1. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 259
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is one of the world’s largest companies in computer software. The company also provides cloud computing services to its consumers. In March, BMO Capital presented a positive outlook on the company’s performance and raised its price target on MSFT to $305. The firm maintained its Market Perform rating on the stock.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is one of the best dividend stocks on our list as it holds a 16-year track record of dividend growth. The company currently pays a per-share dividend of $0.68 every quarter and has a dividend yield of 0.99%, as of March 29.
At the end of Q4 2022, 259 hedge funds in Insider Monkey’s database owned stakes in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), down from 269 in the previous quarter. These stakes have a total value of over $58.6 billion. Ken Griffin and Terry Smith were some of the company’s leading stakeholders in Q4.
Baron Funds mentioned Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in its Q4 2022 investor letter. Here is what the firm has to say:
“Shares of mega-cap software company Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) outperformed despite a mixed fiscal first quarter due to macro challenges that negatively impacted results and guidance, including foreign exchange headwinds, weakening PC demand, and a cyclical slowdown in advertising spending. Total revenue beat Street expectations at 16% constant-currency growth (vs. estimates of 14%), but its Azure cloud computing business missed analyst projections by 1% for the second straight quarter, though it still grew a robust 42% year-over-year, as Microsoft helped its customers optimize existing workloads due to the macro backdrop. While the optimization of workloads is a short-term headwind, we believe it is the right thing to do and should help drive more consumption with customers over time. Our research continues to indicate that the longer-term secular trend of cloud computing remains healthy and intact. For example, in its fourth quarter CIO survey report, Morgan Stanley showed, among other things, that cloud computing was the second highest CIO spending priority (behind only security software), that cloud application workloads were expected to increase from 27% of total workloads today to 46% by the end of 2025, and that Azure was listed as the preferred cloud vendor and likely to take share over the short and long term.9 Additionally, Microsoft is positioned to be a prime beneficiary of ChatGPT. Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2020 and is rumored to be considering investing an additional $10 billion for a 49% stake in the company. Moreover, ChatGPT runs on Microsoft’s Azure platform, and Microsoft recently announced the general availability of its Azure OpenAI Service enabling Azure customers to access advanced AI models, including ChatGPT itself soon. We remain bullish on Microsoft’s long-term opportunity in the cloud, and believe AI has the potential to be additive to growth for years to come.”
Follow Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Follow Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT)
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