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Microsoft Businesses The Almighty Buck

Microsoft Hits $2 Trillion Market Cap (geekwire.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the new-milestone dept.
Microsoft's market capitalization hit $2 trillion for the first time. GeekWire reports: The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant trails only Apple among the world's most valuable companies. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach the $2 trillion mark in August. Fellow Seattle-area giant Amazon, valued Tuesday at $1.77 trillion, is also approaching the $2 trillion club. Microsoft stock was up 1.1% Tuesday and is up more than 20% this year.

The company continues to see growing demand for its cloud services as the pandemic has accelerated technology adoption. It beat quarterly expectations with $41.7 billion in revenue for the March quarter, up 19% year-over-year -- its biggest revenue growth since 2018 -- and profits of $15.5 billion, up 44%. A Wedbush report last month projected more growth ahead for Microsoft, with Azure's cloud momentum "still in its early days" and the company "firmly positioned to gain more market share vs. AWS in this cloud arms race." Microsoft also continues to invest heavily in its gaming business; add new features to its Teams collaboration software; and is staying active in the M&A arena with its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance Communications and reported interest in Discord and Pinterest.
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Microsoft Hits $2 Trillion Market Cap More

Microsoft Hits $2 Trillion Market Cap

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  • While dogecoin crashes after a literal car crash traditional investments have their time in the sun. Either way its all funded by hype and stimulus money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by x0ra ( 1249540 )
      DOGE hasn't had the FED buying trillions worth of shit to keep the rich rich. Anybody remotely involved with quantitative easing should have been hanged a long time ago...

      • Anybody remotely involved with quantitative easing should have been hanged a long time ago...

        I doubt few people who have any real understanding of markets and liquidity would ever say anything on QE quite that strongly.
        For it, or against it, it's hard to argue it's somehow evil.

        This of course makes me ask... why are you forming such strong opinions on topics that you're ignorant of?

        We can have a real conversation when you can find one way that QE helped you as a peon. And it did. If you can't find a way, you're not looking hard enough.

        • QE is justified as a broad monetary stimulus. The evidence is that it works and works well. America did aggressive QE after the 2007 crash while Europe focused on austerity. America had a stronger and faster recovery.

          Nonetheless, while QE doesn't cause wage or consumer inflation, it does boost asset prices. This is most obvious in housing prices and stock market indexes.

          • Most of the working class is wondering , "What fuckin recovery?"
            It would be nice if some Capitalism actually happened to some of these companies. Actually, to a lot of them. Instead, the little guy that actually does productive work, gets to eat Rugged Individualism.

            • Most of the working class is wondering , "What fuckin recovery?"

              No, they're not.
              Median PPP income in the US has increased every single year since 2009.
              If it sucked for you, I'm sorry, but you should stop parroting stupid talking points.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by x0ra ( 1249540 )
            The ECB had the same response to the 2008 crisis as the FED.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by x0ra ( 1249540 )

            Nonetheless, while QE doesn't cause wage or consumer inflation, it does boost asset prices. This is most obvious in housing prices and stock market indexes.

            It saved all Wall Street, all the hedge and retirement funds as well as consumer banks which would have otherwise been siphoned to the bottom because of their financial / investment division. It also saved anything indexed on the stock market and those who needed stability the most: retired boomers. This was proven once again during the pandemic, Goverments' only purpose is to protect their assets by sacrificing all younger generations, at _any_ cost. Pouring trillions to buy worthless assets was the only s

            • You seem to think that those named flickering across the index exist outside of reality. As if they weren't critical components of our economy, directly affecting the employment of literally millions of Americans.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ksw_92 ( 5249207 )

            What the Fed is doing is no longer QE, it is outright manipulation of risk. The Fed has no business buying or backstopping anything but the USD. Instead, they're covering all sorts of risk and sending the signal that, if you're lucky enough to stand under their umbrella, you no longer have to worry about getting wet if it rains.

            • I think that's a valid criticism.
              I'd be very curious to see the various appointed Fed chairs opinions on the matter.
              I imagine at least some would agree with you. Perhaps they felt there was little choice?

              They have to work within their power, and at the same time they have to avoid the flow of money coming to a screeching halt.
          • I'm aware.
            The part I took exception to was:

            Anybody remotely involved with quantitative easing should have been hanged a long time ago...

            This is so idiotically simplified, it's practically akin to saying "anybody who killed someone on the fields of Europe back in '44 should be hung"

  • About 15 years ago, I thought Microsoft was as big as it could get. They had completely dominated the OS market, but couldn't make any inroads to other technologies. Remember Zune, or Windows Phone? The company completely stalled out. It seems Nadella has really turned the ship around.

    • They are where IBM was in the 70's: dominating the majority of business computing. So far they've managed to avoid anti-trust, probably because "the cloud" is not a commodity yet and because they lost browser market share to Google.

      • So far they've managed to avoid anti-trust, probably because "the cloud" is not a commodity yet

        More likely because Cloud is a very healthy market.
        There are too many successful players for anyone to have enough market power to even come close to antitrust statutes.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          Not really. Azure and AWS dominate, Google is hanging on, and the rest will probably fade unless they agree on a mutual standard or something.

          I forgot to mention that MS failed in the mobile market.

          • Not really. Azure and AWS dominate, Google is hanging on, and the rest will probably fade unless they agree on a mutual standard or something.

            No, this is pure nonsense.

            Unfortunately, as part of my job, I have to go to the conventions in Vegas and Hawaii and listen to the cloud providers bloviate about themselves and what fictitious thing makes them different from each other. However, from this comes real discussions and real research at work because it's relevant to our business.

            Azure and AWS have a dominant market position, for sure.
            But combined, they only account for 51% of the market.
            Google has 7%, and the other 42% are various other ent

    • Microsoft has a big problem following. They are however pretty good when they can edge out a leadership position. The exception to this rule seems to the cloud where they were a follower but they very much leaned on their existing dominance in the servers department as well as corporate productivity applications in order to expand their cloud business.

    • Windows Cloud was the one of the last things that Gates pushed before he left. That and online office.... Sooo
    • The investment in the Cloud started during the Ballmer era, but Nadella cemented this direction.

    • Microsoft diversification (Score:5, Informative)

      by jmcbain ( 1233044 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @07:23PM (#61511628)
      If any of you think that Microsoft is doing great due to just Azure and Windows licensing, then you've been asleep for the last ten years. Here are Microsoft's business lines:

      1. Azure - 25.9% of revenue
      2. Office software and services - 25.2%
      3. Windows - 16.2%
      4. Xbox - 9.1%
      5. Online ads 6.1%
      6. LinkedIn - 5.4%
      7. Hardware (Surface) - 4.8%
      8. Plus other stuff

      This webpage [visualcapitalist.com] shows the breakdown of revenue lines from all the major tech companies.

      Note that LinkedIn generates only 5.4% of Microsoft's revenue. But that's 5.4% of $41.7B = $2.2B in revenue from the last quarter.

      • Great article! A more worthy read than the main article. I hate to admit it but microsoft appear to have a comparatively diverse portfolio compared with some. It's impressive that they're still in the game considering every product of theirs that I've ever used lies somewhere between mediocre and outright crap.

        • Vendor lock-in works, and it works well. And the longer you manage to employ it, the longer it will persist even after the alternatives become credible. These lessons have not been lost on others and Apple in particular is fighting tooth and nail to maintain theirs.

    • Nadella has done well, but most people massively underestimate what Balmer did. While the share price didn't budge much under him the actual revenue and profit skyrocketed. Microsoft was just massively overvalued around 2000 and took the next decade or so to grow into its market cap, but make no mistake despite disasters like windows phone and Zune they were massively successful under Balmer

      • Ballmer figured out that the road to making money was dirty tricks, marketing, vendor lock-in, and threatening to throw chairs at people, and abandoned any pretense of attracting business by making better products.

  • I feel old. I recall when the entire US annual budget was 2 trillion. Somewhere back around Reagan's time.

    • Somewhere back around Reagan's time.

      Indeed. He's the one who pushed us over a trillion. 69% increase, with a near doubling of the annual deficit.

      This is of course ignoring the obvious requirement of Congressional participation in all spending.

      • People in power don't generally vote themselves less power and less money. Since they can fleece taxpayers en masse by fiat, sans meaningful representation, and even get them to enforce it against themselves (cf. the US military and police gangs), there's not much to make them pause, is there?

        They have the guns, and they have the gold.

        • They don't have to fleece taxpayers. Remember, the pols represent their donors -- who happen to be the ultra-rich corps.
          The pols aren't going to fleece their donors, they are going to do whatever they say. Which is, letting them suppress wages while offshoring everything that isn't nailed down, and inflate the fuck out of assets (capital gains). Letting financial engineering run the country into the ditch, then bailing them out. If you work, they've got you coming and going no matter what. If they would ba

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ksw_92 ( 5249207 )

      Alright, everyone...time to get off his lawn.

      (I was in HS during Reagan's first term)

    • used to be the adjective for "numbers so big you never see them in any other context".

      Perhaps we should start using "governmental" ...

  • Thank the Federal Reserve (Score:3, Insightful)

    by i'm probably drunk ( 6159770 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:42PM (#61511358)

    A couple years ago we had no trillion dollar companies. Now we have at least 4.

    Keep on printing, Fed!!

  • This is probably the most impressive market failure, ever.

  • We are walking into the same situation as 20 years ago and now there are no excuses. I know "nobody is fired for buying MS product" , but come on, we cannot be this stupid right ?

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