish the Y! charts would include an option to represent present value of a DRIP [fool.com] investment at the beginning of the period.
I've been complaining to Yahoo about that for years. It's especially bad for mutual funds since they are required to make (potentially substantial) distributions each year. For example [yahoo.com], note the sharp drops in December 2006 and December 2007 -- they have no economic significance (fund price drops by $X and shareholder receives $X in cash), but they mangle the graph and make it really hard to compare funds.
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Haven't there been some pretty fat dividends on occasion?
Yes, and when they do the stock immediately falls by the proportionate amount. But IBM pays higher dividends plus goes, up, up, up. Anybody who has held Microsoft instead is just plain gullible.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dividends are not growth.
Learn stock basics.
I'm an investor, I care about DI/DO - dollars in / dollars out. Dividends matter. Give me a flat stock price and reliable 20% dividends and I don't care at all about growth.
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Who the hell has a flat stock price and reliable 20 percent dividends? Please tell me so I can hand them all my money.
Me too. Although, you should remember that past performance is no guarantee of future returns....
I spotted PG (Proctor & Gamble) in the late 1990s, and their 10 year performance at that point was impressively reliable... now I'm kinda glad I didn't have any money to invest in it at the time.
I'm just saying, that I'd be happy with fat dividends, or growth... MS has been paying 3% lately, not too fat, but I was remembering their one-time 15%-ish dividend in 2004, if they did that every year, I'd buy a ch
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Most companies paying 20% dividends are doing so because their stock price has been going down for some time. Not because their payouts have been going up.
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The yield is 3 percent.
Forward Annual Dividend : 3.00%
Trailing Annual Dividend : 0.48
Trailing Annual Dividend : 1.80%
5 Year Average Dividend : 2.00%
Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=msft [yahoo.com]
Where you get 20 percent, I have no idea. Check your math.
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BMO
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Informative)
You're an idiot. Of course MS isn't growing, it's a monopoly covering one area and has a serious difficulty in cracking other markets without a DoJ investigation.
The way that you make it sound there's limitless growth potential. Apple got really lucky in that the DoJ has been turning a blind eye to its antitrust violations, same goes for Google.
Microsoft have the one problem - their success. Most of it was due to luck - Corporate America chose Microsoft as the OS of choice, beginning with MS-DOS. Windows 95 to the present have only grown because the market for PCs expanded until pretty much everyone had one. The problem is - how do you force people to buy a new version of the OS when they don't want to?
There are millions of people on Windows XP and older versions, who see no point as long as their computers do what they want of them. They don't need no damn extreme experience. Only when their computers die or they decide it's time for a new one will they change - and a lot of them will not be happy because the new version isn't like their old version and they have to fight with it just to do the basics of what they've known before. There's some sickness in the Windows division that says, "We must change everything around with each release." Vista made corporate buyers shy away when they saw what a turd it was. I know we're still running a lot of XP systems, ourselves.
So grow in other areas? Microsoft have effectively bought their way into other areas on the strength of Windows, Office and server income. Try as they might to barge into other areas, they have all the sexy appeal of Kmart or Walmart. The playing field changed while they were fumbling around and now Apple and Google are flooding new markets, leaving little room for Microsoft to move into. Microsoft haven't a proven product in the Phone or Tablet field (the XP tablets, eh) They're now a marginal player, trying to find a way to wedge themselves in, while holding back Android with flimsy patent suits.
While they have a good hold on a large market, that market has changed and will continue to change. Microsoft hasn't had the vision to capture anything, playing pretender and following the leaders. Until Microsoft rolls out something people didn't know they always wanted, but never saw before, it's going to be a steadily declining market.
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Microsoft have the one problem - their success. Most of it was due to luck - Corporate America chose Microsoft as the OS of choice, beginning with MS-DOS.
It had nothing to do with luck, Bill sold himself to IBM at a time when IBM was considered king for everything from a desktop computer to a mainframe, which in turn forced everyone to follow with IBM and adopt MS-DOS regardless if it was the best solution at the time.
It was a time back when "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" was still in full swing, and if IBM is endorsing a OS or even a roll of toilet paper, any business that had them, or wanted them at the time, would have followed suit.
Jim
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Profits (and dividends) matter if you really want to make reliable money.
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Dividends are not growth.
Learn stock basics.
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BMO
Where I live (and report income), dividends are taxed at a lower rate than capital gains.
So, comparing apples to apples, you are better off getting the same return in the form of dividends.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Play that AAPL chart from 1988 through 1998 and tell me how smart you would feel in December of 1998 after 10 years of loyal investing?
Any idiot can play history back and point out what you should have done. I worked at a publicly traded company that "grew" from 6 to 240 in a space of less than 2 years. The trick is in picking the bottom and the top _when_ it's happening, not after the fact.
A reliable 10% return will beat 90% of the stocks you can name today. They have an annual tradition in Texas called the "running of the bulls" where they stripe off a pasture and measure the "deposits" left by the horned male bovines and invest according to their percentages. The bulls regularly out-perform the previous year's best analysts on Wall Street.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on "when" and how long you got in.
Look at a charts more representative of the long term investor:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=my&s=MSFT&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=aapl&c=%5EGSPC&c=%5EIXIC [yahoo.com]
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.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Informative)
The Microsoft of the 80s and 90s is not the same as the Microsoft of the 'aughts.
The Apple of the 80s and 90s is not the same as the Apple of the 'aughts.
In fact, the Apple of the 'aughts has more in common with the Microsoft of the 90s than the Microsoft of today. Apple is a growth company. Microsoft clearly isn't. If a 3 percent dividend yield from Microsoft doesn't tell you that, I don't know what can.
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?
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BMO
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Interesting)
>Dividend not important?
Did I say that? No, I did not. I said "If you want growth, you don't go to Microsoft"
The local utilities give out dividends. If you want steady income, that's what you buy. It's boring. It's low risk. It's slow/minuscule/nonexistent growth.
Microsoft has lost the battle on the server end and on the mobile and embedded markets. The only place they are dominant is on the desktop, and when you have 90 percent of the market, there's not much to grow into. Microsoft suffers from a lack of imagination, stump ponds / swamps full of deadwood, and institutional inertia.
That's why the stock price and market cap of Microsoft is moribund.
If you want growth, go elsewhere. QED.
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BMO
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That's what Microsoft has become: the office work flow utility. Microsoft worked very hard to become such a utility, all the while distracting the audience with the other hand lip-synching the word "innovation" which as everyone knows is mainly MIA.
They will never describe themselves this way directly in any media that gossips to the DOJ. You just have
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It's boring. It's low risk.
You talk about those things like they're bad things.
It's slow/minuscule/nonexistent growth.
So what? The original point stands, which is that dividends matter when you are evaluating the performance of a stock. A stock whose price doesn't grow very much but which pays dividends regularly can still be a good stock, it just plays a different role in your portfolio as a risky growth stock. It might even be a better stock, once you discount the growth stock by its risk.
I think part of the issue here is that Microsoft's stock violated people's expecta
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If you'd been paying attention you'd know that you make money through dividends even with a flat stock price.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Informative)
It's more telling when you add GOOG and AAPL to the same graph...
Over the last 10 years, MSFT is near 0% growth, GOOG is a little under 500% growth.... AAPL is around 4000% growth.
That makes MSFT a poor long-term investment choice.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Informative)
Except that, as the disclaimer says, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Not that I'm buying any MSFT.
An oldie but goodie: The Ballmer Stagnation [zdnet.com]
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An oldie but goodie: The Ballmer Stagnation [zdnet.com]
Not only does that chart use an irregular Y axis that makes Gates' performance seem more steady and reliable than it actually was...
...but it doesn't bother to mention the dot-com bubble popping in ~2000. The fact that Ballmer kept their stock price up, while everyone else was losing theirs, is no small feat.
Please don't post any more dishonest crap from zdnet. I passionately distrust and loathe Microsoft, especially now that the B&N revelations are out. There is so much to hate about them, we don'
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Informative)
That's what we call a log scale, and it's the appropriate way to represent things like this. To an investor, the stock going from $5 to $10 is the same as it going from $100 to $200. A log scale shows that as the same increment. A linear scale doesn't.
Sure, give Ballmer some kudos for keeping the stock price from dropping TOO much after 2000 (it did drop). Are you using the bubble popping excuse for the whole ten years since then?
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MSFT is a poor choice just because other companies have performed better? That's a little rash. There are plenty of other companies that have performed a lot worse, and holding a diversified portfolio is always a good idea. (You may remember a time when AAPL's chart was not so stellar.) Also, as other people have noted, MSFT pays dividends, which may not be "growth" but are definitely returns on the investment. Neither GOOG nor AAPL pays dividends -- in fact, both seem quite adamant about not paying them --
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Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft has payed out nearly its full stock price in dividends during that time. Its also got a better P&E.
That makes it a *great* long-term investment choice. But a big swath of investors that came up during the dot-com boom don't seem to really understand what long-term investment means.
Its *not* a good stock to try getting short term gains, and its not a good stock for growth. But like a lot of the big blue chips, its a great place to sink cash for the long run.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:4, Insightful)
A company with no growth paying 3% dividends and consistently losing pieces of their core markets year after year? This is a good place to sink cash for the long run?
Microsoft ten years ago, maybe. Microsoft now?
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Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at Apple, they have done well. Made products people want. Gained technology to product price competitive products. But the real point is that they were under 3% of the market and now are at 12% or so. Microsoft still is over 80% but the point is that growing by 9 basis points for Microsoft would be just over 10% but for apple it was 400% growth. In fact, there is no way Microsoft can grow more that 25% in their primary market as, well, that would put them at 100%, The growth potential is almost all in other markets and new technologies. Apple, on the other hand, has tons of room to grow into if they can take more market share. However, if you look at their actual financial data, it is the new markets that really pushed them forward over the last 10 years. They executed very well in identifying new opportunities and taking the risk to enter those markets at the right point.
Microsoft is currently, I believe, undervalued. Microsoft does have some very bright people and some compelling products coming, And they continue to be stable too. Not that Apple is not in a major growth spurt, but they are also valued relatively highly compared to earnings.
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Just now they're "disgruntled"?
I mean... what did they think? /. posters are disgruntled for ages already.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that Microsoft is very profitable. They make money. Lots and lots of money. The problem is that they treat their investors and their customers like shit. It doesn't matter though, because they're microsoft. AT&T was just like this before they were broken up. They treated everyone like shit because they could and microsoft, the great monopoly of our day does the same. Monopolies don't have to act like other companies because.....they're monopolies.
AT&T treat their shareholders nice (Score:3)
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.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has tripled earning in the last decade, a long history of solid steady (though slowing) growth. The stock had lots of growth priced in and the stock has delivered growth. Growth is slowing. P/E of under 10, PEG .85, 3 P/S and P/B for a healthy growing company; 44% return on equity. The stock was priced for growth a decade ago and is now priced for value. And all this with a 3% dividend yield!
That's a good stock.
Re: (Score:3)
Microsoft has tripled earning in the last decade, a long history of solid steady (though slowing) growth. The stock had lots of growth priced in and the stock has delivered growth. Growth is slowing. P/E of under 10, PEG .85, 3 P/S and P/B for a healthy growing company; 44% return on equity. The stock was priced for growth a decade ago and is now priced for value. And all this with a 3% dividend yield!
That's a good stock.
You buy it then :-)
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want growth, Microsoft is not where you want to be.
That's not what it means at all. It means if you wanted growth in 2000 Microsoft wasn't the place to be. The same may be true of Apple and Google today. That's likely the case, actually.
Re:Just now they're "disgruntled"? (Score:4, Interesting)
according to this,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems [wikipedia.org]
windows has about 75% market share. the next highest is OSX at 7%. if nothing else, that's pretty massive potential.
Re: (Score:3)
Uh, Microsoft is the blue line there, boss. They're underperforming.
Dividends? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Dividends? (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't MSFT pay dividends?
quarterly [dividend.com].
There's no excuse for a 15 min Q&A (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/microsoft-shareholder-meeting [geekwire.com]
I would have left too if those were the best answers I could come up with for those questions.
With Steve gone who is to give them a direction? (Score:4, Insightful)
I kid, I kid.
I hope.
Unhappy about static share price? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unhappy about static share price? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
A stock is supposed to deliver value to its shareholders by either paying dividends or appreciating in price. If a company doesn't pay a dividend and doesn't appreciate in price (through growth in projected earnings), then they're essentially just dicking around with shareholder money.
Looking back at the past ten years, I would have to say that Microsoft has largely been dicking around with shareholder money. They've expanded into some new markets and failed to break into a number of others. They could have been paying a steady dividend instead. They've started paying a modest dividend now which may mean that they're starting to own up to the fact that they don't have any more huge growth prospects and admit that they might as well pay out some of the cash their earning.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Looking back at the past ten years I can see that Microsoft has been reliably increasing the dividend payouts to where it is around $0.65/share/year and will increase to $0.80/share/year in 2012. That seems like a reliable revenue generator for people interested in steady growth rather than playing the lottery.
Re: (Score:3)
As many other people have mentioned, Microsoft does pay a quarterly dividend, currently annualized at about 3 percent.
Re: (Score:3)
Good post.
I mean, other than the part where Microsoft does pay a dividend--that has been increasing--and has done so for years. But other than that...
Perhaps your looks back should involve slightly more on the factual side and slightly less on the "meh, it sounds right to me" side.
Re: (Score:3)
So just go ahead and slide that slider into the future and see how things turn out, and make your investment decisions that way.
Shareholders are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [microsoft.com]
2011 income statement [yahoo.com]
Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re: (Score:3)
>Then they started that horrible OEM recover CD
These were offered to OEMs at discount because it's not a full license.
See "How does a company qualify to become a direct Microsoft OEM? It seems that the larger companies currently have an unfair advantage compared with smaller OEMs." from their Licensing FAQ [microsoft.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Microsoft was also productive in the early 2000-s. Windows 2000 was a great OS, making NT ready for the desktop, and a major step in finally fixing the constant bluescreens and crashes of the 9x line. Unlike Windows XP, 2000 had no activation crap and had everything needed for everyday tasks. XP just added desktop themes, entertainment apps and Windows Restore. .NET/2003 and the introduction of .NET were also major steps, this probably killed Borland because Borland couldn't create a competitiv
Visual Studio
M$ should apologize (Score:3)
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.
So much Softie Butthurt(TM) (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3)
you are being modded down for saying stupid things like companies should be broken up because they are performing consistently, in a recession no less.
could they have done better? sure, a few have. could they have done worse? yes, *many* have. i'd be really, really damn happy if my completely diversified, "low risk" 401k had at least held it's value thus far in the recession. i would be much better off if i was entirely invested in MSFT.
Re:So much Softie Butthurt(TM) (Score:5, Interesting)
You're stupid.
I'm smarter than you.
Deal with it.
Oh look the years that the company was left to colored sugar-water salesmen and bean counters. Not the dynamic and growing company it is now.
Yes, and if I had been born in an earlier decade, I could have bought IBM when there was a market of "four to five computers"
Moron.
Oh, look, a softie redefining words at whim.
You're an idiot.
Here, have another chart. This is growth.
You should have bought AAPL, ya dummy.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=5y&l=off&z=l&q=l&c=aapl [yahoo.com]
Of your last six comments, 2 are at +5, 3 are at -1, and one is at +2 (at the time of this writing). For what it's worth, I agree with every one of them.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll go with this.
Except...
Gates /has/ been selling his stock. It's been one of his stated goals to not leave billions to his kids, that they need to make their own way. This is respectable.
Ballmer, OTOH, is not going anywhere. He has no such outlook. His shares are his, and he's not giving up being Head Cheese without a fight.
Also, Microsoft only started giving out dividends because of exactly what you mentioned. When the dot-bust happened and stock prices weren't going anywhere, but they had 70 or 80
Re: (Score:3)
>serious tangent
At least with Linux, you can change the interface easily.
And seriously, KDE is spectacular now. 4.7.3 is exceptionally pleasing once you take 10 minutes to degoober some of the defaults.
(close button on left, minimize and maximize/restore buttons on right, as God and IBM intended)
--
BMO
Working as intended (Score:3)
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.
This line says it all (Score:4, Insightful)
This line says it all:
"My granddaughters don't even know what Microsoft does."
I sympathise (Score:4, Funny)
That's understandable. if I had to listen to either of them for more than 30 seconds I'd chew my own toes off.
Re: (Score:3)
3% is 2x what my credit union pays in an IRA, which is itself 3x what most banks pay. Poor, but there's a risk/reward thing to consider.
Re:You'd think... (Score:4)
Only the dumb money is left.
Or the safe money. Not every investment needs to be a double-or-nothing crap shoot. I'm sure a lot of people who invest in MSFT also invest in AAPL or GOOG, but for different reasons. I'm sure there are even lots of people who use a Mac daily but still have money in MSFT; it's really all between them and their financial advisers, and has little to do with Windows vs. Mac OS X.
I like Ballmer (Score:3)
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
Re:I like Ballmer (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, no... You misunderstood me. Milking the Windows and Office cows until they're dead is just what I want him to do. I don't want him to have a vision for the future. I don't want him to grasp the significance of the transition to mobile. He thinks XBox is a huge win, and that's just what I want him to think. He thinks Windows Phone and Online Services Division have got a chance in Hell, and I'm OK with that. He probably thinks he's going to make something useful out of Skype. He's going to anchor all "innovations" and acquisitions with "business drivers" until they won't fly. There's no danger he's going to "get it" so I hope they keep him until the end. When your opponent is making a mistake, don't interrupt.
To me this Microsoft debacle is a distraction from the potential progress we could have had these past three decades. Microsoft's goal isn't innovation, it's control of innovation. The prevention of innovation they don't control is Microsoft's goal, and they were great at it under Gates but less so under Ballmer. They've done so well with this that they're now introducing features we had 30 years ago in Unix, and being lauded for it. Their current patent trolling is just the chancres of a much deeper disease. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for them, the innate creativity of people is a force that can be slowed but not stopped. Eventually a way is found.
With people Microsoft's goal seems to be to destroy morale as fast as possible. Their forced ranking system informs one employee in five that he's on the way out - some say two in five. You can only watch that for so long before you know that one day they come for you no matter what you do. Microsoft only hires people good at math so let's do the math. If the odds of you surviving the next year at Microsoft are 0.8 and the distribution is totally random then your odds of surviving 20 years is 0.8 to the 20th power, or one in a hundred. But we all know the distribution isn't random. Most everybody has in their life a bad year and nobody knows they're not going to have one with divorce, the loss of a loved one that drives you to depression, physical illness, ordinary loss of focus, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that induce you to produce less than your peers - no matter how good you are. Even if you don't have a bad year the currently rumored "Young Up Microsoft" program tilts the scale from "insanely difficult" to "impossible". So after about your third year there you know that this isn't a career path that leads to retirement. That shifts the personal goal of employees from "do what's best" to "get what you can before you're canned". Since new-hires have a well-known "grace year" because otherwise the hirer would suffer, for some segment of the new hires this translates to "don't get caught scrapping the walls for copper." Obviously this internal strategy served the short-term bottom line at some point in the past and is now a cultural anomaly like cargo cults but the rest of us eventually benefit so I hope they don't change it.
Microsoft's core products are Windows and Office. An operating environment and a suite of basic applications. The operating environment isn't as secure and robust as many we had 30 years ago, and does the same thing it did then: provide an environment for applications to run in. The suite of applications isn't even organic - they bought them all - and hasn't really changed in productivity in fifteen years. There are only so many ways to put glyphs on a page and do a mail merge. The spreadsheet feature wars ended sometime in 1989 when every spreadsheet had more features than three sigmas of users would ever access. Databases and presentations took a little longer - and to be fair the features they didn't buy there they outright stole. Microsoft won the office software wars not by making better software, but by ensuring that competing software wouldn't run well on their OS - and when they won, they stopped giving more value. This is being worked around by various